Nonprofit Collaboration, Network Weaving, and Kristen Wiig

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col·lab’ o·ra’ tion: two or more organizations working together in a meaningful, well-defined, and deliberate manner to accomplish a set of shared, mutually beneficial objectives they can better achieve together than alone.Wondering what’s been on our minds at Greenlights? I’ll give you three guesses. (Hint: it starts with a ‘c’ and ends with -ollaboration.) Between gearing up for our Nonprofit Collaboration & Mergers Town Hall next month, conducting research on all of the nonprofit mergers that have happened in our community over the past 10 years, and our ongoing work on mergers and collaborations, it’s hard not to think about it.Debra Askanase (one of my favorite people on Twitter for social media and fellow mint chocolate chip ice cream lover) recently blogged about “network weaving,” specifically, how to empower everyone to become a network weaver. The content was primarily around social media networking, but it got me thinking, what if everyone in our organizations was empowered to seek opportunities for collaborating and becoming a network weaver? We know that collaboration happens on a continuum, and that there are numerous ways and opportunities to collaborate, so how can our sector and the communities we serve support these types of initiatives?The Catalyst Fund for Nonprofits is one of the best examples I’ve found of this type of network weaving. It’s a collaborative effort of five funders in the Boston area that serve as “a source of financial and technical advisory support as a catalyst for promising voluntary collaborative ventures and mergers among nonprofit organizations.” Halfway through its initial five-year plan, the Fund has awarded 19 grants for this type of financial and technical advisory support, benefiting 47 individual organizations. The ultimate goal is to develop a permanent resource infrastructure to support nonprofit collaborations—rooted in best practices and data-based outcomes.Boston and its Catalyst Fund aren’t alone, either. Merge Minnesota and The Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot Project in Ohio are additional examples of community-wide efforts to advance strategic collaboration in their communities.In 2008, Foundation Center began building the Nonprofit Collaboration Database to capture these types of collaborative efforts and make them available to the public. The database currently has over 650 entries, including but not limited to collaboration for the purpose of sharing goods and services, sharing staff, or fully merging. You can search a number of sections, including challenges to collaborating, goals for collaborating, and the overall impact a collaboration had.Which brings me to Kristen Wiig (admittedly, not my best segue ever), AKA the person with whom I’d most liked to have collaborated with on Saturday Night Live. Whether she was playing Aunt Linda, Penelope, or the Target Lady, she created magic with every character she portrayed. For me, she was the key ingredient in any sketched she played in, the thing that made it (almost) guaranteed to have an impact on the audience (sorry, Gilly, I guess not everything worked for me). She was a network weaver.What would you say is the Kristen Wiig of nonprofit collaboration, those element or elements that will (almost) always set you up for success? Peter Kramer, who manages the Catalyst Fund for Nonprofits, speaks from his own experience, saying they’ve learned through the Fund’s work that three key elements are needed: effective leadership, clear and aligned goals, and resources and expertise.What would you add to this list?I leave you with yet another of my favorite Kristen Wiig collaborations, the presenter speech she did with Will Ferrell at the 2013 Golden Globes, second only to my all-time favorite power collaboration of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. [Video]

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