| Coalition
Building Communities participating in a Citizen Stewardship Campaign work through a coalition of entities representative of all sectors of community life. The more diverse and usual the alliance the more effective the campaign, especially when building a political mandate for the common good. Diversity of participation insures integrity and equity, shared leadership builds leadership skills, and the amplification of collaborative action reaches toward a tipping point of communal behavioral change. The aim of the coalition is to amplify the good work that each participating member organization is already doing, aligning missions and overlapping strategic objectives towards a synergistic benefit to all. The following questions assist in building effective coalitions. 1. Who are the most committed citizen stewards and sustainability leaders that we know? And who do these people know? 2. What groups in our watershed community are most active around stewardship issues? What are their stated missions that define them as stewardship groups? 3. What programs within parent organizations are specifically focused on stewardship issues even though the parent organization has a larger mission? 4. In alignment with the four principles of citizen stewardship, what are the stewardship issues, and therefore groups, we are leaving out? 5. If we drop our mental map of city and county boundaries and think from a watershed perspective, what new alliances emerge that will be important to our success? 6. What organizational patterns and practices achieve the most synergy for getting work done with the least amount of structure? Read about Open Space. 7. How can we work in collaboration such that we accomplished things without overburdening our own organizations, over-committing personal energy or creating unnecessary bureaucracy? 8. How will we measure what matters to us? Coalition Building Process First: Create a map of community social assets: the individual champions, the organizational resources, the institutionalized policies and practices currently embedded in local civic process. What do we have going for us? Second: Conduct appreciative interviews across the sectors of the emerging coalition to develop a deeper understanding of the achievements and aspirations of the community. What themes are prevalent? What is the shared dream? Third: Establish a communication network to provide immediate feedback to participants, invite new involvement and showcase success. How can we harness mass media for mass awakening? Fourth: Meet face to face on a seasonal basis to exchange learning, design tools and criteria for measuring progress and hold ourselves accountable. What are we learning? Always: Notice what's working and do more of it. |
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www.peterdonaldson.net peter@peterdonaldson.net 206-236-8114 3635 88th Ave. SE Mercer Island, WA 98040 Background Salmon image by Bill Reid |