Collaboration
photo credit: East Coast Greenway Alliance
Collaboration is the foundation of healthy communities and a healthy Earth. Complex opportunities and challenges require working together to create positive change, which is why ICL supports networks and collaborative efforts. We have facilitated hundreds of collaborations focused on protecting our air, land, water and communities.
Collaborative work – meaning alliances, coalitions, networks, partnerships, and collaborations – requires a specific range of skills, a unique mindset, and knowing how to serve common and divergent interests. ICL helps collaborations clarify direction, strengthen relationships, build shared infrastructure, and become comfortable with the ambiguity and complexity inherent in collaborative work.
Start a Collaboration
Build your vision. Create connections. Gain momentum.
If you’re just starting a new collaborative effort, let ICL support you on your path to collaboration.
ICL supports collaborations in:
Creating a shared focus and purpose
Appointing team leaders
Designing adaptive planning approaches from the beginning
Anchoring the collaboration in principles and practices of equity and inclusion
Building a foundation of connection and understanding among the participants
Manage Your Collaboration
Established collaborations often need to evolve and change to continue supporting collective actions and progress.
The art form of collaboration requires ongoing attention to keep the movement fresh and energized.
ICL supports leaders in a collaboration so that they can:
Assess the collaboration’s dynamics, engagement, and ways of working
Lead planning efforts that focus and energize
Build shared leadership and communication platforms to drive action and momentum
Plan and facilitate effective meetings
If you are thinking about strategy, relationships, your board, your organizational business model, your organizational structure, or fundraising, our team of coaches are ready to support you and your organization.
Get Unstuck
A collaboration can get stuck if it stops evolving. Or perhaps what brought the collaborative effort together shifts mid-stream. ICL helps leaders and collaborations get “unstuck.”
We support leaders so they can make change while considering the whole collaborative community. We’ll show you new ways to leverage and shift dynamics.
ICL will assist you to:
Understand the natural tensions in your collaboration
Identify new experiments and approaches to the collective work
Examine decision-making and communication patterns and tools
Name and claim conflicts, and work to resolve or accept conflicts that exist
collaborations we’ve Supported
- Delaware River Watershed Initiative – over 50 organizations working together to protect and restore the Delaware River Watershed
- Greater Baltimore Wilderness Coalition – public, private, and nonprofit organizations with a collective impact model
- Chicago Wilderness – a volunteer driven alliance of more than 200 organizations
- Network for Landscape Conservation – an umbrella network of over 250 organizational partners and 5,000 individual practitioners
- Capital Trails Coalition – a collaboration of public and private organizations, agencies, and volunteers
- Vermont Agricultural Water Quality Partnership – agencies and organizations collaborating with and supporting farmers
See Our Impact
Delaware River Watershed Initiative
Since 2014, ICL has helped develop and strengthen a network of more than 50 organizations working together on one of North America’s most ambitious water protection initiatives. Launched by the William Penn Foundation, the Delaware River Watershed Initiative is driven by an intricate web of relationships designed to address a complex problem.
Strategic Planning for Collaboration
ICL supported the Circuit Trails to complete a strategic plan in 2022. Circuit Trails is working to expand the trail network, add miles, and make it more accessible and inclusive.
Strategic Development
In 2021, ICL supported the strategic development of two urban wilderness coalitions. These unique networks exist at the intersection of a variety of sectors with a shared goal of creating more resilient and healthy urban areas for everyone.