THE WHY & HOW OF RADICAL COLLABORATION
We are making professional community health workers the norm worldwide. We also field quite a few questions about how to run a Coalition.
Over the past couple of years, more and more groups have reached out for Community Health Impact Coalition’s advice on radical collaboration.
How to kick it off? How to make it stick? How to organize collective action so it drives major impact?
In recent years, we’ve advised organizations such as Bridgespan, Coalition for Clear Vision, CASH Coalition, Prevail Fund, Unlock Aid, Global School Leaders, and others operating in diverse fields—from community animal health workers to financing compassion in healthcare to disability organizing.
Recognizing the growing demand for insights on the art and science of field building, we wrote this blog. This is our best attempt to distill the why and how of Coalitions, along with some of the most helpful resources we’ve consulted along the way.
WHY COALITIONS?
Over the past several decades, the development community has increasingly recognized the complex nature of global problems. Solving these problems requires changing complex systems and doing so on a scale commensurate with the size of the issues. In other words, collective action is needed.
The entities driving this collective action are called multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), field catalysts, system orchestrators, or simply⸺Coalitions. This type of organization aligns, coordinates, and influences stakeholders in an ecosystem to achieve systems change.
Many fantastic pieces have been written on why collective action is necessary. Our own introduction to the concept came from “How Field Catalysts Galvanize Social Change” a short introduction from which we adapted the following definition. Field catalysts:
- Influence the direct actions of others, rather than act directly themselves
- Work together to achieve systems change, not to scale up a particular organization
- Are built to win, not to last—that’s why we work in the background
Sustained cooperation and collaboration are the essences of how we fight together. Together our voices are stronger, our resources go further. And we can do more than any single actor on its own.
THE SET-UP
DISCIPLINE TO LEARN FROM THE BEST..
The hard truth is that while collective action is clearly necessary, most MSIs do not achieve their stated goals. So when setting up Community Health Impact Coalition, we relied heavily on research examining why some MSIs succeed, and others don’t. GDI’s “More than the Sum of Its Parts: Making MSIs Work” was by far the most helpful. Think of it as a “Good to Great”, but for coalitions.
We’d encourage any serious Coalition builder to read the whole report.
Some of the most critical takeaways for our own journey were:
WORK FIRST, LAUNCH LATER.
Successful MSIs prioritize a “long tail” of informal collaboration before launch, establishing a robust foundation and garnering support from key stakeholders. This approach allows the coalition to “go live” with an existing body of work and mitigates premature launches lacking consensus on problem definition, solutions, or buy-in from key stakeholders.
The average timeline for MSIs to move from discussions to launch is 18 months. At Community Health Impact Coalition it was 24 – our founding members met every two weeks for two whole years before launching in January of 2019. Support from Sall Family Foundation for one part-time neutral facilitator enabled the group to vision, experiment, and hone in on a value proposition. The work done during this “long tail” gave us confidence that CHIC was emerging from a field with critical mass and had sustained support from core leaders who would not let the effort fail.
The research found a clear distinction between MSIs initiated by a few donors with limited consultation and those characterized by inclusive consultations during their initiation, design, and launch. The former ultimately struggled with buy-in, whereas the latter earned legitimacy and engagement by developing problem definitions and solutions that authentically represented the field.
Systematic and disciplined setup is crucial: launching prematurely not only wastes resources but also contributes to initiative fatigue, harming the entire field.
HOSTING: NEUTRAL IN STRUCTURE, NOT IN PURPOSE.
Most MSIs begin in a hosted arrangement, a strategic move that provides immediate administrative support and tax-exempt status, freeing up coalition members to focus on the mission without the burden of establishing legal and financial infrastructure.
The choice of a host plays a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of an MSI. Neutrality – in structure, not purpose – is vital for MSIs. Ensuring a neutral convenor in early stages helps mitigate NGO concerns regarding competition for resources and reassures all partners that the initiative is not simply an extension of a single donor’s programs.
Opting for a fiscal sponsor rather than a mission-aligned NGO or funder, goes a long way in addressing these challenges. CHIC’s first employee previously worked for one of its member NGOs. Impartial hosting and multi-partner funding (see next section) helped assuage skepticism from other partners and reinforce her role as a neutral intermediary adept at bringing together a diverse set of partners around a shared goal.
RAISE A ROUND: FUND AS A VENTURE.
A clear finding from the research was that higher performing MSIs tended to have more donors at launch than their lower performing peers. Support from multiple smaller donors not only alleviates perception issues, as described above, but fosters a sense of momentum and critical mass. This attracts additional contributors and ensures the coalition is resourced to establish the staffing, governance, and capabilities needed to succeed.
Ideally this initial backing is structured like venture capital: multi-year and unrestricted. MSIs, like all high-risk, high-reward ventures, require time to build and demonstrate initial proof points.
CHIC garnered support from a group of initial partners – Skoll Foundation, CRI Foundation, Dovetail Impact Foundation, Partners for Equity, and CHAP – all contributing at the same level for a three-year period. CHIC members committed to work our tails off and an independent evaluation of progress at the 2.5-year mark. This approach allowed us to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck, testing and refining the initial business plan and accumulating high profile wins in a non-linear way.
