Section 4. Developing Multisector Collaborations

 

Can community members help solve complex problems?

Communities often face challenges that can feel difficult to address: gaps in education and health care, housing instability, economic insecurity, environmental concerns, public safety issues, and unequal access to opportunity. Many of these challenges are connected to one another and cannot be addressed effectively by a single organization or institution.

At the same time, communities contain a wide range of knowledge, relationships, skills, and resources. Residents, public agencies, businesses, schools, nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups, and other partners may understand different parts of the same issue.

When these groups work separately or at cross-purposes, progress can be limited. When they build relationships, share information, and make decisions together, they may be able to address complex issues more effectively.

Community members do not need to wait for outside experts to define every problem or determine every solution. Professional and technical expertise can be valuable, but so are lived experience, local knowledge, cultural knowledge, and the perspectives of people most affected by an issue.

One approach communities use to bring these forms of knowledge and resources together is multisector collaboration, which is the focus of this section.

Although the term "multisector collaboration" may sound technical, the basic idea is straightforward: people and organizations from different parts of the community work together toward shared goals.

What is multisector collaboration?

A multisector collaboration is a partnership that brings together participants from different sectors -- such as government, nonprofit organizations, businesses, schools, health systems, community-based organizations, resident groups, and individual community members -- to address issues that affect the broader community.

Multisector collaboration is often useful for addressing systemic problems.

Systemic problems involve several connected parts of community life rather than one isolated issue. Examples might include unequal educational opportunities, gaps in health care access, shortages of affordable housing, economic instability, environmental hazards, transportation barriers, or several related challenges occurring at the same time.

Multisector collaborations can help address these issues because different partners bring different forms of knowledge, authority, relationships, resources, and experience. No single organization has to understand or control every part of the solution.

Historical example: Baltimore multisector collaboration

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), an African American grassroots organization, developed a partnership with the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC), a major local business organization. The partnership focused on community concerns related to employment, education, and economic opportunity.

BUILD brought strong relationships with residents and knowledge of community priorities. GBC brought relationships with the business community and other institutions. The partnership later expanded to include local government and public schools.

Together, the participating organizations worked on efforts intended to strengthen educational opportunities, support students in completing school, and connect education with employment pathways.

The example illustrates how organizations with different constituencies and resources can identify shared interests and work together on issues that affect the broader community.

Complex problems often require responses that address more than one condition at a time. A community may need changes in services, policies, institutions, environments, and access to resources, as well as action by residents and organizations.

Multisector collaboration is particularly useful when progress depends on several organizations or sectors changing how they work rather than expecting one group to solve the entire problem.

What else makes multisector collaboration so different?

Multisector collaboration emphasizes cooperation across organizations and sectors

Organizations often operate in environments where they compete for funding, recognition, staff, participants, or influence. At the same time, many community goals require organizations to share information, coordinate activities, and combine resources.

Multisector collaboration creates a structure for identifying areas where cooperation can produce greater community benefit. Partners do not have to give up their individual missions or interests, but they do need to identify shared goals and determine where working together makes sense.

This can take time. Organizations may reasonably have concerns about sharing resources, decision-making, credit, or risk. Clear agreements, transparency, accountability, and trust can help partners work through these concerns.

Multisector collaboration can broaden community participation in decision-making

People who are directly affected by a community issue bring knowledge that institutions and professionals may not have. For that reason, residents and community-based groups should have meaningful roles in defining problems, developing strategies, making decisions, and evaluating results.

Participation should go beyond asking community members for opinions after major decisions have already been made. Strong collaborations clarify where decision-making authority rests and create opportunities for residents to influence the direction of the work.

Institutions also benefit from shared decision-making. Government agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses, schools, and other institutions can make better-informed decisions when they understand community experiences, priorities, strengths, and concerns.

Multisector collaboration is complex

Collaboration across sectors rarely follows a perfectly predictable path. Participants may have different priorities, responsibilities, organizational cultures, timelines, resources, and expectations.

Plans may need to change as new information emerges, community conditions shift, or partners learn more about the issue. Flexibility is therefore an important part of collaborative work.

Multisector collaboration requires substantial time and resources

Multisector collaboration is usually a long-term effort. It can require considerable time for relationship building, community engagement, information gathering, planning, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation.

For that reason, collaboration should be used when the issue actually requires it. If a goal can be accomplished effectively through networking, coordination, or a smaller partnership, a full multisector collaborative may not be necessary.

Is your community ready for multisector collaboration?

