Much of the contemporary research on nonprofit management has counseled individual nonprofits on how to work more efficiently, define program niches, and become highly attuned to the changing needs of their stakeholders. By contrast, an emergent stream of research focuses on improving the ability of the entire nonprofit/civil society sector to work together to achieve common social goals, such as poverty elimination. The underlying but untested assumption of these concepts is that deliberate and strategic coordination among a group of nonprofits results in better social outcomes than nonprofits could achieve in isolation from one another. Given the growing number of nonprofits in Boston, decreases in public funding, and pressure on limited private sources of funding, collaborative solutions will be increasingly required. In this research project, we set out to address the following questions:
- Can Boston’s nonprofits realize greater outcomes (i.e., effectiveness) by working together in new structures or alignments, and, if so, what is preventing that from happening?
- What can foundations and support organizations do to overcome barriers, incent, catalyze, seed, provide tools and resources or otherwise nurture the development of these new ways to work?
In order to address these questions, and to better understand the structure and process of collaboration, we interviewed 42 people (staff of nonprofits involved in local collaborations as well as technical assistance providers); convened a panel of senior consultants; conducted a literature review on collaboration; and identified and examined cases where Boston’s nonprofits have engaged in collaboration.
Overall, what we found supports the notion that nonprofit collaborations are effective and often essential for achieving social outcomes. In the collaborations we studied, we identified policy achievements, cost savings, new solutions to old problems, and innovations in thinking. However, we also found that collaboration is hard, time-consuming and frustrating, and requires new skills that often are not in the toolbox of many nonprofit executives and staff. In particular, nonprofit executives struggle with relational issues that arise during collaboration. In addition, the technical assistance that is available to most nonprofits is at the individual organizational level rather than at the collaboration (i.e., inter-organizational) level. There is an important opportunity to identify the types of technical assistance needed by collaborations, and, more specifically, the sequencing and timing of these interventions.
We identified several actions that foundations and other funding mechanisms can undertake to help incent and reward these activities.
About the author:
Roy Ahn, S.D. is an independent consultant. He is also a research fellow of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.
Much of the contemporary research on nonprofit management has counseled individual nonprofits on how to work more efficiently, define program niches, and become highly attuned to the changing needs of their stakeholders. By contrast, an emergent stream of research focuses on improving the ability of the entire nonprofit/civil society sector to work together to achieve common social goals, such as poverty elimination. The underlying but untested assumption of these concepts is that deliberate and strategic coordination among a group of nonprofits results in better social outcomes than nonprofits could achieve in isolation from one another. Given the growing number of nonprofits in Boston, decreases in public funding, and pressure on limited private sources of funding, collaborative solutions will be increasingly required. 
