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Working Together:

A Toolkit For Cooperative Efforts, Networks and Coalitions

ICL is now offering workshops and consulting assistance in applying the tools and concepts for effective multi-organizational cooperation.  Click here to inquire about these services.

This Toolkit is for leaders and activists who are working to combine forces with multiple organizations to better accomplish environmental and social change goals. The Institute for Conservation Leadership wants to share useful ideas, models, and practices gleamed from our 16 years of consulting with, coaching and training thousands of leaders and organizations; nearly all were cooperating in some way with other groups. We hope this Toolkit helps your cooperative effort start off on the right foot so you can avoid reinventing the wheel, evade common pitfalls, and travel well.

The Toolkit will help you:

• Gain tools and insight into leadership in cooperative settings, as well as learn how to assist group development - the first task of leadership.

• Clarify your organization’s reasons for joining a cooperative effort, assess risks and benefits, and find productive and focused common ground

• Learn to use three essential elements for inclusive, purposeful and active cooperation, and choose exercises for launching your group.

• Select the most efficient and effective organizational model and structure to fit the purpose of your cooperative effort.

• Anticipate predictable persistent tensions as the cooperative effort evolves, and use leadership and organizational practices that suppport success.

We are very grateful to the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Russell Family Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation for their generous support for this publication.

An overview of the contents of the Toolkit:

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why a Toolkit?

• Overview of this Toolkit

Chapter 1:  Group Development -The First job of Leadership Leading Cooperative Groups

• Share the Responsibility of Leadership
• Four Reasons Groups Stay Together
• Practicing Inclusion and Diversity
• Seven Tips for Working in Groups
• Phases of Group Development
• Exercise

 Chapter 2:  Start on Sound Footing - Four Steps

• Get Started in Four Steps:

1. Assess Your Organization’s Readiness
2. Explore Options for Cooperation
3. Initiate the Cooperative Effort
4. Assess Your Start: Are you on Sound Footing?

• Exercises and Processes

Chapter 3:  Choosing a Structure to Fit the Work:  Six Models

• Explore Cooperative Structures
• Six Models of Cooperative Efforts

1. Network
2. Association of Organizations
3. Coordinated Project
4. Campaign Coalition
5. Ongoing Partnership/ Strategic Alliance
6. Multi-Stakeholder Process

• Find the Form to Fit Your Function: The Cooperative Agreement
• Exercises and Processes

Chapter 4: Cooperative Work - Full Speed Ahead

• Together, and Working Well

1. The Give/Get Ratio for Member Groups
2. Manage Disagreements and Conflicts
3. Communications Flow

• Share Power and Benefits

1. Be Accountable to Each Other
2. Raise Money Together
3. Share the Limelight

• Accomplish Common Goals: Constant Motion, Constant Learning
• Tips to keep the Learning Alive
• Exercises and Processes

Chapter 5: Time for a Change - Transform, Merge, or Close it Down

• Transform Your Cooperative Effort
• Mergers - A Special Case
• Closing It Down - Plan and Carry it Out Well

Bibliography and Resources

Price: $35.00 (a 15% quantity discount is available when ordering 5 or more copies)

Please click here if you would like to order via email or download an order form.