It can be hard sustaining a collaboration because tackling community issues together creates challenges to partnership and momentum. But you can set up a collaboration for success. Focus on four areas—people, resources, process, and impact—and the factors that determine their quality, like leadership, funding, community engagement, and the ability to influence policy and systems that lead to collective change. When things do get hard (and they will), the collaboration’s resilience will be proven by its overall health and well-being, as well as its ability to adapt, shift, and change.

In this session, recorded live on May 8, 2023, Liz Weaver and Mike Des Jardins of the Tamarack Institute share stories and provide helpful ideas about how to make a collaboration more sustainable, resilient, and impactful. They discuss how collaborations can develop a sustainable approach during the early phases of their work. They also pose the question: What really needs to be sustained and how might this work?

[5:50] 1. Define what is a sustainable collaboration
[11:32 2. Focus on people, process, resources, and impact
[16:42] 3. Centre equity in the design of sustainability
[20:03] 4. Adapt to changing communities / collaboration
[24:05] 5. Include funders in the process
[27:05] Q & A

Download the session handout. Follow along with the transcript.

Presenter bios:

Liz Weaver is co-CEO at the Tamarack Institute.

Liz leads the Tamarack Learning Centre providing strategic direction for the design and development of learning activities. The focus of the Tamarack Learning Centre is to work with community leaders to co-generate knowledge and become a collective force for social change. Liz is one of Tamarack’s popular trainers and has developed and delivered curriculum on a variety of workshop topics including collaborative governance, leadership, collective impact, community innovation, influencing policy change and social media for impact and engagement.

Previous to this, Liz led the Vibrant Communities Canada team and provided coaching, leadership, and support to community partners across Canada. In her career, she was the Director for the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction (a collective impact initiative), which was recognized with the Canadian Urban Institute’s Leadership Award in 2009. She has also held leadership positions with YWCA Hamilton, Volunteer Hamilton and Volunteer Canada. Liz has a Masters of Management through McGill University. Liz was awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 2002 for her leadership in the voluntary sector and has received awards and recognition from the City of Hamilton, Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, Parks and Recreation Ontario, and Volunteer Canada.

Mike Des Jardins is the Manager of Sustainability & Development for Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF), Tamarack Institute.

In this role, Mike is responsible for sustainability planning, researching, and sharing best practices related to the sustainability and resilience of youth collective impact work, coaching CBYF communities on developing and implementing sustainability strategies, and telling the story of impact. Mike is a certified teacher in the province of Ontario and has worked directly with youth through program and service delivery and indirectly supporting youth by creating the system conditions to support their learning, development, and well-being.