Maintenance

One of the reasons I admire One Love Global, where I’m doing field work, is that they are collaborative and coalition-driven. They are thoughtful about the need to work with others and to help them work with each other, from community members and youth, to grassroots organizations and religious institutions, to political leadership and government institutions, and so on. I find this unusual among nonprofits, at least in my experience, because of competition for funding, brand recognition, and programmatic reach.

I am becoming more involved in the coalition building and maintenance work, and, in line with the readings this week, am thinking about what I/we can be doing to support coalition member engagement. Some of the challenges I am noticing early into this work is low turnout for monthly meeting calls and disengagement among members who span across the state, which I know are interrelated issues. I think part of it is that we focus too much on steering the work and reporting out to members, rather than creating space for shared stories and learning. There is the added complexity that Butterfoss and Kegler talk about of different levels of roles and engagement among members, which to me – an unfamiliar newcomer – are still unknown, and organizationally are undocumented.

Over the coming weeks, I will be reaching out to coalition members to hear about their communities, work, strengths, and needs in relation to the coalition mission and milestones. In other words, how can we facilitate cooperation and better pool resources, mobilize talents, and create synergy?

Once I’ve connected with more coalition members, I think a key will be facilitating check-ins, information sharing, and saying thank you often. I like a case example on the Community Tool Box website re. coalitions that talks about the human elements of coalition maintenance and how a manager made sure to check in often, say thank you often and congratulate, and let people know they were needed. The coalition also “practiced maintenance regularly through restatement of the mission, goal-setting, communication among members and with the community, follow-up, and constant reevaluation of the Coalition’s goals and direction.” I’ll be working on integrating these practices into my every day.