Should We Join (or Start) that Coalition? Top Strategic Considerations - Episode 41

You're listening to the nonprofit power podcast. In today's episode, we help you answer the question. Should we join or start that coalition? Or run in the other direction. So stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Cath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive non profit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. Hey everybody. Kath Patrick here. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the nonprofit power podcast. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode. Anyone who's been part of a coalition, knows that it can be a complicated set of relationships. Some coalition experiences are fantastic. Some are terrible. And most falls somewhere in between. The best thing is when you and your coalition partners are fully aligned and everyone is pulling their weight and working together to get the results you've all agreed you want. The worst is when you get involved in a coalition and it becomes a huge headache without any of the results you wanted. To keep your coalition experiences in that happy zone. It's important to ask some very strategic questions before you leap. Hey there folks. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. I'm your host cath Patrick. One of the biggest advantages of a coalition is that it by definition describes a group of people or organizations. That represent a range of voices and perspectives and constituencies. It implies by its name, that there are a lot of different kinds of people supporting a thing. That can command the attention of decision makers in a big way. And can help make them more likely to take the actions you want. One of the best reasons to join a coalition is to amplify your voice. And this can be especially helpful if your organization is small. Or if the issue is one that your organization cares about, but it's not central to your work. And so being part of a coalition allows you to contribute without shifting your organization's focus too much. Great example of that would be a coalition to raise the minimum wage. Organizations that focus on workforce development say are a pretty easy fit. But organizations focused on housing or healthcare or other issues. I might still join because earning power is so strongly affects all issues faced by low income clients. Or an organization focused on workforce development might want to be part of a coalition on healthcare because they see it as related and important. But not something that they can take the lead on for sure. They don't have either the expertise or the personnel to do it. But it's still important to them. There are a lot of benefits to being involved in a good well-functioning coalition. That's clear about what it's doing. But boy, can they turn into a time? Suck if you're not careful. Or they can turn into a giant headache. With a lot of long and difficult meetings that don't seem to make much progress. So one of the things to realize about coalitions is that they can be convened around an idea or a concept. Or a specific goal. And it's really important that there be clarity from the beginning. About what it is, you're coalescing around. I know that sounds super obvious, but I've seen a lot of coalitions kind of fail to nail this down. And when you don't have that nailed down, it's the beginning of all kinds of trouble. If you're just coalescing around an idea or a concept with no goal attached. Be very wary. It's not always a non-starter, but it's already set up for that kind of vague uncertainty that allows things to go off the rails pretty easily. Generally speaking a coalition that doesn't plan to take action. Is of questionable use. Now action can take many forms. If the coalition has been formed in response to a threat. Then the actions are going to be centered around assessing monitoring and countering that threat. And it may involve opposing a specific policy proposal or budget item or something like that. If the coalition has been formed around a positive or aspirational goal. Then the action should be centered around bringing that goal into being. And there should be a clear, agreed upon strategy for making that happen. Occasionally, it makes sense to organize a coalition around a collection of related agenda items with a broad heading. So think things like an economic justice agenda. Uh, healthcare for all agenda and affordable housing for all agenda that covers a lot of territory. A lot of different organizations and perspectives would be interested in getting behind that at least in principle. But with a broad concept like that, then there would need to be a series of policy and investment recommendations underneath it. That would be more specific. You've probably been part of, at least one of these kinds of coalitions. And they're not inherently good or bad. It's really about how well they're structured and managed and how well aligned everyone is on what you're trying to get done. And of course. The degree to which they have achieved some sort of specificity beyond their broad agenda. So, no matter what the focus of the coalition is, the number one thing is to have clarity about what the heck you're focused on, what you're trying to do, what the desired outcomes are. And it is. I was going to say surprising, but I've seen it happen so much. It's no longer surprising. It's perplexing, shall we say? How often coalitions come together around a concept or an idea or an aspirational goal. And then fail to get specific about what exactly they want. How they see that coming about? What specific actions, policy makers, or funders or budgeting entities