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Collaborations & Networks

Greater impact together

Complex social problems are too big for any one organization to solve and are best addressed collaboratively. We have been privileged to support coalitions, networks, and alliances of nonprofits, foundations, and companies working together to drive lasting change.

Our role is to help structure and facilitate collaborations to enable them to have greater impact. We design collaborative structures, conduct landscape research to identify opportunities, develop tools to help diagnose and build on members’ capacities, facilitate collaborative dialogue, develop measures to assess effectiveness, and support strategy development to foster shared goals.

We also help partners identify and engage with critical stakeholders—to form reciprocal, respectful relationships and ensure a voice for those directly affected by the challenges.

How We Can Help

Strategy

Sound strategy is grounded in a deep understanding of your core purpose, capacity to achieve change, and collaborative relationships with others. From diverse perspectives on your work, we help you clarify your mission, vision, and values—then we collaboratively chart the course to realize your goals.

Evaluation & Learning

We’re often engaged to evaluate coalitions, networks, and alliances’ work. All our evaluation services take a customized approach—using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods—to harness evaluation and learning for your diverse stakeholders. We provide actionable insights and build internal capacity to carry on learning efforts.

Capacity Building

Along with strong leadership, sound management, effective tools, adaptability, and a values-driven culture, accomplishing your goals takes collaborative muscle. We help you identify your strengths and opportunities for growth to determine how you can best partner with others in coalitions, networks, and alliances to achieve your shared aims.

Grantmaking & Foundation Management

We work with funder collaboratives, networks, and alliances on a wide variety of giving programs. Our experienced staff members design, develop, implement, and manage grantmaking efforts. We help you administer grants efficiently, communicate with grantees and grantseekers, and align your grantmaking with other funder objectives.

Initiative Design & Implementation

Tackling complex issues demands integrated action, informed by deep listening, intentional engagement, critical analysis, and bold approaches. To help your coalition, network, or alliance achieve your goals for lasting impact, we design integrated initiatives: strategic endeavors that meaningfully choreograph multiple program components and are responsive to community needs.

Stakeholder Engagement

Relationships are essential for impact. We help you build authentic, expansive, and productive relationships with the stakeholders critical to your collaborative work. We begin with stakeholder mapping, plan your strategy for engagement, identify the touchpoints for ongoing and fruitful partnership, and bolster feedback loops.

Strategic Communication

At all stages of work—designing a complex initiative, embarking on an organizational change in direction, or creating a suite of materials—strategic communication is essential. We create communication plans that make your voice heard, identifying your messages, messengers, audiences, and channels.

Governance

An engaged and effective board helps ensure you’re achieving your mission. We work with coalitions, networks, and alliances of all sizes, helping define the role of the board and advising on issues of its composition, structure, tenure, performance, and sustainability.

Theory of Change, Indicators & Measures Development

Surface the hypotheses and assumptions underpinning your work. How will you get from here to your goals? We lay out the steps by which your collaborative work will lead to impact. Articulating a Theory of Change and indicators of success are essential to establishing a shared vision for priorities, evaluation, partnerships, and resources.

Landscape Analysis

We have deep experience with collaborations and networks. We map the key players, relationships, and trends essential for your unique mission. We collect data and connect you to the perspectives of diverse actors—including those most impacted within the community. We help you find the most effective ways you can make a difference.

“Interventions focusing on networks are very complex by nature, involving a multiplicity of interests, yet often we tend to treat them the same way as programs. TCC has really helped organizations map the complexity and the key changes they want to see … TCC Group has been instrumental in building the field of network evaluation and helping us all understand how to think of networks differently.”

Nancy MacPherson, Former Managing Director, Evaluation, The Rockefeller Foundation (2008-17 tenure | Quoted on 6.27.18)

“TCC Group’s extensive experience working with coalitions has been invaluable… They’ve provided a lens through which we’ve been able to look at the overall campaign and the individual coalitions and make tangible gains in sustainability, nursing leadership, stakeholder engagement, and capacity building.”

Pat Polansky, RN, MS, Director of Program Development and Implementation, Center to Champion Nursing in America

“TCC Group helped us understand the need for sustained, long-term leadership development and capacity building across a network of affiliated nonprofit organizations. TCC helped us understand how networks can function like healthy ecosystems in which each leader and organization has a key role to play, supported by others.”

David J. Ringer, Chief Network Officer, National Audubon Society