“If I had known it would come to this, I would have never entered the field.”

Her comment came in that awkward pause between initial greeting and relaxed conversation. She was the CEO of a large social service not-for-profit organization in a major metropolitan area. She was also the co-chair of the community-wide conference where I had arrived to deliver a keynote address, and we were meeting for the first time. Her honesty was unexpected, disheartening, and yet all too familiar. Here, in one brief exclamation, she had crystallized the essence of hundreds of conversations I’ve had with not-for-profit leaders over the past several years.

For many such committed and hard-working individuals, the days are filled with activities that fail to approach the vision of community and societal impact that propelled them along this career path. Whereas in the other sectors, achieving the “corner office” signifies fulfillment, for not-for-profit CEOs, it often expands the perceived inconsistent, inconsequential, and insipid demands on their time and soul. In today’s environment—characterized by devolution, privatization, and sector blurring—CEOs face an array of seemingly irreconcilable trends:

• collaboration and competition
• demands for holistic responses funded by categorical appropriations
• demands for operational efficiency with little funding for operations
• measurements of program outcomes that fail to look at systemic results
• remediation funding swallowing any dollars for prevention
• disengaged boards and an increased need for strong local relationships

These trends have spun a web of complexity and self-doubt that is beginning to overwhelm even the most resilient CEOs.

Fortunately, these CEOs are not isolated from organizational support. The number of technical assistance providers, management consultants, and leadership books has expanded right along with the professional angst. But these resources all seem slightly off-point—they are necessary but not sufficient.

This realization is what compelled us at The Collaboratory for Community Support to expand our vision beyond not-for-profit management support organizations (MSOs)—which build the operational capacity of individual not-for-profits—to “community support organizations” (CSOs). CSOs seek to build the community’s capacity to systemically address social problems by assisting efforts that work across multiple not-for-profits and across multiple sectors of the community.

We have spent the past two years researching how local CSOs assist comprehensive, systemic, collaborative efforts to address social needs. We have discovered a few great examples of CSOs, and a widespread need in most communities for this kind of support. We believe it is the key to unlock the positive community impact that not-for-profit CEOs have always hoped to have.

Defining the Community Support Organization We define a CSO as an impartial, skilled, local intermediary that is dedicated to fostering the success of local alliances and systemic reforms in order to improve the way the community solves problems. CSOs provide the following kinds of generic support to a variety of activities in a community:

• convening representative boards to make community-level decisions,
• facilitating cross-organization meetings and community forums,
• providing research services to help community groups make informed decisions,
• tracking systems-based outcome data,
• coordinating funding streams or facilitating local funder collaboratives,
• managing collaboratively owned resources,
• being a liaison between community initiatives and government officials, and
• developing information management systems for local use.

Such an intermediary can serve multiple coalitions and collaborative groups while providing a link among these integrated efforts on behalf of the whole community. By definition, CSO staff have the time and commitment to do the behind-the-scenes tasks that allow cross-organization alliances to progress.

The few communities that have some version of a CSO rely on it as a key resource for making the case for coordinated approaches, creating the political resolve to affect change, removing barriers to implementation, building relationships across traditional boundaries, and refusing to allow the community to take “no” for an answer. The CSO is a servant to its community, but it is not a direct service provider and does not run its own programs. Instead, by committing itself to the success of alliances—over and above the success of any participating organization, program, or project—the CSO remains impartial in its relation to any one leader, organization, or sector.

Why Would Not-for-Profit CEOs Want a CSO in Their Community?
The quote we chose to introduce this article points to a key reason why not-for-profit CEOs would benefit from a CSO as a resource for their community: having a CSO to pull together the people, information, and activities of cross-organization work will allow the community to get to holistic, systemic results that improve people’s lives. The CSO creates the structure for not-for-profits to bring their efforts to bear on a larger process of comprehensive solutions—thus allowing the CEO to shed the frustration of limited impact. We’ve looked at different ways in which the CSO makes this possible.

1. Supporting Collaboration While Saving Time for Busy CEOs
We all know that collaboration across organizational boundaries is necessary to address the complex social and economic challenges of our communities. But collaborative work of any kind needs support to succeed. Many U.S. corporations have created full-time staff positions just to facilitate and inform their multi-business alliances. Yet, such business alliances are a much simpler form of cross-organization work than is currently required in communities. Community collaboratives need convening, planning, background information, bridge-building, creative resourcing, and barrier removal throughout the process.

