Column: Collaborating for The Common Good

Collaboration among competitors is an unnatural act—but sometimes it’s the best way to reduce costs, leverage strength, accelerate scale, or amplify influence in order to generate results. Useful lessons lie in how collaboration among unlikely allies is achieving change in the world of social enterprise. Collaboration among unlikely allies is achieving change in the world of social enterprise. Consider the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. For more than a decade EMCF has focused on helping youth-serving organizations whose programs have proved effective. Working collaboratively with its grantees (an unusual approach in a realm where donors often treat recipients as subcontractors), EMCF helps them build the strategic and organizational capacity to increase both results and scale. Recognizing their severe lack of growth capital, EMCF boldly launched a pioneering pilot program with other philanthropists in 2008. The foundation’s leaders used stringent selection criteria to choose three proven organizations from among its grantees: Nurse-Family Partnership (which coaches needy mothers and families to raise healthy babies), Citizen Schools (which mentors disadvantaged middle schoolers), and Youth Villages (which helps troubled youths and their families find their footing). Aiming to create a $120 million pool, EMCF committed $39 million and supported the three grantees in securing the remainder. The money was raised in less than six months, with 19 collaborators that included the Kresge Foundation, the Samberg Family Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A memorandum of understanding established shared strategic goals, clear performance metrics, and streamlined operational practices. EMCF expects that the $120 million in private funds will help the organizations leverage an additional $700 million in public funds, paving the way for unprecedented results. EMCF’s ability to collaborate with peers created substantial benefits for society and set an example for others—notably the Obama administration, which found the pilot an inspiration for its Social Innovation Fund, a public-private initiative to foster innovations focused on economic empowerment, health, and youth services. Businesses pursuing social enterprises can achieve greater results by dampening their competitive instincts and collaborating with peers. They can also promote collaboration among the organizations they fund or support efforts whose business model is collaboration. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, set up the Omidyar Network to help promising social enterprises. Its grant-making arm brings portfolio executives together for robust peer-learning forums. One of its grantees, Ushahidi (Swahili for “testimony”), is a Kenya-based crisis mapper whose business model is anchored in collaboration. Ushahidi’s web platform gathers data from thousands of e-mails and text messages and re-presents them in maps or time lines to inform others and inspire them to act. First used to chart post-election violence in Kenya, Ushahidi has been employed around the world to galvanize real-time responses to Haiti’s earthquake, BP’s drilling-platform explosion, and Japan’s nuclear crisis. By sharing data with other crisis mappers and disaster response organizations, Ushahidi is helping to expose fraud and increase transparency, saving lives in the process. Collaboration isn’t easy—that’s why it is still far too infrequent across all forms of social enterprise. But when peer organizations honestly embrace shared goals and clearly articulate how they will achieve them, collaboration works. Most important is believing that a group—even of “competitors”—can accomplish what no one member could do alone.

Column: Collaborating for The Common Good

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