Collaboration and Partnerships

for aspiring social entrepreneurs

Select activities which best meet your needs and take a look at the Resources page for tools which might help.

This part of the curriculum covers two broad aspects of collaboration and partnering:

Teamwork in you own project
Collaboration and partnership with stakeholders and interested and affected parties.

For both of these explore the general concepts and practical approaches which may be applied in student social entrepreneurship projects.

Design activities which enhance understanding of the benefits and provide practical advice etc.

Reflect on your own experiences of collaboration

Can you think of an experience of achieving more or making a more significant contribution with a team than you could have on your own?
How did the cooperation come about?
What made this cooperation successful?
- What energised you and the other participants?
- What can you say about the participants (individually and as a team)?
Did the collaboration lead to longer term relationships?
- If so, have you developed those relationships in further activities?

Teams and Networks

What is a team?
What is a network?
Discuss the similarities and differences.
What are some of the critical elements in a team/network?
- Read Teams and Networks and reflect on your own experience trying to identify other beneficial elements of a team/network.
How can you use teams and networks to reach common goals?

Communities of ____

Explore the following (and related) concepts:

Club
Community of Interest
Community of Practice
Network of Practice
Social network
Association
Organisation
etc.

Social Networking

Online Academic

Join a new (or revisit an) online social network
- Search for and create links with other social entrepreneurs, students of entrepreneurship or groups
- Join a social entrepreneurship group within this network
  - Discuss and share learning.

Reading group

Find a few fellow learners - face to face, by e-mail, social networking (see for example Power.com), etc., agree to read and discuss the following:

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Suggested discussion points:

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Approaches to Collaboration and Partnering

Informal

...

By contract

...

Client as Partner

Some highly successful companies have a policy of "client as partner" to get away from this contract-delivery paradigm (we pay you to deliver for us).

This attitude of client as partner (or community as equal partner) is particularly important for community-based and services-based learning ...

Experiential Learning

This is your next step towards community engagement. Activities here will be extended in future modules/units and build on previous.

The pattern will generally be:

Preparation and planning ... field work/ quest ... learn ... come back and share ... create links under Community ....

Form or Join a Fellowship

How this happens will depend on your institution or other circumstances. The course manager/instructor may have a process which you are required to follow. If so, start there.

The important thing is to assemble a balanced team with a range of skills and capabilities. Recognise your strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to enhance the effectiveness of the team via collaboration.

Some of the techniques described below may be useful in your team's deliberations.

Explore Community Structure

By now you may have met some community members and have an idea of the structures and dynamics.

Discover existing networks, engage with them ... in creative dialogue.

Seek to understand.

What questions could be asked at this stage?

Is the community actually asking for anything?
Do you feel welcome?
Regarding the existing initiatives in the community
- Are there any you would like to support/join?
- How much buy-in is there among community members for these initiatives?
  - Were they initiated from within the community or externally?
Who do we contact in connection with ... (with a view to joining or supporting the initiative in some way).
If we do anything, who needs to know?
When can we meet again?

Record your activities, learning and plans emerging from this quest.

Outputs

This may be the start of a cycle of successive meetings which will become the real essence of your project.

Depending on the nature of your project the meetings and actions may result in one or more of the following (or something else entirely):

Memorandum of Understanding
Contract
Document describing collaborative arrangements
etc.

You would do well to document everything thoroughly every step of the way to ensure you have all the material needed for these outputs and other reports.

What Next?

The next module in this course is Developing a Social Entrepreneurial Idea|Developing a Social Entrepreneurial Idea.

Alternatively, return to the main curriculum page and choose a different unit.