Presentation Materials: 

B7_CollaborationCapacity_presentation.pdf

Using an innovative new program designed to foster and deepen relationships inside and outside an organization, one organization was able to “break down the walls” between departments in order to collaborate on a process to more fully engage ambassadors, staff, and supporters. The program involves institution-wide efforts and opportunities for input, data collection and analysis, outcomes and benchmarking tools, and dissemination of the information collected in a variety of ways (written, spoken, and electronic), with a feedback loop to inform on how to improve the process. This workshop will review the program in detail, sharing how, through this innovative and collaborative effort, this organization is increasing its capacity to not only fulfill mission, but giving its supporters the opportunity to find meaning in their lives.

Workshop objectives/takeaways:

• participants will more fully appreciate the need to continually deepen the interdependent relationship between an agency and its supporters in order to build the capacity of the institution;


• participants will receive concrete examples of methods for “breaking down walls” between agency departments to more fully engage staff in the agency’s mission; and


• participants will receive concrete examples of how an agency can systematically communicate the emotional and objective data required by ambassadors to more fully “tell our story.”

Presenters: Matt Obert, director of quality assurance, and Jeff VanCamp, director of development, Chaddock

Workshop synopsis:

Nonprofit human service agencies today are dealing with opposing forces: the need to increase their capacity to fulfill their missions and an increasingly fierce competition for support to do that. Every institution has a number of different components, but we can’t just be good at the pieces, we have to put them together in the right way. Agencies that will grow and thrive in the future are exploring ways now to deepen internal and external relationships in a systematic and continuous way.