Before initiating a multisector collaborative, consider whether it is the right approach for the community and issue at this time. Several questions can help.

Is there a clear reason for multisector collaboration?

Collaboration is more likely to gain support when people recognize that the issue affects several parts of community life or cannot be addressed by one organization alone.

For example, residents and organizations may recognize concerns related to deteriorating infrastructure, limited affordable housing, gaps in educational opportunity, transportation problems, environmental conditions, or reduced access to jobs and services.

If the issue does not yet require community-wide collaboration, a smaller group of organizations may begin working together while building relationships and learning more about the problem.

What is the level of trust among the different groups and sectors?

Some potential partners may already have strong relationships. Others may have histories of competition, exclusion, broken commitments, discrimination, or unequal power.

Avoid reducing mistrust to stereotypes or personality differences. A community organization may have legitimate reasons to question whether a larger institution will share decision-making power, follow through on commitments, or take community priorities seriously.

Building trust may therefore require more than informal relationship-building. Partners may need to acknowledge past experiences, clarify expectations, make decision-making more transparent, share resources more equitably, and demonstrate accountability over time.

Groups that have historically been excluded from institutional decision-making may need evidence that their participation will be meaningful and not simply symbolic.

Do people agree on how the issue should be understood?

Sometimes partners agree that a problem exists but understand its causes differently.

For example, if a community is concerned about increasing substance use among young people and community safety, participants may identify different contributing factors: limited youth opportunities, economic conditions, access to behavioral health services, school engagement, family and community supports, exposure to trauma, availability of substances, or other conditions.

Rather than deciding in advance that one explanation is correct, the collaborative can examine community data, lived experience, research, and input from people most affected. This process can help the group develop a more complete understanding of the issue before choosing solutions.

If multisector collaboration is not the right approach, organizations can use other forms of partnership that better fit the situation.

What are the first steps you should take in building a multisector collaborative?

When people begin a new collaboration, they may be eager to move immediately toward solutions. Taking time to establish relationships, roles, expectations, and shared understanding can make later action more effective.

Develop leadership across sectors and communities

Multisector collaboration benefits from leadership throughout the partnership. Leaders can help communicate a shared purpose, facilitate participation, address conflict, maintain accountability, and move the work forward.

Leadership should not be limited to people with formal titles or institutional authority. Residents, youth, people with lived experience, staff members, community organizers, and others may bring valuable leadership skills and relationships.

Collaborative leadership can also be shared. Different people may lead different parts of the work depending on their expertise, relationships, and responsibilities.

Communities can strengthen collaborative leadership through training, mentoring, facilitated learning, and opportunities for people from different sectors to develop skills together.

Identify a facilitator or facilitation team

Multisector collaboration often benefits from skilled facilitation. A facilitator helps create a process in which participants can communicate, make decisions, manage disagreements, and stay connected to the collaborative's purpose.

The facilitator may come from one of the participating organizations or may be an independent person or team. The most important qualities are trust, fairness, strong facilitation skills, and the ability to work effectively with the different groups involved.

Facilitation responsibilities may include:

• Planning and facilitating meetings
• Making sure participants receive information in time to prepare
• Creating opportunities for different voices to be heard
• Helping clarify agreements and disagreements
• Supporting conflict resolution
• Tracking decisions and responsibilities
• Helping maintain communication between meetings

These responsibilities can be shared among several people rather than placed on one individual.

Gather the information needed to understand issues and possible solutions

Collaborative decisions should draw on reliable information. Depending on the issue, this may include community data, research, budgets, environmental information, service-use information, public records, and other evidence.

Lived experience and community knowledge are also important forms of information. Quantitative data may show that a disparity exists, while residents can help explain how policies, services, or community conditions contribute to it.

When information is missing, partners may conduct research together. Joint data gathering can also help organizations develop a shared understanding of the issue.

Support community leadership and shared power

Multisector collaboration is strongest when community members have meaningful influence rather than being limited to advisory roles while institutions make the major decisions.

Shared power may include community members helping to:

• Build community support and participation
• Form coalitions and partnerships
• Develop facilitation, communication, and decision-making skills
• Develop community leadership
• Develop a vision and mission
• Set priorities
• Shape budgets, strategies, action plans, and evaluation

Communities do not all begin from the same position. Some have long-standing organizations and strong networks, while others may have experienced disinvestment, exclusion from decision-making, or divisions created by historical and current conditions.

