Massachusetts nonprofits have historically played a critical role in shaping the state’s educational landscape, addressing gaps in public services and advocating for lasting, systemic change. The state is home to hundreds of nonprofits, focused on everything from early childhood development and special education to STEM initiatives and college readiness.

Today, though, many of the Commonwealth’s nonprofits are being forced to question how – or even if – they can continue to support public education as they always have. Political uncertainty and continuing aftershocks from the pandemic have reduced funding options everywhere. Instead of strategically supporting one another, like-minded organizations have been left to compete for the same dwindling dollars.

Additionally, the education sector often mirrors the business world’s impatient, survival-of-the-fittest mentality. New tools and ideas are rushed to the classroom without due diligence and, on the other end, worthy efforts are often abandoned before they can fully take root and spread. True systemic change takes time, and requires patience. There are no magic bullets that can change our flawed educational system overnight.

Within this context in 2025 our two nonprofit organizations, Power of Place Learning Communities (PoP) and the Teacher Collaborative (TTC), recognized that, instead of going it alone in today’s competitive economy, joining forces would be the most promising path forward.

Three important agreements enabled collaboration

1) Lean Into Unique Strengths

A merger is more than an operational decision and a signing of paperwork. A merger is a blending of ideologies and cultures, and the creation of a new delivery system that expands our footprint and potential for impact. Done poorly a merger can collapse under its own weight and fall apart. When done well, it can cultivate growth, fuel possibility, and infuse an organization with new energy and value.

Our organizations asked:

• How are we more alike than different?
• What do we each do distinctively that we should continue?
• What do we do that overlaps that we can strengthen together?
• How can we create optimal conditions for educators and communities to flourish?
• How do we bring in funders and partners who share this aspiration?

The answers solidified our shared vision, grounded in learning in community, cultures of belonging, educator excellence, and human agency. We recognized that what each of our organizations does distinctly is in service of something greater, and that by embracing the potential for a deep, meaningful collaboration, partnership made sense, even before we reached agreements on the details.

2) Be Candid

Our conversations were radically honest. We resisted the urge to make the process bigger or more polished than it needed to be.

Instead of hiring expensive consultants, we leaned on our relationships and our funders, most notably, the Barr Foundation, which encouraged us to slow down, explore, and give the conversation the time, thought, and space it deserved. We invited funders to consider how they might act not just as financiers, but as bridge builders and connectors — helping organizations explore collaboration with curiosity rather than fear.

3) Embrace a Shared Vision and Shared Values

Collaboration at this level is hard, and often feels like two steps forward, one step back. Some people lost jobs; others were invited to transition to new roles. But what made this merger possible was not perfect alignment on operations or logistics, it was that we started — and remained — in philosophical lockstep from day one. We agreed on a core principle that educators are capable leaders and they thrive when given space to connect, recharge, and imagine together.

This conviction anchored both of our organizations and kept us braided together when the gnarly details threatened to derail our process. Remaining true to our shared “whys” and “hows” allowed us to weather the array of skeptical questions from boards, partners, attorneys and funders, and reminded us that while we might not have all the answers immediately, we could — and would — figure them out together.

Our Collective History

Our organizations had a history of collaboration, beginning with the 2022 launch of the Teacher Action Research Fellowship, a highly successful 18-month action research project for Essex County teachers. Through that work, we built a trusting relationship, and given today’s context it felt like a natural next step to come together to imagine what might be possible under a single umbrella.

The Teacher Collaborative, a trusted leader in educator-led innovation and collaboration across Massachusetts since 2017, offered a professional learning model that enabled educators to learn directly from and with one another. In 2025, news of a delayed funding stream following months of dwindling resources left the otherwise successful nonprofit to question its long-term viability. None of the range of options were good: furloughing staff, scaling back on programming, or shutting down. The future sounded expensive, complicated, and messy.

Power of Place Learning Communities first founded in 2018 and then expanded into a non-profit in 2023, focused on building cultures of belonging in schools for both students and adults. Backed by generous, multi-year funding from the Peter and Elizabeth Tower Foundation, PoP was poised to build something lasting: a body of work and a model of professional learning that could ripple across the Commonwealth and beyond, designed to strengthen and amplify the work of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and other providers, not compete with them.

Today we stand strong as Power of Place Learning Communities, a single organization with combined resources, staff, and a shared mission and vision. Our path here was neither linear nor easy, and we believe it offers a roadmap for others in the sector who are similarly feeling the squeeze and recognize that this is no longer the time to go it alone.

Our Hope for Other Nonprofits

We urge others to take note — this is the moment to seek out like-partners, clarify the shared “why,” and move beyond scarcity thinking. We encourage bravery, even when the path is murky. We encourage radical honesty, openness, and a willingness to be flexible because this is when true collaboration is possible. For nonprofits, that means taking the leap from working alone to working together. Stop competing. Find partners with complementary strengths, a commitment to be honest, and a shared vision. Public education still needs the nonprofit sector to thrive. Working together, with honesty, humility, and hope, we can move the good work forward further than we ever could alone.