would need to take in order to bring that goal into reality. Without that. It's pretty hard to get any concrete results. Now, that's not to say that every coalition needs to have a comprehensive policy document that. I might or might not be useful. It depends on what you're asking for and what you're organized around. But if you don't have that, Then you need something that says with clarity and specificity. What it is you're trying to make happen. What are the end results you're looking for? Even if those end results are a long way down the road, which will happen a lot with aspirational kinds of goals. Affordable housing for all is a wonderful aspirational goal, but we all know that's not going to happen next week or next year. It's a longterm project that has a lot of pieces to it. And a lot of steps that need to be taken. But there could be legitimate reasons to organize a coalition around that broad goal. As long as you then get specific and decide what it is you're actually working on. The way, most direct service non-profits encounter coalitions is there's already one out there. Or there's one forming. That somebody else has called together and you've been invited or you're just aware of it. And you're trying to decide, should we join this coalition? And if you've had much coalition experience, you probably already know. That you don't want to say yes to any coalition until you've had a chance to learn more. But the question is what is it that you need to learn more about? What I've observed through my own experience of being part of many coalitions over the years, having led a number of them having convened a few of them. And also having helped many of my clients do one or more of those things. What I've noticed is that there are a handful of core strategic questions that it's very important to ask yourself before you say yes to being part of a coalition that someone else is pulling together or has already created. If you're thinking about joining a coalition. Some things you want to be looking for and asking about the coalition itself. Number one, are there clearly stated goals? And if the coalition is just forming and they're not there yet with that, then the question to be asking is what's the plan for arriving at some clearly stated goals? If there isn't one. And you don't feel strongly about heavily influencing the answer to that question. You might want to wait until they got that figured out before you agree to join. If this is something that you're pretty tightly aligned with, and you're excited that someone is organizing a coalition, but it's still in the formative stages. Then the question to ask is, Will you be able to have the input you need in the creation of the coalition's goals? Cause if it's tightly aligned, you're going to want that input. With more peripheral kinds of coalition relationships where it's not your primary issue, but you see some alignment and you want to be helpful and you want to keep a hand in. Then you may not care so much about defining the specific goals, but if it's something that's pretty well aligned with the primary work that you do. First of all, you probably need to be part of that coalition. Because you don't want somebody else creating an agenda around your issues that you don't have input into. So there's that. And so you want to get clear on how you're going to be able to help shape the goals for the coalition. You're number two. Very important question is what is the leadership structure? And can you be part of the leadership if you want to, is there room for that? How does that work? Depending on what you want out of this coalition relationship, this may be a key determining factor in your decision to join or not. And the third big question. Is what are the rules around? Creating and signing onto coalition positions. And what are the rules around when the coalition can take a formal position? This can get very tricky, especially in those areas where you're not as perfectly aligned. Say it's something a bit more tangential. And I've seen this happen a lot where the coalition has organized around a particular issue and some of the member organizations agree with the aspirational goal. But they may have a problem with one or more of the specific policy recommendations or statements of the coalition. If those recommendations or positions cross some lines that are going to upset your board or your funders, you may decide that, if it's not your primary issue. You may decide it's not worth either spending the political capital to help your board be okay with the thing or help your funders be okay with it. It might be easier for you to be able to just say, we're not going to sign on to that particular thing. But that only has value. If the rules of the coalition are such that when the coalition issues a position statement, That the only members of the coalition who can be listed on that statement are ones who have affirmatively signed on to that specific position. What you don't want is to be in a coalition that's kind of tangential to your primary work. And find out too late to do anything about it. That the rule is that if a majority of coalition members vote to take a position, then all the coalition members names go on the position paper, whether you specifically agreed to sign on to that position or not. That can cause all kinds of problems. So you want to know the answer to that question? And if it hasn't been decided yet you probably want to strongly voice your desire that it be an individual sign-on requirement. And there can be systems for that. But bottom line, you don't want the coalition to be able to put your name on something that you haven't explicitly