It’s also vital to establish realistic expectations regarding self-sufficiency, recognizing that very few MSIs can operate independently without sustained external support.
THE DAY-TO-DAY
OUR EXPERIENCE.
Contrary to popular belief, collaboration doesn’t just happen—it takes serious thought, effort, and consistent attention to establish and maintain.
This section summarizes key practices that—in our experience— achieve exactly that.
TRUST US: BE A TEAM, NOT A CLUB.
Trust is the cornerstone of any successful coalition, including ours.
Without trust, collaboration becomes difficult, and the coalition’s effectiveness is compromised.
One of our top tips: Be a team, not a club. Clubs have a shared interest, teams have a shared mission.
Club members know the management. Team members know each other.
But here’s the twist: in many Coalitions, most members only know the secretariat. That’s not how movements are built. We need a dense network, not a hub and spoke.
True and lasting momentum springs from deeper connections.
One of the best playbooks for this is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (again, please read the whole thing – it’ll take you less than an afternoon).
It notes that in order to focus on the achievement of collective results, we must hold each other accountable for delivering against shared plans. To do that we will have had to have made those plans and committed. Which will ultimately be mediocre if we don’t engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas. Which is impossible unless we…trust each other.
In other words, trust is not a byproduct; it is the foundation.
THIS LOOKS LIKE.
1) A small, fast start: “doing hard things with friends”
We think co-creation and co-ownership on the way to shared wins is the best way to build any team. This is why we always suggest budding Coalitions make something, anything, together right at the outset—whether it’s outlining a set of demands, collaborating on a report, or organizing an event. And that they do this before thinking about the right organizational structure and governance and certainly before announcing, launching, or fiscally sponsoring anything. By engaging in a joint endeavor first you not only refine your collective vision, you strengthen your collaborative muscle.
2) Keep greasing the wheels
Once an entity is in full swing, particularly as it grows, it remains critical to actively and intentionally foster trust. Here are some additional tactics we use:
- Kick off meetings with random, 5-7 min, 1:1 breakout rooms.
- Ensure every new joiner has a member “buddy” and connects prior to the first meeting
- Transparency exercise. Every quarter member organizations report to each other on expansion plans, new domains of work etc. before those changes are announced externally
AM i in the right place for…?
CONCEPTUAL CLARITY.
Emergent coalitions are frequently at risk.
If coalitions don’t settle on a clear mission and tactics early, they can quickly become a blank slate for everyone’s desires.
This “everything to everyone” approach leads to underachievement – and, eventually, to dissolution.
So the first thing we tell budding Coalitions is to get clear on what you’re fighting for.
Concepts like “community-led development,” “last mile,” “localization,” and “professional” begin to have their meaning eroded as soon as they become popular.
So it’s critical to have a crystal clear definition of what the group is uniting around and trying to bring into being.
In the case of Community Health Impact Coalition, our goal is to make professional community health workers the norm worldwide.
But what exactly is a professional CHW? First we identified eight best practices that have proven to be universally relevant across different locations and programs.
Better yet, we condensed those principles into a “4S” shorthand: salaried, supervised, skilled & supplied.
Better yet, we simplified that shorthand into one metric: the number of countries with proCHW policy.
Sustaining a coalition demands a clear mission. For the Coalition, making professional CHWs the global norm is the North Star. This clarity keeps members committed and focused on the ultimate goal.
THIS LOOKS LIKE.
1) Define and simplify the vision
One of our top recommendations to aspiring Coalitions is to get explicit from the get-go. What does success look like?
This is why we suggest starting small. It’s much easier to achieve meaningful consensus with six entities than fifty. Once you get something, work to relentlessly simplify complex concepts until they become accessible and actionable.
Nothing saps momentum quicker than “every meeting was spent trying to rehash the same conversation about aligning goals and objectives and trying to bring all partners onto the same page.”
2) Make it a threshold for inclusion
How do you know if your vision is any good? GDI suggests coalitions “find a sandbox big enough that people get excited, but small enough that MSIs can show meaningful progress against objectives before too long.” It should be evidence based, of course. It should bring together the best of practitioner expertise and felt needs. It should probably exclude some folks too.
No one likes that last point. But being crystal clear about what you are gathered together to achieve is critical to ensuring you are something to someone, rather than everything to everyone–or dominated and distracted by the most vocal stakeholders. It’s fine if new joiners want to walk to Mecca. It becomes a problem if your team was actually headed to Jerusalem. You “fill a table with the right people before you fill the tent.”
This is why it’s critical to make endorsing the Coalition’s vision a criterion for those wanting to join in. To this day, organizations wanting to join Community Health Impact Coalition have to endorse and embody proCHW best practice. In other words, everyone is welcome, as long as they can prove they’re headed in the same direction.
LEVERS & TACTICS: TRAIN, PLANE, OR..?
So you know where you’re going. But how will you get there?
Systems change is ultimately about “advancing equity by shifting the conditions that hold a problem in place.” Systems deliver exactly what they’re designed to deliver–so to change the outcome, you must change the structure.