Some person has to take responsibility for this work, but most not-for-profit CEOs already work 50+ hour weeks just running their own organizations. While they often attend collaborative meetings with similar organizations, they have no extra time to devote to the necessary between-meeting tasks. Where they exist, CSOs take care of that work. CSO staff can remind participants of upcoming meetings, take minutes, distribute materials, find answers to participant questions before the next meeting, and invite requested guests. In Jacksonville, Florida, for example, CSO-type services provide community collaborations with extensive research on local trends, local resources, and best practices in other communities.

CSOs can also use their broad community connections to assist with fundraising for the collaborative effort and to broaden participation in the group as needed. And CSOs are aware of the other collaborations going on in the community, so they can create connections among groups to facilitate improved problem solving. Thus, the CSO gives the not-for-profit CEO the luxury to think and act collaboratively and systemically without adding to the CEO’s hectic schedule.

2. Engaging the Broader Community Around Solutions, Not Problems
Increasing community engagement is an essential role of the not-for-profit CEO. Whether to recruit board members, market to clients, raise awareness, or cultivate donors, the CEO needs the community to recognize and value the not-for-profit’s mission and activities. While promoting individual organizations is not the focus of the community support organization, the CSO will broaden community engagement in the concerns of the not-for-profit sector by convening community-wide forums and clarifying the full system of services existing in the community around any social issue.

Most importantly for comprehensive impact, the CSO engages the community in order to seek solutions, not to wallow in problems. The CSO uses information and diverse participation to challenge the community to reach for its highest aspirations. Facilitation by CSO staff discourages “lowest common denominator” decisions about what a community should support, so that not-for-profit leaders can expect to be part of visionary community efforts, not deflating meetings that go nowhere.

At the same time, community engagement promotes community ownership, so that CEOs no longer need to feel solely responsible for society’s challenges. In Toledo, Ohio, for example, our CSO-type services have taken the challenge of homelessness off the shoulders of just the service providers and made it a community-wide concern for which many leaders are now taking responsibility.

3. Addressing the Difficulties with Funding Streams and Policy Restrictions
The barriers that prevent not-for-profit success and community-wide impact often stem from problems with funding and policy. Categorical funding from government programs inhibit systemic approaches. Local funding streams with no alignment in their expectations create administrative headaches. And government policy at all levels can get in the way of innovative solutions. Trying to change this situation is beyond the scope of any not-for-profit CEO’s or collaborative group’s time and resources.

The CSO, however, is charged with taking on these challenges. It can convene and support local funder collaboratives to create joint applications, shared deadlines, and similar reporting requirements. It can develop ongoing relationships with public officials to seek waivers or changes in policy requirements. It can bring the voices of many community leaders and collaborative efforts to the need for changes in funding allocations.

The CSO in Kansas City, Missouri, for instance, used its strong ties to state government to allow its community to re-write an RFP before the government issued it, and to re-design human service positions to facilitate more holistic services for clients. Alternatively, in San Francisco, the CSO negotiated greater flexibility in the use of state funds in exchange for improved outcomes for children; CSO staff then helped the community set and measure these outcomes over time.

The Net Benefits
Supporting collaboration, engaging the broader community, and working to change funding and policy will clearly enable a community environment that is more conducive to not-for-profit success. The actions that fall within each of these CSO roles also provides direct benefit to the not-for-profit CEO by addressing the contradictory trends discussed at the beginning of this article.

By facilitating collaborative efforts and connecting funding to systemic solutions, the CSO confronts the problem of simultaneous collaboration and competition among not-for-profits. By encouraging community engagement in the full system of social problem solving, the CSO enables a focus on community/system outcomes rather than individual agency outcomes. By promoting a systemic perspective on improving efficiency, the CSO presents a wider rage of options besides mergers and acquisitions to reduce costs and enhance services. By fostering community ownership of solutions, the CSO makes apparent the operational needs of not-for-profits—including the need for technology to support collaborative work and system-based outcomes measurement—so that community-wide efforts will ensure adequate operational resources. By calculating a community-wide return on investment in social services, the CSO allows budgeting and implementation to focus on prevention rather than remediation, opening the door for strategies that CEOs have always wanted to try, but could never before afford.

Finally, by holding all members of the community to high aspirations for achievement, the community support organization provides an ongoing stimulus for community improvement. It makes possible the citizen engagement that moves social challenges from “problems to be addressed by not-for-profits and government” to “solutions to be enabled by the full community.” Thus, the CSO supports the evolution of communities into local environments where not-for-profit CEOs can participate as leaders in creating a community response worthy of a CEO’s passion.

The Collaboratory for Community Support
7423 Hickory Ridge Drive
Ypsilanti, MI 48197-9487
Phone: 734-623-4952
www.thecollaboratory.us
For more information email us: jcrubicon@aol.com

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