Getting Out of Silos: How Collaboration Improves Community Impact
- Rachel Cheng
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Collaboration is a word that is thrown around a lot in the social impact world. The social impact sector and nonprofits therein often work on a tight budget while meeting a large demand. Nonprofit organizations recognize that collaboration is a crucial factor in community flourishing. No one organization can meet the needs of an entire community. And this is where collaboration comes in. Groups across different sectors, public and private, sectarian and non-sectarian alike, must communicate and work together for the common good.
In practice, organizations fall somewhere between collaboration and isolation - with a strong aspiration to collaborate, but real-world barriers often lead to isolation and reduce community impact.
In fact, according to surveys (like from the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Bridgespan):
Eighty-to-ninety percent of nonprofits say they value collaboration highly.
Fewer than 50 percent report active, strategic collaborations.
Only a small percentage are engaged in truly integrated or interdependent partnerships.
If nearly every organization values collaboration, yet less than half are even in strategic partnerships, something is off. Perhaps collaboration needs to be unpacked a little bit. But first, let’s discuss what is common in practice.
Collaboration in Practice
While collaboration is ideal and frequently discussed, many nonprofits continue to work in silos. Organizations are often pitted against each other in a competition for the same funding streams. In addition, donors don’t often incentivize partnership, and some even threaten to remove their support if changes are made to the structure and system.
They also worry about mission drift, which is the divergence of an organization from its original purpose or formal goals, where its activities and resources become misaligned with its stated mission. Essentially, organizations worry about their loss of control.
Organizations, nonprofits in particular, can operate with limited resources and capacities, making coordination with other organizations next to impossible. Add limited trust or relationship with peer organizations on top of that, and you have organizations with their proverbial heads in the sand.
Collaboration is growing—but often limited or surface-level. Many nonprofits co-host events, make referrals, or join coalitions, but even at this level of partnership, the change only goes so deep.
Contrasting Communities: Connected and Siloed
Early in my career, I (Rachel) was in the homelessness sector working for the local government as an Education and Outreach Specialist. The collaborative ecosystem I entered had been cultivated over many years by different partners across the city and county. Every month, approximately 40 service providers, faith organizations, government programs, civic leaders, community members, and those experiencing homelessness sat in a room together. Each group shared resources, made decisions together, worked towards common goals, and knew each other’s organizational missions.
I knew that this collaborative ecosystem was special, but I didn’t understand that it was an anomaly until I moved to another community. The community I’m in now recognizes its need for collaboration, but is currently entrenched in siloed work. Each organization is dedicated to its cause, working arduously to meet the needs of its clients. The problem is, no one else knows who else is out there. The wheel keeps getting reinvented, duplicating services instead of coordinating and partnering. The community is saturated by nonprofits that carry their own torches, not realizing they are surrounded by other torch-carriers as well.
If you’re part of a nonprofit, you're not alone if collaboration feels aspirational but hard to execute—the system wasn’t built for it, but many are now working to change that. There's a growing movement toward collective impact, shared services, and networked approaches—especially in response to complex, systemic challenges.
The Benefits of Collaboration
Collaboration helps to maximize impact in the community. When organizations are siloed, they may unknowingly offer the same services to the same population, wasting limited resources. However, collaborating allows them to combine their resources—financial, human, and informational—which increases their collective capacity. Collaboration also ensures efforts are complementary rather than redundant.
Organizations can share administrative services, training, technology, or office space to reduce overhead. This also results in stronger grant proposals. Funders often prefer to support collaborative efforts that show a broader reach and more sustainable impact.Information sharing is important to growth and innovation. Collaboration encourages the exchange of expertise, strategies, and lessons learned. Different perspectives can spark new ideas or more effective approaches to problem-solving.
Working together with a unified voice brings attention to challenges while amplifying the growth and development of a community. A coalition of nonprofits has more influence when advocating for systemic, policy, or funding changes. Working together increases the visibility of shared missions and enhances credibility with stakeholders. Partnerships can also provide more comprehensive services to the people they serve. One organization may reach groups or areas that another can’t, creating a broader safety net together. In short, collaboration allows nonprofits to do more with less, reach further, and create deeper, lasting change than they could on their own.
How to Move from Isolation to Collaboration
Moving from siloed operations to interdependence among nonprofits requires deliberate planning, trust-building, and strategic alignment. Interdependence doesn’t mean losing autonomy—it means working together intentionally to increase collective impact.
Before any of this can happen, organizations have to assess whether they are ready for collaboration. They must acknowledge the limits of working alone and see collaboration as a strategic advantage. If it’s not going to be advantageous, then the collaboration needs to be put on hold.
Collaboration is often built on relationships. Invest in current relationships and network to create new ones. This includes leadership, but it doesn’t have to stop there. Getting all stakeholders at the table can give organizations a clearer picture of their collaboration. Trust and transparency are key elements to these conversations so that all parties can understand each other’s strengths, needs, and limitations. Create a unified vision of success that everyone can contribute to and benefit from. Each organization brings unique resources—skills, networks, tools—that can be leveraged. Recognize where your organization falls short and how others might fill those gaps (and vice versa).
