onPhilanthropy: Beyond Borders - Maximizing Nonprofit Effectiveness Through Collaboration

onPhilanthropy: Beyond Borders - Maximizing Nonprofit Effectiveness Through Collaboration: "Beyond BordersMaximizing Nonprofit Effectiveness Through Collaboration
By: Lilya Wagner, 08/02/06

Folk tales from any culture are meant to make a point. I recall one that my father told me when I was a child about a wise old man who called his sons together and gave them a bundle of sticks to break. One after another the sons tried to break the bundle but couldn’t, yet the task was easy if the bundle was untied and each stick broken individually. There’s a lesson in that little tale Unity builds strength and nonprofits can maximize their effectiveness by joining together in traditional as well as nontraditional ways.

In a new volume on philanthropic effectiveness, published by the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany, the authors address the role of philanthropy in globalization. They point out the value of building coalitions across sectors which include nonprofits, business and government, and also suggest that coordinating strategy among philanthropic organizations means leveraging each other’s power and building alliances for greater effectiveness. "