Building community leadership may therefore require time, organizing, resources, relationship-building, and opportunities for people to participate in ways that fit their schedules and circumstances.

Recommendations for supporting meaningful community participation include:

• Community members should help determine the purpose and priorities of the collaboration
• Resident-led organizations and community coalitions should be included directly rather than assuming that larger institutions can speak for them
• Community members should have meaningful decision-making roles rather than being limited to providing advice
• The collaborative should be accountable to community members as well as participating institutions and funders
• Community priorities should meaningfully shape the collaborative's agenda
• Community members should help design strategies and action plans alongside professional and technical partners
• Community members should be compensated when participation requires substantial time, expertise, or ongoing responsibilities whenever resources allow

Historical example: Community-led collaboration in the Mid-Bronx

In 1974, residents, faith leaders, civic organizations, tenant associations, and block groups in the Crotona neighborhood of the Bronx formed a community-based coalition known as the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes (MBD).

After organizing locally, the coalition developed relationships with businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and foundations. Its goals included improving housing, strengthening commercial areas, expanding employment opportunities, restoring services, and improving neighborhood conditions.

Over time, the coalition and its partners supported housing development and rehabilitation, career programs, neighborhood initiatives, and other community improvements. The example illustrates how resident-led organizing can form the foundation for broader institutional collaboration.

How do you continue to build and operate a multisector collaborative?

Once the groundwork has been established, partners can begin developing the structures and processes needed to carry out the collaborative's work.

Every collaboration will be different. The following steps should therefore be treated as general guidance rather than a fixed sequence.

Identify the stakeholders

Stakeholders include people and organizations that are affected by the issue, have relevant knowledge, influence decisions, control resources, implement programs, or may experience the effects of proposed changes.

Depending on the issue, stakeholders may include residents, people with lived experience, neighborhood organizations, businesses, public agencies, schools, health systems, service providers, advocacy organizations, property owners, workers, Tribal governments, youth, families, and others.

When identifying stakeholders, ask not only who has institutional power but also whose experiences and perspectives have historically been left out of decision-making.

Participation will vary. Some people may serve as ongoing members of the collaborative, while others may contribute through listening sessions, surveys, advisory groups, working groups, or other methods. The important point is that people should understand how their participation can influence the work.

Make a commitment to collaborate

Participating groups should agree on what collaboration means in practice. That may include sharing information, resources, decision-making, responsibility, and credit.

Partners should also commit to transparency. Important decisions should be made through the agreed-upon process rather than through informal conversations among only the most powerful organizations.

Establish procedural ground rules

Early in the process, partners should establish clear agreements about:

• How decisions will be made
• Who will facilitate meetings
• Who may speak publicly on behalf of the collaborative
• What information should remain confidential
• How information will be shared
• The authority and responsibilities of representatives
• How conflicts will be addressed
• How resources, expenses, and credit will be shared
• How community members will participate in decisions

Clarifying these expectations early can reduce misunderstandings and help participants hold one another accountable.

Strengthen collaborative process skills

Collaboration depends on skills that help people work together constructively. These may include:

• Active listening
• Facilitation
• Conflict resolution
• Negotiation
• Shared decision-making
• Cultural humility
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Problem solving

Facilitators, trainers, and experienced community members can help partners strengthen these skills. Learning together can also build the collaboration's capacity for future work.

Build trust and explore perspectives

Trust develops through experience. Partners need opportunities to understand one another's goals, responsibilities, histories, values, and concerns.

This does not require people to disclose personal experiences they would prefer to keep private or to speak on behalf of an entire community. Participants can instead discuss the experiences and perspectives that are relevant to the collaborative's work and that they are comfortable sharing.

Trust should continue to be monitored throughout the collaboration. If commitments are missed, decisions are made without appropriate participation, or partners feel excluded, address the issue directly and determine what needs to change.

Identify community issues and priorities

Collaborative partners should develop a shared understanding of the issues they hope to address. This may take time when different groups experience the issue differently or have different ideas about its causes.

For example, when examining substance use among adolescents, partners might consider access to prevention and treatment, youth mental health, economic conditions, family and peer supports, community environments, availability of substances, school engagement, transportation, recreation, and other factors.

Input from young people themselves should be part of understanding the issue. Their experiences can help identify barriers, resources, and possible solutions that adults or institutions may overlook.

Clarify a vision and develop a mission statement

Once partners have discussed community priorities, values, and desired changes, they can develop a shared vision and mission.

A clear vision can help participants understand the long-term change they are working toward, while a mission statement can guide goals, strategies, and action.

