From the WABT book project:
What I have in mind here is the deliberate action by funding organizations to drive collaboration. The ECB (Emergency Capacity Building) project that the Gates Foundation and Microsoft co-funded in 2005 is a good example. See the description of Phase I of the ECB project, here: http://www.ecbproject.org/background-and-context/phase1 [1]. Driven by the heads of emergency response at seven international relief organizations, this project sought to identify the processes and systems to improve the capacity to respond to emergencies [2]. Technology was one of the areas to push for greater coordination.[3]
When a Microsoft manager asked me about the ECB project proposal and the potential relationship with NetHope, we agreed that there was an opportunity to drive greater collaboration and conversations between the IT departments and the emergency response department in the member organizations. Six of the seven members of the Interagency Working Group (IWG) that commissioned the ECB project were also NetHope members. In some organizations, the two departments had not talked much, let alone collaborate. So part of the grant to fund the ECB project came with a condition: the project directors needed to work with NetHope on the technology components of the project. NetHope is comprised of the IT leaders at most large international NGO organizations. As a result, NetHope managed four of sixteen sub-projects in the ECB program. More importantly, the technology and emergency folks were at the same table, talking about common goals and working together toward common objectives.
The point of the story is not that technology departments got a piece of the funding pie, or even a seat at the table; the point is that collaboration was driven by one of the fundamental factors for nonprofit programs: funding. If there is one thing can drive NGO change faster than a crisis, it’s funding. The challenge I make to grantors in our sector is to drive the collaboration by making it a requirement in your grants.
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