Working at Social Organizations Challenge: the Keys to Success

 
For several years, working with others – in alliances or networking – has become a mantra for social organizations. In a globalized world, it naturally seems impossible to undertake any project by ourselves if we pretend to have any impact. Think about political advocacy: in order to have influence on the public agenda nowadays, we need wide coalitions of the civil society able to fight for the forgotten rights of the most vulnerable. But what are the minimum requirements for networking? In my opinion, some of them include the following:

• Institutional support and a group of committed people. A network requires a group of committed and enthusiastic people with passion to carry forward an objective and who are willing to give all they have in order to achieve it. Furthermore, if we want networking to work in the short run, the institutional support to the group and to the work done by the association will be crucial. This is important not only by allocating enough resources but also by ensuring the sustainability of our actions, but also to allow the network to obtain the importance of a relevant project in every institution that may support it and to get the organizations to fully get involved with the project.

• Common objectives and a clear horizon, beyond the individual objectives and interests of the members, as well as relations based on trust. The will to build something together is indispensable, which means giving up some things in order to achieve a common goal. The achievement of this common goal also involves having trust on each other, being allies and never competing against each other. This means having a great predisposition, clear and unselfish approaches, fluent communication and trust in the others, as well as lending resources and work.

• Clear roles definition. The network requires an accurate definition of objectives and roles: an equitable distribution between members is needed. The organization’s representation, common messages and logo must also be established. In addition, the network shall achieve more through task and actions specialization and the sum of everyone’s abilities than what would be achieved individually.

• Actions shall follow the same line, but they mustn’t restrain. As we have mentioned before, it is important to have common objectives and lines of action, but they should be balanced with some autonomy and decentralizing on the action’s implementation. By this way, we will give more freedom to the creativity and commitment of many other people and organizations. There has to be a balance between control and chaos, between management and autonomy. My experience at the Global Campaign for Education has shown me that there must be clear models, coordination and lines of action to achieve the objectives along with autonomy for the teams and people who work from different places. We sometimes need to lose our fear of having a bit of chaos because, while the actions and results may not be the ones expected, the creativity and the higher responsibility and implication assumption will make it up.

(…) Sometimes, other indicators can be enunciating different action levels from the national to the international level, having a major impact of the actions done by the net that the individuals would have had or achieving set goals.
In addition to what has already been said, in my experience, a network prevents organizations from focusing on themselves to give more importance to external success and to the achievement of the objectives according to our internal interests and planning. In short, networking is currently essential and it shows the African saying: «If you want to walk fast, walk alone. But if you want to go far, walk together with others.»
This post was originally published in the blog of the ESADE Social Innovation Institute (in Spanish).