Current e-Journal

Try this:
This week’s “try this” exercise is simple. It also has the potential to create powerful change in your community.

Step 1 is to ask these questions:

• Who else cares about the issues at the heart of your work?
• Whose work is connected to your work in some way, where they might wind up talking to the same donors and foundations as you, about funding their work?

The obvious answers are going to be organizations with very similar missions - another domestic violence organization, another food pantry, or another theater group.

Those other organizations might, however, be a group that has a different mission than yours overall, but has aspects of their work that might be seen as similar to yours. For example, if your work is around addiction recovery, the local domestic violence shelter may have a program to help survivors who are dealing with addiction. Recovery is not their primary mission, but it is part of helping survivors heal and thrive, and so they have a small program that feels like it is in competition with your work.

List all those groups. Then list individuals within those organizations – perhaps the executive director, or perhaps the head of the program that is similar.

Step 2 is the big one.

Pick up the phone. Or send an email. Invite that person to have coffee, specifically to explore what you have in common.

What could you accomplish together that you cannot accomplish on your own?

That’s it. Simple? Yes. But do we do it? Not nearly enough.

You may already know the people you are going to invite to coffee. You may consider yourselves friendly competitors. That is different than seeing yourselves as prospective allies and partners.

The worst that could happen is that the other person will decline your offer to meet (or may ghost you altogether). In our experience, that’s pretty rare.

The next worst thing that could happen is that you’ll have coffee, and nothing will come of it, in which case you will be right back where you started. The only thing you will have lost is the cost of a coffee.

And the best that could happen? All the good stuff that comes from linking arms with others who care about your cause.

By moving from “differentiating” to finding what you have in common, you will be building allies, linking arms to create something powerful together. That is why the question “Who is affected by what we do? Who else cares about what we care about?” is the very first question in the Catalytic Thinking framework.