Your whole statement here really shows that you have wisely worked out some of the primary challenges here, and these are among the biggest, eternal challenges in all of community organizing. However, they can be overcome, and there is little doubt that you'll be able to form this coalition in the most effective possible way. You are starting from the right place. You recognize the real advantages of forming this cultural committee and you have pinpointed the type of groups you want on this committee and why you want them there. But that of course is the real challenge. You see the wisdom in concentrating efforts toward a common problem. That is the way we can really do great things and take on big tasks, working together. Yet you also recognize the need of community organizations to have their own unique part in the process. In order to get their investment, it is simply not effective to tell them the single issue the collective is going to tackle. If they are truly members of this group, they are going to want to do their own thing, to a certain extent. So first of all, you want to get across these collective benefits of working together. Second, you want to ensure them that the goal is not to put their group under your umbrella nor to be guided by any one single group. Third, you want to give them a sense that they are a major part of this initiative and their piece is their own and uniquely designed by them. You have a general enough, overarching topic--troubled teens. How do you go about navigating the paradox of everyone working together on a single topic and yet allowing everyone to simultaneously go off on their own. It seems like a difficult task, but again, you are taking the perfect approach. When you form the group, you probably want to get this all out in the open from the start. You want to make it clear that the ultimate goal, and what will hold this group together, is not just the needs of individual organizations, but "troubled teens" and their needs. Their well-being is the superordinate goal that is going to hold the whole coalition together. Ask yourself, what are the categories under "troubled teens" that need to be addressed? Maybe you will come up with 5 to 9 categories, however many collaborating groups you will want to be at the table. Make them major, all equally important categories, with terms that serve justice to how important they are. Now what are the top organizations in the country, doing the most innovative work in each of these categories? List a number of the most interesting sounding groups you can discover under each. Conduct some research on them, talk with them. Which ones sound most positive, engaged, and caring? Tell them you are building such a coalition. When you have a group that sounds perfect, invite them to lead that arm of the initiative using their program, their strengths, and their new ideas. You'll have many additional challenges, but at least your committee will have the best possible people with hopefully good, active liaisons. Their intentions will hopefully be in the right place. They will have a sense of their role and that their expertise is valued in their particular area. In some sense, everyone will be doing their own thing, yet working together toward a common project. The focus of that effort will hopefully narrow over time so that you are all tackling a manageable problem that you all value very highly. The eventual goal is to have some consensus on a single initiative that everyone is adding to through their unique skills and the fact that everyone values them at the table. Throughout the nation, they were chosen for being the most innovative and concerned and ready for action. The goal for the whole committee may be to find the commonalities that every group's strengths can help tackle.
