Collaboration Consulting

We help you master the art and science of working across organizations

Working on a common goal across organizations brings unique challenges.

Every partner organization has its own mission, values, culture, policies, budget constraints, and capabilities and limitations. Weaving these together across organizations to increase impact is both an art and a science. If you are thinking about collaboration or are in the midst of one, Fieldstone Alliance can help you strengthen your process and increase your impact.

Our consultants can help you

• Assess the effectiveness of ongoing collaboratives;
• Develop plans to sharpen focus and impact;
• Help develop operating agreements or memoranda of understanding;
• Problem-solve issues that are blocking effectiveness;
• Coach collaboration leaders; and
• Evaluate the impact of your collaboration's work.

Fieldstone Alliance also serves as convener, lead partner, and base for broad-scale community-building and capacity-building initiatives that involve collaboration.

Collaboration workshops and presentations
We offer a variety of workshops for people involved in collaborations, for grantmakers who fund collaborations, and for consultants who want to improve their collaboration consulting skills.

Who we work with

• Nonprofit, grantmaking, and community-based collaborations
• Funders who want assessment of collaborations either before or after funding decisions
• Intermediaries, management support organizations, and consultants who want assessment of a collaborative before capacity building work begins
• Cross-sector networks and partnerships of nonprofit, private, and public sector organizations working to improve communities
• Regional, national, and international networks

Our expertise
Our collaboration assessment, consulting, facilitation, and evaluation services reflect our extensive research and experience in all facets of collaboration among nonprofits, grantmakers, and other sectors.

Our guide, The Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey, is one of our top sellers and is is demand around the world.

Our research report on success factors in collaboration, Collaboration: What Makes It Work, was recently updated, and a companion Collaboration Factors Inventory was created to help groups assess their collaboration's strengths and weaknesses.

Forming Alliances: Working Together to Achieve Mutual Goals was developed in 2005 to help less intense and less complex collaboratives work effectively.

FREE collaboration resources

Four Keys to Collaboration Success
An article by Carol Lukas, consultant to more than 50 collaborations in the past 10 years. Carol has identified four keys that —while not a guarantee to success—are essential to a well-functioning collaboration.

What Makes Collaborations Succeed
(Tools You Can Use e-newsletter, January 26, 2005)
Describes The Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory and how to use it to see if your collaboration has the necessary ingredients to succeed.

Lower Intensity Alliances (Part 1)
(Tools You Can Use e-newsletter, August 23, 2005)
Don't waste time on complex partnerships when simpler alliances can be more effective.

Lower Intensity Alliances (Part 2)
(Tools You Can Use e-newsletter, September 13, 2005)
What to do when your partnership is on the rocks.

Collaboration Bibliography
A free list of resources dealing with the topic of collaboration. This list is useful to collaborations and collaboration consultants.

For more information, please contact Sandy Jacobsen at 651.556.4510 or email her at sjacobsen@FieldstoneAlliance.org