agreed to. As a general matter of keeping yourself out of hot water in places you don't want to be in hot water. So with each of these, obviously there's lots of ways to handle them internally depending on what your priorities are and what you're worried about and all of that. But you want to know the answers to at least these three major questions because they can be deal breakers. The answers to these questions should be prominent in guiding your decision-making about whether or not to join the coalition. Now beyond those are all the internal questions you want to ask in your own organization and get clear about those before you decide whether or not to join. And those are. What does our organization want out of this? What's our reason for joining. Do we just want to be good citizens and sign-on because we support the concept and we want to help our friends who are organizing it. If that's all you want out of it. Then. You need to be clear about that. Both internally and ultimately with the coalition as well. At the other end of the spectrum. If there are very specific things you want. Specific results or to be part of the leadership or to be able to help shape position papers. Or what the asks are going to be or what the specific plans are going to be for action. If you want input on all of that. You need to be really clear about that internally. Because that will guide your additional questions. The. Big three external questions that I listed are ones that you should ask. No matter what. Because if you don't know the answer to those, you don't know enough to join or not join. But beyond that, you want to be clear internally about why are we doing this? What do we expect to get out of it? And whatever the answer to that question is. Ask this too. Are we more likely to get that desired result? If we joined the coalition? That's a big one. And The answer is often not immediately obvious. It may take some analysis. And thinking through, because it could depend on a lot of factors. Another key question that I alluded to in the three external questions. Is. Do we feel a need to be part of the leadership? That's going to depend on a lot of things. It's going to depend on your internal bandwidth. It's going to depend on some political considerations that we're often uncomfortable talking about, but that come up all the time with coalition stuff. And a big one is if, say you're one of a number of service providers in a geographic area, however you define your area. If you're one of several who are doing something similar or in the same general category. And there's a group of those service providers who are getting together and organizing a coalition around some of the stuff you work on. And you're not part of it. And you don't have a voice and how they're shaping the agenda and the policy or the asks or whatever they're doing. There are all kinds of risks associated with that. So quite honestly, sometimes a reason to join a coalition. Is to keep them from doing something you don't want them to do. That will be harmful or at a minimum unhelpful to you. Not the most inspirational reason to go join a coalition. But sometimes it's the political reality. That we have to jump in there to keep somebody from doing something that's going to create more problems if they do it in artfully. So that's one reason you might feel you need to be part of a leadership. Now on the more positive side of, do we want to be part of the leadership? It might be. Heck. Yeah, because this is something we are really excited about and passionate about, and we've been trying to figure out how to amplify our voice. And we thought about a coalition, but we didn't feel that we had the capacity to lead it, but we could be among the leaders. And that's something that would really serve us. And we want to do that because we do want to make a big contribution to this and help shape it. Those are great reasons to want to be part of the leadership. Or maybe your answer is. We don't feel we need to be part of the leadership. We're just along for the ride. We just don't want them to do anything unhelpful, but if we've answered those first big three questions to our satisfaction, we're okay with being part of it without being in leadership. There is no right or wrong answer. You just have to ask yourself the questions internally. What do we want and what leadership role do we want? Another important question, especially if you've said yes to the leadership question. Is how much work are we willing to put in to get the desired result? And again, there's no right or wrong answer to any of these questions. It's just an internal assessment of what are we doing here and why are we doing it? And what are we committing? And are we comfortable committing it? If you're like most non-profits, you've got a lot on your plate already. And joining a coalition is one more thing. So, if you feel like you do want to put quite a bit of work into something, because it feels important, then you want to define what that's going to look like, and who's going to do that work. And how is the organization going to support them? So that they have space on their plate to go do that work. These are the internal questions that always come up if we're going to commit to something new. How do we balance that with our existing commitments and work? And then adjacent to that question. Is. Do we feel that the return on investment is sufficient to warrant joining? And that's directly proportionate to what you want out of it. If all you want out of it is to add your voice to the crowd. That's saying, yes, this thing is important. Decision-makers should go do this thing. And you just want