Tackling social challenges requires attention to partnership

On October 3rd, the Blueprint team was thrilled to host a panel at IPAC’s 76th annual conference in Winnipeg, on Treaty 1 Territory. We discussed practical approaches to navigating the (often messy) work of government and community collaboration to address complex policy issues like housing and homelessness, climate change, and substance use and mental health.??

The panel—Tackling social challenges together: Lessons from the frontlines of community and government collaboration —brought together Nadine Smith (Acting Executive Director, Women and Gender Equity Manitoba , Government of Manitoba), Cynthia Drebot (Executive Director, North End Women’s Centre and Executive Director, North Point Douglas Women’s Centre), Cordella Friesen (President & CEO, YMCA-YWCA of Winnipeg), and Blueprint’s Emily M. Colpitts , in a conversation moderated by Blueprint President and CEO Karen Myers .??

The session built on many themes raised throughout the conference about the craft of public administration, such as the importance of building trust and following one’s moral compass. However, as Karen Myers stated at the beginning of the session, knowing community collaboration is important isn’t enough to make it happen. Even the best intentions do not necessarily translate into execution.??

Government and community collaboration is not easy. We know that government staff face significant pressures to deliver high quality services, urgently respond to complex challenges, and minimize risk, all of which are often at odds with the time and uncertainty involved in collaboration. The panel and audience members agreed that, despite these tensions, collaboration is essential. Addressing deeply entrenched and complex social challenges requires solutions that go beyond what any single actor or organization, on their own, can accomplish. But specifically how to collaborate is not always obvious. Our panel members shared their thoughts on this, together exploring the question: what does it take to do good collaboration? ?

How governments can support effective collaboration with community partners?

This panel was inspired in part by Blueprint’s recent experience working with Women and Gender Equity Manitoba and the Family Violence Consortium of Manitoba (FVCM)—which includes women’s shelters, transition homes, and resources centres across the province—to establish a collective impact model for the gender-based violence sector, with a dedicated backbone organization.??

Panel members emphasized that this initiative demonstrates an important way that governments can create (and are creating) enabling conditions for collaboration: by investing in the capacity of community organizations to engage with each other and with government. Through this initiative (made possible by the strong leadership of Jamie Carnegie, Nadine Smith and the FVCM Executive), Women and Gender Equity Manitoba made a significant investment in building the capacity of the gender-based violence sector to organize, establish shared goals, and have a touchpoint with the government through which they could learn about each other's priorities and collaborate over the longer term. This enhanced capacity enables the sector to work towards better policies, programs, services, and—ultimately—outcomes for survivors and their families.?

The panel identified some additional actions governments could take to support collaboration. Three opportunities stood out:??

• Including relationship building as a project outcome, not just a means to an end. Reframing collaboration in this way can shift how success is defined, prioritized, and measured, and how we think about investing the time and resources required to do this relationship-building work well.?

• Being strategic about who is engaged in collaboration and how. Engaging trusted and familiar partners can be more efficient and comfortable, but it can also mean missing out on different perspectives and ideas that could be important in tackling complex issues. It is important to think carefully about engaging the right partners and listening to our critics. Collaboration also requires attending to power dynamics between partners, recognizing that there is history that precedes us in every room, and using practices such as clarifying how decisions will be made and what is and is not on the table. Being strategic and thoughtful about collaboration also means recognizing that trust is built when action is taken following engagement and eroded when partners are engaged but no action is taken.??

• Showing up and investing in relationship building. Community partners emphasized just how important it is for government staff and decision-makers to get out from behind their desks and meet community partners in their own spaces to learn about their day-to-day work and the individuals being impacted by policy, program, and funding decisions. Government staff could also foster relationships by attending community events where partners will be and engaging with them. Partnership also means humanizing communication; for example, sending a funding decision with a contact name rather than from a no-reply address.??

How Blueprint supports government and community collaboration?

Through our work on this project, we expanded our understanding about what works well in facilitating government and community collaboration, and why engaging a third-party facilitator like Blueprint can be helpful. Two main insights stood out:?

• Invested but not embedded: As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, Blueprint is deeply invested in the outcome of this collaboration. At the same time, because we are not embedded in Manitoba’s gender-based violence sector, we were able to create space for each member of the FVCM to share their needs, priorities, and honest perspectives on how a backbone organization could effectively support their day-to-day work. We were then able to bring all of the partners together to discuss what we heard. Through this, we were able to help the group see what they had in common and establish shared goals and path forward toward greater collaboration.?

• Filling gaps in capacity and skills: Blueprint's team brings together a range and diversity of skill sets and areas of expertise, which we draw on as we tackle complex policy challenges alongside our partners. For this project, we were able to fill gaps in capacity and technical skills by gathering evidence of what has worked well elsewhere in developing backbone organizations. We know many government and practitioner staff are managing a wide breadth of issues, and we have found that we can complement this by spending time ‘going deep’ into a topic in a way that staff would not otherwise have the capacity to take on.??

Operating at the intersection of government and community actors is a constant learning process. We’re grateful to be able to apply what we’ve learned and strengthen our practice working with governments and community partners in our current project work in Manitoba, Durham Region, and Barrie, Ontario in the coming months. As we continue to test and learn, we would love to hear what you have learned about this role and what works well. Please share your thoughts and watch the full panel discussion here .