“The Water of Systems Change”, the source of the definition above, diagrams the six mutually reinforcing conditions that keep a problem in place: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships & connections, power dynamics, and mental modes.
Coalitions must be built to wield influence on a scale sufficient to change norms. Understanding the bottlenecks driving poor outcomes in your system of interest—and what tactics can change—them is critical. These become your levers for change.
The Coalition identifies three levers crucial for our mission of making professional CHWs the norm worldwide: changing guidelines (practices) , funding (resource flows) and national policy (policies). By tackling these levers together and ensuring nothing about community health workers without community health workers, we are also engaging with relational, mental, and power dynamics at the semi-explicit and implicit level.
We didn’t get here overnight, but at this point our collective efforts are entirely channeled at shifting these conditions: We research to equip international norm setters with evidence to create proCHW guidelines. We advocate to influence global financing institutions to increase proCHW funding. We mobilize in-country networks to win national proCHW policy.
A powerful, symbiotic machine for systems change.
THIS LOOKS LIKE.
Deep apprenticeship to the problem and a serious positioning strategy.
What conditions are holding our problem in place? What system levers exist? Which ones are most critical for rapid and sustained change? Which levers is this group uniquely well-placed to pull? How will we pull them?
Answering these questions thoroughly and systematically and orienting your collective efforts around a targeted set of tactics is essential to create clarity, efficiency, and impact.
SO…WHAT’S THE SCORE?
Clubs share an interest. Teams know the score. What’s your scoreboard?
If you don’t have one, work to create one. It’s a game-changer for: alignment, transparency, and sustaining momentum.
A scoreboard allows both the coalition and those outside of it to (i) see the big picture, (ii) understand how our individual efforts contribute to team success, and (iii) drive results & communicate impact.
Scoreboards foster shared language, aid decision-making, and ignite collective responsibility.
At CHIC, we’re making professional community health workers the norm worldwide. So we created the world’s largest public-facing dashboard on proCHW policies. Updated quarterly.
Where do we focus? Where the next “game” is being played: countries with community health policies up for renewal in the next 18 months. When have we won? When those are proCHW policies. In other words: when we turn the map purple.
THIS LOOKS LIKE.
Track You + The Field
Attribution is challenging for field catalysts (and any organization engaged in advocacy), because changes are driven by multiple factors and many different parties. A helpful approach is to track both your work and the field.
At CHIC this means we have KPIs around the reach and impact of our research (e.g. is it being viewed >5k times? Cited in the guidelines we want changed?), the success of our shared advocacy (e.g. Total $ allocated annually to community health investments? % annual increase in proCHW funding allocations per funder? ) and the growth and power of our movement (e.g. are CHWs completing our advocacy course? How many national CHW associations are being successfully seeded?).
We also track progress in the field as a whole using the dashboard above. When we don’t hit our targets or when the field stops moving, we know we have a problem.
LEADING FROM BEHIND.
Large scale social change is a team sport—and that has implications for leadership. First and foremost, it means secretariat members are not the boss, but the coach. Leadership in a coalition is not only about knowing the score, but about scouting your players, cultivating a strong group dynamic and making it easy for members to collaborate.
Scout your players. For the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, you need to know the team. This means devoting a significant amount of time to connecting 1:1 with members. What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses, what are their concerns? Remember, before they tell you anything, they need to feel cared for and like they can trust you.
Cultivate a strong group dynamic. That starts with as many people as possible knowing and trusting each other, as described above. It continues by setting a high standard of accountability for members and secretariat.
Make it easy: Take seriously your role as a steward of people’s time and resources. As organizations, we tend to emphasize our own growth and push our own brands. And too often, we see each other as competitors rather than collaborators. We are schooled to put our organizational interests first.
To buck that trend, coalition leadership must take seriously their role of creating different kinds of incentives. To make the experience of collaboration as frictionless as possible and one in which feel part of something greater than the whole and experience success together.
Finally, being the coach means you are not the star player. Doing those from a posture of humility and servant leadership is key.
THIS LOOKS LIKE.
1) Scout your players
- 20 min secretariat/member 1:1s 3x per year
- Gestures of care: e.g. birthday cards (an e-card template is fine!) with 1-2 sentences specific to that individual’s contribution; handwritten holiday cards
- Track the % of members who speak in group meetings – is it lopsided or are we really getting the best from each member?
2) Cultivate a strong, accountable group dynamic
- Action items tracked in public spreadsheet, so all members can see who has done what
- Share-back reports on 1:1 learnings and concomitant actions
- Annual survey on group effectiveness paired with a share-back and concomitant improvements
3) Make it easy
- Create rhythms of reassurance: agenda is always out 72 hours in advance, call link is always the same, lists are always up to date, emails always receive a response in <48 hours etc.
- Create shared collateral: unified messaging platform, quarterly summaries of collective achievements, one pagers etc.
- Track attendance: people vote with their feet. Follow up with any org that misses two meetings consecutively.
NEXT STEPS
LET’S CHAT
This piece is the beginning of an ongoing conversation we hope to have about how to make collaboration more visible, powerful, and effective in the social sector. We have lots to share—and lots to learn! If you’re running a field catalyst, let’s chat!