Over the last 40 years, tens of thousands of partnerships have been formed all over the United States, each designed to engage people and organizations in solving problems in their community. Name an issue - be it in the area of child welfare, economic development, education, the environment, health, housing, jobs, or criminal justice - and, most likely, some type of partnership has tried to address it.

Both practical and philosophical reasons are driving the formation of community partnerships. The practical reason is that many community problems are so complex and interrelated that no single person, organization, or sector can hope to address them alone. The broad array of knowledge, skills, and resources that communities need to understand the root causes of these problems and to develop locally effective solutions requires an equally broad array of diverse, talented, and engaged community members.

Beyond the practical rationale for partnerships, there is a compelling philosophical one. Collaborative efforts offer a mechanism for giving people who have been excluded from community decision making a meaningful voice about the issues, policies, and services that affect them.

Foundations and government agencies alike have responded to this blend of practical and philosophical appeal by supporting and even requiring partnerships as part of their funding initiatives. Their considerable investments have been matched by the passion of people involved in partnerships, who are committed to making a real and lasting difference in their communities.

There would be no need for the Pathways to Collaboration Workgroup if the great potential of collaboration were being fully realized in practice. But, far too often, the experience with partnerships has generated more frustration than results. Successful partnerships, by any measure, are the exception rather than the rule. Many communities are finding it difficult to involve a broad array of people and organizations in partnerships and to sustain collaborative efforts over time. Many partnerships have not been as effective in solving problems as either their participants or funders would like. This is particularly true if we take into account the views of community residents who are directly experiencing the problems that partnerships are trying to address.

A newly developed model of collaborative problem solving - based on what has been learned about community collaboration over the last 40 years - suggests that much of the frustration and lack of effectiveness that partnerships are currently experiencing is due to the way they engage community residents. The term "community engagement," while universally endorsed, means different things to different people. The model brings much-needed clarity to this ambiguous term. Even more important, it gives partnerships a way to determine whether they are achieving meaningful engagement.

An important accomplishment of the Center's and Foundation's work with the Turning Point initiative, the model is a road map that explains how the process of collaboration contributes to the outcomes that partnerships want to achieve. The model defines "meaningful community engagement" by who is involved in the collaborative process and how these participants are involved. It identifies early markers of success - individual empowerment, bridging social ties, and synergy - that indicate just how well community members are engaged in a partnership's collaborative process. In addition, the model identifies the special kinds of leadership and management that are needed to promote meaningful engagement. (A detailed description of the model, including the large body of practical experience, research, and evaluation on which it is based, has been published in the Journal of Urban Health [volume 80, pages 14-47, 2003]. To obtain a copy of that article, click here.)

This clarity is important because there are striking differences between the way the model defines meaningful engagement and the way many partnerships engage community members in practice. Although most partnerships have adopted the rhetoric of community engagement, the community residents who are directly experiencing the problems that a partnership is addressing rarely have as much influence in the collaborative process as the model specifies.

The model suggests that many partnerships and funders could be far more successful in solving vexing community problems if the people directly experiencing those problems played leadership roles in identifying the issues that the partnership addresses, framing the way these issues are understood and tackled, and determining how success is defined. The purpose of the Pathways to Collaboration Workgroup is to give partnerships and funders the practical information they need to put such a collaborative process into practice.

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