Not Reinventing the Wheel through Complementary Partnerships

Throughout my 30 years in the NYC non-profit world, funders periodically would launch efforts to "reduce duplication of services" and "increase collaboration" among non-profits.  Most fizzled out with limited impact.

I think there are 3 main reasons it failed:

1. There are so many people who need particular services that there can almost never been enough service providers.
2. Some services are best suited to being delivered on a small scale, and you would not find efficiencies or improve effectiveness by merging organizations.
3. People who found non-profits are heavily invested in the idea that they can provide a better service and do it better than whoever is already out there.

This last point also applies to current leadership of non-profits.  Executive Directors, CEOs, Boards of Directors, Presidents, Chairs - all are invested in believing their organization is the best.  If the Board doesn't have confidence in the management, their first inclination is to replace management rather than to find another organization to take over their programs.

The one area where funders did have an impact is in helping organizations resist "mission creep."  This occurs when it becomes clear that an organization's clients need more services than they are currently getting.

Typically, organizations used to develop a new program to meet those needs.  And many still do.  Now they call it "holistic" or "comprehensive" service models.

Another option was one we adopted at City Harvest when I was the Executive Director.  I called it "complementary partnerships" - where City Harvest did what we were best at and we engaged other organizations to provide services they were best at.  Here's what we did.

City Harvest began a Mobile Market, where we distributed free produce to residents of NYC Housing Authority buildings.  The brainchild of Val Traore (now the ED of the Food Bank of South Jersey), the Mobile Market was based on the farmers' market model, where it's possible to bring in a range of sellers and products.  In this case, we decided to bring in a range of services, offered by a variety of providers.  We knew that free food distribution would attract many people.  So what else could we help them with, once they were present?

• Many public housing residents were eligible for food stamps, yet most were not receiving them.  We decided to bring in an organization expert in signing people up for food stamps. They were eager to get access to this audience. 
• We realized that some produce would be unfamiliar to residents, so we brought in a chef funded by Share Our Strength who did demonstrations of recipes using the produce and we passed out recipes.  We also recruited some of our celebrity chefs who were on our Food Council, to do demos. They were eager to use their skills to benefit lower-income New Yorkers. 
• We also realized that residents lacked health care, so brought in community health organizations to do medical screenings and even dental care.  Again, they were eager to have access to a critical mass of people. 
• To get volunteers who would help staff the Mobile Market, we turned to New York Cares, the expert in volunteerism. It was eager to have a project that needed regular volunteers on the weekend.

The idea was to offer way more than we alone could provide, and to find organizations that had a mission-based interest in working with us.  It simply didn't make sense for City Harvest to develop expertise in every area. It would have been "mission creep" and put us in competition with organizations already doing that work - creating conflict, potential ill will, and difficult choices for funders.

Today, the challenge to use dollars wisely continues.  Perhaps complementary partnerships are a way to really collaborate and best serve clients.