What Makes Collaborative Partnerships Strong and Long Lasting? Lessons-Learned from Collaborative Partnerships
Rusty Lloyd1
1RiversEdge West, Grand Junction, CO, USA; Rlloyd@riversedgewest.org
For over a decade, RiversEdge West (REW) has formed collaborative partnerships with a variety of watershed groups in the four-corner states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Such collaboration is certainly not unique. Indeed, organizations, state and federal agencies, institutions and others form partnerships throughout the world in pursuit of common goals. When successful, such partnerships can accomplish goals that often would be impossible to realize independently. What are key ingredients of successful collaborative partnerships? When collaborative partnerships are not successful, are there lessons to take stock of for the future? Beginning in the summer of 2020, REW initiated a ‘lessons learned’ study to take stock of the body of collaborative conservation work between REW and its watershed partners in the four-corner states. Interviews were conducted with executive directors and staff of X # of organizations to understand how well REW and watershed groups collaborated together on key priorities. What worked well? What did not? If we had to do it all over again, what would we do differently? Although the information gathered from the interviews relates to the qualities of collaboration between REW and its watershed partners, the lessons learned and other key findings have broad implications for collaborative partnerships everywhere.
Key findings of the lessons learned study include:
• The importance of forming mutual strong mission statement and sense of purpose, backed by goals with sufficient detail to allow progress toward realizing them to be quantified;
• Understanding the time needed to form successful partnerships. Strong collaborative partnerships do not happen overnight. Relationships and trust have to be developed first;
• Meetings, jointly conducted pilot projects and fund-raising, and short-term agreements can foster the foundational trust needed for long lasting and successful collaborative partnerships;
• The formation of mutual realistic, near-term objectives, and celebrating their achievement, fosters excitement for realizing longer term and more impactful collaborative goals;
• Particularly for collaborative partnerships that involve multiple players, having an outside facilitator that leads meetings, keeps track of outcomes, holds participants accountable for commitments, among other considerations, is essential for success.
• The importance of forming mutual strong mission statement and sense of purpose, backed by goals with sufficient detail to allow progress toward realizing them to be quantified;
• Understanding the time needed to form successful partnerships. Strong collaborative partnerships do not happen overnight. Relationships and trust have to be developed first;
• Meetings, jointly conducted pilot projects and fund-raising, and short-term agreements can foster the foundational trust needed for long lasting and successful collaborative partnerships;
• The formation of mutual realistic, near-term objectives, and celebrating their achievement, fosters excitement for realizing longer term and more impactful collaborative goals;
• Particularly for collaborative partnerships that involve multiple players, having an outside facilitator that leads meetings, keeps track of outcomes, holds participants accountable for commitments, among other considerations, is essential for success.
As part of this presentation, these and other findings from the lessons learned study will be summarized in the context of looking at specific partnerships and the key ingredients that allowed them to realize mutual conservation goals.