Monday, November 8, 2010

Roundtable 2, Monday afternoon: Collaboration and Capacity Building within and between Public Land Agencies and Stewardship Organizations

Facilitator: Wendy Newman

Participants:
Tim Wohlgenant: Executive Director, Trust for Public Land
Harry Bruell: CEO and President, Southwest Conservation Corps
Mike Roque: Director, Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships
Brian Ross: Executive Director, Colorado Conservation Trust
Elise Jones: Executive Director, Colorado Environmental Coalition
Mary Mitsos: Vice President, Conservation Programs, National Forest Foundation

If we build it – will they come? And do we have the infrastructure to handle it?

Collaboration isn’t easy – How do you manage the egos and logos and make it work in your collaborations?

-It is tough. It is easier if you have political weight behind it and can say, “The Mayor wants this done and will come to your event.”
-Working together makes the pie bigger for everyone. There is the scarcity mentality – only a certain number of resources. But national funders want to fund innovation, collaborative efforts and not individual programs.
-Don’t partner just to partner. 5 of the largest land conservation groups in state have come together to show funders (state and national) that we are all working together on 25 essential landscapes in the state.
-Political clout. Don’t collaborate unless you can get something you can’t get on your own. Took a lot of failure for organizations working on their own in advocacy to start working together to influence state legislature.
-Big foundations want to fund joint fundraising opportunities, not individual. Sweeten the pot to give some of their own resources to bring more people to table.
-Collaboration means sitting down with people you don’t agree with. All ends (or at least all that will come to table). You can’t get what you want individually but can get more of what you want by working with other people.
-Mission capability between partners – can’t force things. Associations have to check their egos at the door.
-There are five steps to collaboration: 1. Broad goal that everyone can rally around (50 million dollar goal that everyone can buy in). 2. Right composition of people – media, politicos, etc to be at table. 3. Right timing – sense of urgency + sense of opportunity. 4. Leadership – sense of organization, charisma, normal meetings, minutes, etc. 5. Leverage for future – next steps rather successful or not.

People here today are representing a wide array of folks but there are still groups missing (health, transportation, education). How do we reach out to those folks and form our message to get them to the table.


-Make sure that partners you want to bring to the table have a reason to come. Tie your needs to their priorities. Changed the conversation to how they can work together
-Public health community is focusing on smart growth and city/community layouts to address obesity rates and getting kids outdoors. Significant health impacts. How do we get more kids riding their bikes and outdoors?
-Working with gov’t employees can be challenging – they don’t know how to work with non-profits. Engage these people and teach them how to work together – show them the benefit.
-Diversity is important. The environmental sector still one of the most whitest. Reach out and engage communities of color in ways that affect them. Must watch how we message - Careful with word choice “citizen engagement” has a certain stigma because of immigration debate. Many people of color care deeply about the land but don’t call themselves environmentalists. (example of hunters in the San Luis valley) Must build the structure with them and not build it and invite them – they will only be guests.

How do we do that? (Build structures with communities of color)

-Engage them. Embrace their causes and they will support our causes. Example of immigration and how this coalition could support them to win their support.

What are specific challenges when conceptualizing this coalition of getting one million and one Coloradans? What else do we need to be aware of?

-Need to focus on the one million for what? The goal isn’t the number, it’s what you get from the number.
-Need to focus on and collaborate with the people who use the public lands (example of Trust for Public Land developing a park in a vacant lot in Denver)
- It takes a lot of work. Money, people and time. These barriers are always going to be there and will take resources to get around how we want these million people to look.

To clarify around the million Colorado concept – just an idea. Want to point out that it’s more than daydreaming. This gathering is about how we make this a reality with goals, barriers, what we need to look at.

There has been success with collaboration with the people here. But, there are limited pots of money, competing missions…what will happen if we don’t collaborate?

-There are real, external threats: climate change, consumption, the state budget in terrible shape, population rising and demographic shifts. These things will happen whether we change or not. Working together we can start to help.
-State demographers office says 5.1 million people in CO today. 8 million in 25 years. That is a given. We can’t stop that. But these trends will not make current land use patterns work. What is the effect on water, transportation, wildlife? Population densities in Chicago, Manhattan is different and how will we be able to make that happen. More innovative land use planning is needed.
-Single issue organizing (environmentalists, gay/lesbian, immigration) will continue to allow us to be divided. We must have messages we can all agree on to make sure we coalesce around that.

As panelists, if we do this, can all of you pledge to work together with us?

- Folks that are missing must be involved as well. Get involved with health folks and education folks.
-Be careful about what we call an environmentalist. A lot of people care about land but don’t want to be pegged as environmentalists.
-This is a great time to be doing this. People want to be engaged in a positive, community building concept after a nasty, dividing election. Future Governor Hickenlooper could be handed this and want to run with it.
-Future governor could reach out to bring everyone together (diverse groups) to work together on this. We have a golden opportunity to bring these unlikely partners to keep this movement with a way to keep moving forward.
-Pull together a Colorado Great Outdoors type movement to capture this.

There are many wonderful folks working on the same issues. How do you break down barriers and work together with organizations that truly have overlapping missions? How to be a more effective, unified voice? Can we pull these groups together without duplication?

-Plan events together, get political power together.

Who is it we are seeking to coalesce? Who is the target audience for this message?

- Most folks come for the resources of this state whether for recreation, aesthetic or whatever. Must be able to nest local coalitions into regional and statewide ones. Find better way to connect grass-roots orgs with statewide coalitions.
- Depends on the mission. (example of Audubon Society partnering with golf courses) Organizations with different purposes often want the same thing.

How can one organization build its capacity to collaborate with other folks?

-Find those partners with the same goal and make them your friends. Folks with common interests will be able to find a way if they know they can work together to get more than they could alone.
-Finding time to make partnerships must be a priority.

Are there too many organizations, non profits working on the same thing?

-Yes. There are over 20,000 non profits in CO – 12,000 in Denver. Not like private sector, people don’t shop around. Our clients don’t bring the funding. Funding comes from govt, foundations.
-So many out there with similar names, similar missions that it dilutes the work we do and confuses the public. (Polls the audience with a large agreement)

Does Co-housing concept (FS, BLM, etc) better engage citizen volunteers?

-In Durango area, people don’t know what land they are in at one time. Crisscrosses from FS, BLM land. Have found it very easy to work with partners, logistically easier and more efficient.

What else would panelists like to share to make collaboration more effective in Colorado?

-Big opportunity for partnerships for stewardships and advocacy groups. Stewardship is a nice entry point for people to get onboard and can get them introduced to the idea about why public policy is important
-Collaboration is hard but only way we can win. We are underfunded, overworked etc versus the folks working against us.
-We must use technology to our advantage.
-Educate funders to continue incentives to partnerships and not individuals. Partner with orgs that can help you and not big v small, weak v strong, etc.
-Identify the strengths and expertise different people bring to the table. Make sure they complement each other and build from there.

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