your name on there and let it be known that you support this thing. then cool. That's almost no effort. So no problem getting your ROI out of that because the investment is so small. But if you want some very specific concrete results. That in order to get them. You're pretty sure you're going to have to be among the leadership in the coalition. You're going to have to commit a substantial chunk of time to not only doing that leadership work. But also then. Whatever comes with that. There'll be advocacy, and messaging, and time spent engaging decision makers and all of that. There's all kinds of work that goes with getting that done. It's just advocacy by coalition versus. By your individual organization. So you're adding it to your advocacy play. So when you assess how much that's going to take. It's just good to do a check of. Okay. We're estimating. It's going to take this amount of effort. And remind us again, what we said we wanted out of this. It could be game changing if we get that result. Okay. Then we're all in on that investment. Not so sure about the impact. Um, let's discuss further. And the other question that's related to all of these. Can we do it and maintain our other advocacy and strategic relationship building work. Because if we have to put on the back burner, some of our current advocacy work and priorities in order to pursue this coalition work. There better be a big ROI for that. We have to really think hard about whether that's worth doing. Because understand that some way. Every time you take on something new, you got to shuffle around your other work a little bit, or maybe put something aside for awhile. And what you don't want to have happen. Is to have your existing advocacy priorities get set aside in favor of the coalition work. Unless you've made a conscious decision that you believe your existing advocacy priorities are so well aligned. With the coalition's priorities that you'll get a double win simply by being involved in the coalition. That you'll still be doing the same work you were going to be doing anyway. Only now you're going to be amplifying your voice through a coalition. That is the magic place where, Assuming there are no red flags on the other questions of how the coalition is structured, how its leadership is operating. very likely it's a heck yes to the ROI question. And that's the ideal situation when you're that well aligned, really good things can happen. So those are all very important questions to take a look at when you're thinking about, should we join this coalition or not? And how should we join it? How involved do we want to be? All those questions. But sometimes you may decide that you want to create a coalition. To help you get something done. This is taking coalition Ning. To a whole new level. There are some really good reasons to occasionally decide to convene a coalition. There are times when it really makes sense to do that. The times when it makes sense to do that, or when you feel very strongly about the need for collective action on the thing at hand. Almost by definition, the thing will already be an advocacy priority for your organization. It's pretty rare for something to be so brand new that it wasn't already on your radar one way or another. Either it's a long-term goal that you're pursuing, or it's a threat that you've become aware of, or maybe have been aware of for a while. And you realize that your organization working alone is unlikely to be able to achieve this goal. You're going to need help going to need reinforcements. That's when you know, you need collective action. When it's just not doable by you alone or not desirable to do by you alone. Another reason to be the convener is that you want to exercise strong leadership over the direction of the coalition. Which could be for any number of reasons. It could be that you have the most at stake. So you have the most vested interest in this goal happening. And so yeah, if you want it to happen, you probably need to be leading it. It could be that you have. A really strong and compelling vision that is so clear in your mind. And then you would want to have strong leadership because you're the one with the vision. Now on the flip side, it could also be that you see a significant risk that the coalition could be pulled off target without your leadership. There's all kinds of scenarios in which that can happen. Sometimes it's by accident and sometimes it's by design. You know, most of the time when organizations join a coalition, they have a stake in that thing. And sometimes if they feel strongly about the stake that they have, they're very interested in making sure that the coalition goes in the direction. They want it to go in. And if that's not the direction you wanted to go in. Then it helps a lot. If you're the one who convened the coalition. It gives you an extra level of authority. And extra ability to keep things reigned in and moving in the direction you think they need to be. Moving. So. If you're leaning toward convening a coalition. There's one more big consideration. And it's one that often gets overlooked. And this is where I see a lot of problems come up a lot of the time. Are you committed to doing the extra work involved? And that means not just the work of leading the coalition, which you will need to do. But there's also a ton of admin that goes with that. There's a lot of herding cats. And that's the unfun part of leadership. You've got a lot of different voices, a lot of different perspectives, helping make sure that everyone is heard and has a voice and has input and is able to be part of the coalition's decision-making process. And at the same time, exercise