Collaboration as a Key to Better Communications
For nearly five years, we’ve had the honor of serving as the national communications agency working on behalf of a group of more than 130 community foundations through the Community Foundation Public Awareness Initiative.
It’s been great work – highlighted by the fact that we get to partner with an incredibly talented group of communications professionals from every corner of the U.S.
But it wasn’t until last spring – during the early days of COVID-19 – that we truly unleashed the power of this group.
That’s when we decided to lead a series of virtual conference calls to help these communications teams workshop ideas and ask each other questions about how to communicate about the pandemic.
I thought it would be a short-term service. But here we are – nearly 18 months later – and we’ve been organizing and hosting this meeting every Tuesday.
And we have no plans to stop.
Here’s why: collaboration is an underrated and incredibly powerful tool for communicators.
When we bring smart people together to talk about their work and share examples and approaches, wonderful things happen. Ideas that work in one part of the country can become the spark for a creative concept on the opposite coast.
These conversations can also lead to action that would not otherwise happen.
In one case, five community foundations decided to pool their resources to host a series of virtual presentations from national-level speakers. These presentations offered each foundation a chance to inspire and challenge their donors – and they would not have taken place if these five foundations did not join forces.
For our agency, these conversations and collaborations have become invaluable for building stronger relationships, identifying trends and examples for our work with the media, and giving us ideas that shape our work and our thinking.
It’s easy to dismiss opportunities to meet with our peers at other organizations as a speed bump or a waste of time. Collaborative projects can sometimes bring challenges, for sure, especially when you’re working with others who have different priorities or skill levels.
But at a time when it remains difficult to get out and network outside of our organizations, let alone talk to colleagues in our own organizations, it’s important to remember the value of finding ways to connect and build relationships with our peers.
We’re exploring new models for building collaborative opportunities for our individual clients based on what we’ve learned from our work with community foundations. And we invite your ideas on how we can help build peer learning communities that support and elevate your work.
Speaking of Collaboration
I’ll be hosting a free webinar in partnership with Blackbaud on Thursday, Aug. 26, on the power of foundation collaboration. There, I’ll be showcasing some examples of effective partnerships, why they work, and what they accomplish.