It’s a good idea to start small. Pilot a joint program, co-host an event, or share space or data systems to build momentum. Acknowledge wins, both big and small, to keep morale and momentum high. Encourage openness, mutual respect, and a willingness to compromise. Don’t treat partnerships as one-off projects—see them as evolving commitments.
A truly integrated collaboration and partnership among nonprofits goes far beyond occasional cooperation or joint events. It involves deep alignment, shared decision-making, and mutual accountability—often to the point where organizations operate as an ecosystem, not just individual players. It’s challenging, but when done well, it leads to stronger outcomes, more efficient use of resources, and deeper community impact.
Flexibility
As you discuss flexibility, it will be important to note that this means each party has to be willing to give up some things in order to gain a diversity of strengths and offerings they could not provide on their own.
Flexibility and resilience are deeply connected—especially in nonprofit organizations and systems working in unpredictable, complex environments. Flexibility is often a core component of resilience, enabling individuals or organizations to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of change or adversity.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, our work (like everyone else) had to shift. Our ministry is community-based, so we had no idea if shifting online was going to work. Thankfully, the community that we were engaged with was also able to shift to online. Instead of meeting in coffee shops and each other’s homes, like we had done for years, we visited through Zoom calls. We actually were able to connect with more people that way, and we realized that the pandemic gave us an unexpected opportunity.
We decided to innovate with our training program. Before the pandemic, we welcomed residents to join us locally for in-person field work and professional and spiritual development. No one in our 40-year history had adapted our catalog of workshops and lessons to an online format. We gave it a shot, and in the first year of the online training academy, we welcomed a cohort to join us for 10 months. That model worked so well that it has become its own missional enterprise, financially supporting our local ministry.
Give-and-Take
The muscle of adaptability we exercised in 2020 paved the way for a unique partnership among different ministries of The Navigators. Last fall, one of our coaches, Casey Duthiers, began conversations with Benjamin*, who is part of a ministry called Nations Within. They explored the idea of hosting interns through a joint internship program based in Detroit and Atlanta. The internship would provide young adults with exposure to missions among diverse populations, while also supporting local fieldwork.
Discipling for Development, the ministry that Resilient Communities Center is an extension of, tends to be less connected to the U.S. Navigators than other ministries within the umbrella organization. A large part of that is because most D4D teams are abroad, while the Atlanta team (RCC) is the only team in the United States. Therefore, a joint internship was a big step in collaboration.
The Resilient Communities Center and Nations Within had numerous discussions about the program's design, including how much overlap there would be between interns from the two locations, who would provide orientation, who would provide ongoing training, and what the program's focus should be. Within about six months, the program was ready for recruitment.
Interns arrived in June for their six-week placement and hit the ground running with community development training, cultural enrichment, field placement, mentoring, and weekly debrief calls. The hosting team ultimately scheduled each component of the internship, but these decisions were based on conversations with each party involved. By the end of the internship program, we knew it was a success and would become an annual program.
However, we needed data to support the success we felt. We gathered evaluations and feedback from interns, field placement supervisors, and one another. We took stock of what worked and what needed improvement. It was indeed a positive experience for all parties involved. While we had a few kinks to work out, we wrapped up the internship program with confidence that next year would be even better.
Relational Investment
In January 2024, Casey and I sat with Rusty and Emily from Friends of Refugees for our first meeting together. We aimed to learn about each other’s organizations, looking for overlap and opportunities for collaboration. The meeting did not result in any immediate results, because there were no clear avenues for partnership at the time. However, that meeting strengthened our relationship as fellow nonprofits serving refugees in Clarkston. It wasn’t until December of 2024 that the ball for partnership got rolling.
Rusty passed our organization's name to the volunteer coordinator at FOR. She was planning a resource fair that December and heard that we provide education around grounding resources, such as deep breathing. We showed up and met a Habesha woman who was connected to other Habesha moms. She asked us to help her community with the same resources we were providing at the fair. Within a month, we were meeting with these moms in their homes leading them in a bi-weekly support group.
Word about the support group started to spread at FOR. The following spring, we were back at a FOR resource fair, connecting with more families. A woman named Mariam*, inquired about the work we were doing with East African women. She works for Embrace, a refugee birth-support program at FOR. She mentioned that the moms in her program would benefit from the resources we provide. Fast forward to August, and we are now joining their Mom’s Circle to lead a similar support group with the mothers in that group.
Our summer intern helped us make even more headway in this relationship with FOR. She was working closely with Emily during her field placement with FOR. As Emily and I discussed the intern’s schedule, Emily invited us to conversations around a coaching program for kids. Our intern and I met with Emily for weekly brainstorming sessions. By the end of the summer, we had a plan, and by August, we had developed a pilot leadership development coaching program.
This pilot has taken off with excitement and momentum. Each week, middle-schoolers get off the school bus and head straight for the FOR location for their next lesson. From this program, we hope the middle schoolers will grow into leaders who then mentor those younger than them. The relational investment we made nearly two years ago is paying off.
An Invitation to Learn More
If there is anything that we have learned about collaboration, it is that it takes time. It is iterative. And it involves others.
Our team of coaches at Resilient Communities Center supports teams who want to foster greater collaboration, shared leadership and relevance of their impact both within teams and across organizations. Schedule a free demo to begin exploring these concepts, together.