For all the talk about a rapidly changing world, there seems to be little real action devoted to the practices needed to navigate it successfully. To help narrow that need-action gap, Alberta Ecotrust recently co-hosted a workshop by one of Canada's foremost experts on collaboration for social change.
Collaboration - which has always been a part of Alberta Ecotrust's mission - is now moving front and centre as an organizational focus. In pursuing this mandate, Alberta Ecotrust has gained an eagle's eye view of Alberta's environmental landscape and the players who inhabit it. That unique vantage point led us long ago to conclude that our environmental challenges are simply too complex for any one player - be it government, industry, or the nonprofit sector - to solve. At some point - and the sooner the better - we need to come together on solutions that work for all. ENGOs need to work better with ENGOs, industry needs to work better with ENGOs, and the Alberta government needs to work better with all of us.
According to Executive Director Pat Letizia, "The time is right for Alberta Ecotrust to be deliberate in encouraging collaboration. Nonprofit groups face increasing competition for limited resources and complexity of both problems and solutions. They really need to explore a variety of cooperative opportunities."
The workshop, co-hosted with the City of Calgary's Office of Sustainability, was held on November 16th with 40 participants drawn from the ranks of Ecotrust's partners and grantees and the City's community partners. Centre stage for the afternoon was Tonya Surman, Executive Director of Toronto's Centre of Social Innovation, and the "constellation model" of collaboration she helped develop.
While collaboration has been around for a very long time, Surman said, the constellation model incorporates systems thinking and emphasizes action as the first priority. The model's drivers are small, self-organizing teams or "constellations" that work together on a particular task (for example, public education, research, policy development) as needed and when there is energy to do so. The constellations thread into a larger partnership that gathers around an acknowledged need or opportunity, agrees to a shared leadership framework and develops a common vision. "Being in action generates energy," Surman said, "and energy is the key. It keeps the constellations working and the collaborative alive."
Much of the model, Surman noted, came from her work with the Canadian Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment, a collection of Canadian nonprofits that came together in 2000 out of a common concern for children's health and the risks posed by environmental hazards. "The organizations had very different mandates and resources," she said "but they realized the only way they could address the issue was by working together." The question of how to work together led to the constellation model. Was the collaboration successful? One outcome, Surman noted proudly, was Canada's ban on Bisphenol A from baby bottles and children's toys.
The afternoon introduced participants to a tool with a lot of possibility. According to Letizia, "It is helpful to get external perspectives on our work and Tonya brings a wealth of experience and collaborative success to this dialogue. The next step is to find compelling opportunities for strong nonprofit networks and alliances that connect on complex issues." To learn more about the Constellation Model, read Tonya's 2008 article in Social Space.