Continue to keep the process open and seek community input

Community participation should continue throughout the life of the collaboration rather than ending after initial planning.

Representatives should regularly return to the communities and organizations they represent for feedback, updates, and direction. Collaboratives can use public meetings, listening sessions, community forums, surveys, digital engagement, advisory groups, neighborhood meetings, or other methods that fit the community.

Make clear how feedback is used. Asking repeatedly for community input without showing how it affects decisions can weaken trust.

Historical example: Public participation in infrastructure planning

In Denver, local government created a large resident committee to help prioritize infrastructure projects for a proposed bond initiative. Participants from different parts of the community reviewed proposals and helped determine which projects would move forward.

The example illustrates one way residents can be given a direct role in difficult public decisions involving limited resources and competing priorities.

Create options for addressing community issues

Once the collaborative has developed trust, clarified its mission, gathered information, and received community input, participants can begin developing possible strategies.

Working groups, brainstorming, idea writing, focused discussions, the nominal group technique, and other methods can help generate multiple options before the group decides what to pursue.

Consider not only whether an option might work, but also who would benefit, who might experience unintended consequences, what resources would be required, and whether the people most affected consider the approach appropriate.

Formulate goals, objectives, and an action plan

The collaborative should translate its mission into clear goals, objectives, responsibilities, timelines, and action steps.

Tangible results matter, but results should reflect the priorities established with the community. Depending on the collaboration, goals might include improving water quality, increasing access to affordable housing, strengthening school engagement, expanding employment opportunities, improving transportation, or increasing access to health services.

Historical example: HandMade in America, Western North Carolina

HandMade in America brought together craft organizations, tourism representatives, businesses, educators, local governments, artists, and community members to explore how craft and related activities could contribute to sustainable community and economic development.

Early efforts included developing regional craft trails, creating a registry of craftspeople, integrating craft into school curricula, supporting downtown revitalization efforts, and establishing an institute focused on craft, creativity, and design.

The example shows how a regional asset -- in this case, craft traditions and creative industries -- can become the foundation for collaboration across multiple sectors.

Large goals can be divided into smaller steps. Early progress can help partners learn what works, strengthen trust, and maintain momentum while longer-term work continues.

Implement the action plan

Implementation requires clear responsibility, adequate resources, and continued coordination.

The collaborative may oversee implementation directly, participating organizations may take responsibility for particular strategies, or a separate organization or structure may be created when needed.

Continue involving community members during implementation. Conditions may change, strategies may produce unexpected results, and participants may identify adjustments that improve the work.

Evaluate the results

Evaluation should examine both what the collaborative accomplished and how the collaborative worked.

Ask questions such as:

• Are the goals and objectives being achieved?
• Who is benefiting from the changes?
• Are there groups that are not benefiting or are experiencing unintended effects?
• Do community members believe the work is addressing their priorities?
• Are decision-making processes inclusive and transparent?
• Are resources and responsibilities being shared fairly?
• What should be changed based on what has been learned?

Evaluation can help partners improve their strategies, strengthen accountability, and decide what should happen next.

Celebrate progress, large and small

Recognizing progress can help maintain energy and relationships during long-term collaborative work. Celebrations may range from a shared meal or acknowledgement at a meeting to a larger community event.

Make sure recognition includes the residents, community organizations, staff members, volunteers, institutions, and other partners whose contributions made the progress possible.

Continue the collaborative community

When a collaborative reaches one of its goals, consider whether the relationships, knowledge, and structures developed through the process can support future community priorities.

Not every collaboration needs to continue indefinitely. Partners may decide to continue, change their structure, reduce their activities, or conclude the collaboration once its purpose has been fulfilled.

Whatever happens, preserving useful relationships and documenting what was learned can strengthen the community's ability to respond to future challenges.

In Summary

Multisector collaboration brings together community members and organizations from different sectors to address complex issues that no single group can effectively address alone.

Strong collaboration requires more than gathering representatives around the same table. It depends on trust, reliable information, clear goals, strong facilitation, transparent decision-making, attention to differences in power and resources, and meaningful participation by people directly affected by the work.

Community members bring essential knowledge and should have opportunities not only to provide input, but also to shape priorities, strategies, implementation, and evaluation.

Multisector collaboration requires time and sustained effort, and it is not the right approach for every problem. When it fits the issue, however, it can help communities combine their strengths, improve coordination across systems, expand participation in decision-making, and develop solutions grounded in both professional expertise and community knowledge.