enough coherent leadership that the thing stays on track and eventually get stuff done. If you don't want to be the one, doing all the work of the coalition and everybody's there just to rubber stamp your stuff. If you want shared work, you're going to have to facilitate the sharing of the work. And that means you're also probably going to have to keep track of people and their assignments and nudge them when they don't get them done and all that kind of stuff. There's just a whole lot of back-end administration. If there are any policy papers to be created, you're going to be facilitating the drafting process. Doesn't mean you'll have to do all the drafting, but position papers don't write themselves. They have to be outlined. They have to be organized. If they're on multiple points, they gotta be farmed out. And there has to be a coherent voice. In the overall paper when it's done. There's just all kinds of unglamorous background work to successfully leading and maintaining a coalition. That kind of doesn't get noticed. If your experience with coalitions has primarily been as being a member of one. If the leadership has been pretty effective, you may or may not have realized just how much work the leaders and their staff were doing behind the scenes. And so if you're going to convene a coalition, it's important to understand that you're signing up for a substantial pile of work. The fact of it being work shouldn't scare you away. You just want to go into it with your eyes fully open that that's part of the deal. And so again, this is an ROI conversation. If you've checked all the boxes that I've just listed out, you feel really strongly about the need for collective action. You have a powerful vision for this thing you're committed to leading. You really want to get this thing done. You feel it's really important. All those things. And you're willing to put in the work. Then if you're able to get that thing done through the collective action of the coalition, then yeah. That return is going to be worth the investment of time and energy you made. No question. What I've seen from time to time is organizations convening a coalition around a general goal of advancing an idea. And that's where things. I tend to get really messy and go off the rails. Not only do you not want to be part of a coalition that's doing that because it's very frustrating. But you really don't want to be in the position of trying to lead a coalition that lacks clear direction. So the way you avoid that is you get super clear internally on what you want out of this and what you needed to do and what work you're willing to do to get it done before you ever take any action about convening anything. When you're able to do that, then you can communicate that effectively to all the folks that you would go out and recruit to be part of the coalition. And say, Hey, this is the vision. This is what we're excited to do. We think we can make this happen, but we know that the only way it can happen is if a bunch of us were together on this. What do you think about pulling together a coalition and working on this? And in a perfect world. Maybe you have one other allied organization that's well, enough aligned. And you work well together with their leadership. That maybe you can share launching the coalition. That's ideal. It's ideal for a couple of reasons. One it's two organizations then sharing that admin and cat herding work that takes a ton of time and energy, but also it reduces the chance for bad feelings in the coalition. Of, folks in the coalition feeling like, oh, well, yeah, they just called us all together so they could get what they want, but we're not sure what we're getting out of this. When it's two organizations convening a coalition together. There's less of that because. You know, Inevitably your two organizations are going to have different perspectives and different interests in getting this thing done. And if other perspective members can already see why these two organizations came together and they're putting the work in. It feels more like an effort worth joining. If you do decide to convene a coalition, there's a whole bunch of things you want to do to set it up and manage it. And. Make it be a success, but that is a whole other episode. For today's episode, I really wanted to focus on just helping you ask yourself the most strategic possible questions before making the decision to either join a coalition or on some occasions, decide to start one. And to set you up for the best possible coalition experience. However you come at it. Because, you know, nobody needs to be wasting time. Nobody needs to be wasting energy and there's already enough frustration in your day to day advocacy work. Once you're in a coalition, there's a certain amount of frustration that just goes with the herding of the cats. Getting everybody on the same page about something is messy. And it can be slow and frustrating. So if you're going to do it. You want to make sure that you're really going to get something of significant value for your organization out of this that is really going to help advance a goal that you've already got. So I hope that helps you think a bit more strategically about your coalition relationships present and future. And that when you do decide to join or start one, it sets you up to have the best possible and most productive experience. Because the bottom line is it's all advocacy. It's all strategic relationship building. We want to be spending our time and energy well and effectively and getting big results. Otherwise, why do it? Thanks for listening. And I'll see you in the next episode right here on the nonprofit power podcast.