Below are excerpts from THE SDG PARTNERSHIP GUIDEBOOK: A practical guide to building high-impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals, Darian Stibbe and Dave Prescott, The Partnering Initiative and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 2020. And, to me, it’s the heart of why approaching public online activities as community engagement, at a way to use technology to build community and grow an organization, makes sense, though it never mentions online tools:

Most of us work in operating environments that encourage a sense of competition and separation, rather than collaboration and cooperation. We are often told that there is a scarcity of resources, and that our job is to secure for ourselves, and for our own organisations, as much of the available resources as possible, and that if others lose out in the process then that’s too bad… for the most part it is a reductive way of thinking, because it limits the scope of what can be achieved together. It makes collaborative working difficult, especially if we have been told to work in partnership as a way to help an organisation to compete with others for funding opportunities.

Rather than starting from an assumption of competition and scarcity, what happens if we start with a different assumption:

All of the ideas, people, technologies, institutions and resources that are required to achieve the SDGs are already available, and the task is how do we engage them and combine them in new and transformational ways?…

What if we approached every single one of our encounters as opportunities to create new ideas, and what if the best and most interesting ideas emerged from the most unlikely sources? What new connections might emerge then?…

There are (at least) three levels at which to engage: You can think about how it relates to you as an individual and to your professional practice; you can think about how it relates to your organisation, and how your organisation collaborates; you can also think about how it relates to existing or new partnerships that you might be involved in. Effective partnering calls for great personal leadership: brave, risk- taking people able to operate in ambiguous situations while remaining outcome-focused.

In July and August, I have been teaching MGT 553 Using Technology to Build Community and Grow Your Organization, part of the MS in Nonprofit Management for Gratz College. I started designing the course in February, and I first blogged about the course May. My mantra, over and over, to these students who work, or want to work, in the nonprofits world has been that online tools are best used when their primary purpose is to build community, not just to market, not just to build awareness about an organization, and that such a focus enhances all other functions: program engagement, community participation, fundraising, volunteer engagement, partnership development and more.  

The students, in turn, reminded me of something that I’ve long known: the biggest challenges to this happening are those thrown up by their own organizations’ systems, processes and culture – something the United Nations publication also notes. Senior management or long-term staff who fear change are the far bigger obstacles to using online communications tools than budget or lack of tech knowledge. The reluctance and fear comes from knowing only the negative stories, the worst-case scenarios. I have a fantasy about making a list of all the in-person meetings I’ve been present for and people deciding they should never meet anyone ever again.

I talk a lot about leveraging online networks to reach new volunteers and other supporters via The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, co-written with Susan J. Ellis. The book also talks about using online tools to build community among your volunteers, cultivating information-sharing and shared learning among that particular group of supporters, as well as the detailed guidance you need to use the Internet to involve and support ALL volunteers, whether most of their service to you is online or onsite. And purchasing the book is far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer (though you can still do that)!

Also see:

• Online Community Management as Volunteer Management
• Contributing to online communities can help you professionally
• How to support your online community manager in times of trolling
• Factors for Success for a Neighborhood or Town-Based Online Community
• Volunteering to build community cohesion
• Cultivating Online Civility
• Support Your Local Online Discussion Manager!
• How to deal with online criticism / conflict.

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