This article is an interesting resource for organizations or people thinking about partnerships. It outlines the two different types of partners, strategic and enabling. Strategic partners are more formal and take on more rights and responsibilities, whereas enabling partners are more relaxed and have more verbal agreements. This article also gives lots of worksheets filled with questions to make sure that you or the organization is truly ready and in a good spot to think about partnering with another person, organization or company. There are many benefits to partnering with someone else; however there are also many negatives that can come from partnering with the wrong person or organization, or partnering at the wrong time. If you are thinking about partnering with someone this is an article you need to read prior to committing to that partnership.
After reading the article I realized that there is a lot more to partnering than I ever thought. I always thought that if you knew someone else with similar interests and wanted to reach a common goal, you would get together and talk about what your two organizations could do to reach that common goal and then proceed with reaching that goal. Little did I know there are many more things to do and think about even before you start thinking about partnering, or ask someone else to partner with you. Relationships can make or break a partnership. If you do not start and continue having great relationships throughout your partnership the partnership will most likely fail, and both partners will go their separate ways. Communication is definitely a big part of a good relationship and partnership. If the two organizations cannot communicate effectively, they will not get anything done and probably be very frustrated with the other partner. A good way to keep good communication and have good relationships is to have fun. If people are not having fun they will not be happy, and the organizations will suffer. Retreats and risk sharing are just two ideas the article shares for creating good relationships and having good communication. This article is great for anyone, but especially community developers because usually the funding for community development is not a huge amount, if any, and therefore other people, organizations and corporations are needed to help achieve the community’s goal. This is a huge benefit for the community as well because it gets people involved and wanting to make that difference. Having people in the community be partners for the community development project can be difficult and a risk, but if done properly it can have huge benefits. There are too many questions you should ask yourself before partnering; this article has a ton of worksheets and suggestions to help anyone make the decision of partnering or who with. This is an article I will keep close by whenever I am doing any programming, community developing, or anything relating to partnerships.
