I really like this post from Entry Level Living about the need for nonprofits and for-profits to collaborate in these dicy economic times. She lays out some good examples of collaboration and ties it into a compelling sandwich. But it also begins with a an false cliche (nonprofits war with the for-profits) and doesn’t actually get beyond the the assumption that collaboration is an intrinsic good. The interesting and unanswered piece (for anyone who isn’t a millennial, like the Allison of Entry Level Living and I) is: why the hooey should we care about collaboration?
The answer: you shouldn’t. You should care about creating value, collaboration is just a means to getting there (and not the only one, at that). Entry Level Living lays out some fine examples that do create value, but doesn’t provide a strict method for thinking about value-creation.
So let’s talk about value:
Nonprofits tend to talk more about values—our mission, our vision, our culture of caring—than the value (no ‘s’) we create. Most of the value we do talk about is tied up into our values. The value theory of nonprofits mostly has to do with creating moral goods: things someone is morally obligated to strive for (education, self-reliance, non-violence, positive familial and community relations, etc.). In nonprofit parlance that is called Social Value.
We tend not to talk about the Economic Value we have: our brand and name-recognition; our well-developed skills or expertise; and our general social authority and legitimacy (a fancy way of saying people trust us)… to name a few.
While Social Value is good (duh!), it has no meaning in cross-sector collaboration: it’s just not the business of business. Economic Value is meaningful for cross-sector collaboration, and that’s where nonprofits should be spending their time. If you’ve ever heard someone say “Monetize your Core Competencies“, they’re talking about your Economic Value, not your Social one.
So now that you know about value, how do you create it in cross-sector collaboration? To begin with, we’re going to toss the word collobaration and replace it with a broader and more neutral term: negotiation. While collaboration may be a strategy within negotiation, negotiation encompasses the entire scope of communication that you may be engaged in.
Cross-sector negotiation means thinking of creative ways to combine your nonprofit’s Economic Value with a for-profit’s Economic Value in such a way that you create more value than existed in the first place.. In negotiation theory, this is called “joint value”. In more metaphorical terms, you’ve just enlarged the pie.
For example, if you’ve ever had a corporate volunteer day, you’ve done exactly this: you combined your social authority and legitimacy as do gooders with a for-profit’s staff-as-volunteers. The for-profit received CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) PR and personal development (the warm fuzzies) for staff; you received cheap labor; and both of you did it for less than the cost of an alternative plan (advertising campaign and professional staff development for them; part-time paid labor for you).
Nonprofits and for-profits aren’t at war; they are just similar looking games with somewhat different rules. The secret to winning is to look for cross-over skills, strategies and players. Evaluating the economic value of your nonprofit is a good place to start.
Related posts:
- Starvation begets starvation An article that confirms my anecdotal experience: “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle” from the Stanford Social Innovation review: A vicious cycle...
- Nonprofit Budgeting Scenario While cleaning up some files, I came across this awesome scenario I wrote for our AmeriCorps*VISTA orientation last summer. I...
I see this as semantics. And agree with the concepts. There are commonalities among non-profits, for-profits and small businesses. Getting together to share best practices is excellent unto itself and provides benefits to those involved. A long time ago I worked through one non-profit with the local chamber of commerce to start a business incubator that would also support local non-profits and generate revenues for the public library.
Collaboration in my opinion results in a greater outcome because of the active participation of the partners. The project takes form, grows and changes because of a unified purpose, different from negotiation or compromise. Joint ownership. Collaboration could work with the right mix of n-ps, f-ps, and sm. businesses who are committed to a common goal, thus creating value in the broadest sense. The role of leadership then becomes moving the good of the whole forward and engaging all the group members.
The word I have come to mistrust is “input” because it usually means giving an opinion of someone else’s conclusion, not influencing it.