Being, Becoming and Belonging

Abstract

For non-profit social agencies, new contract funding structures have increased their vulnerability. Collaboration is a strategy for dealing with reductions in the availability of funding and the pressures to ‘do more with less’ but there are few illustrations of how this might be achieved. The main body of literature devoted to creating models for collaboration was developed in the world of the new public administration and market models. Many of the less formal approaches consist of checklists and mock contracts that strive to account for variables that may affect collaborations. While valuable for focussing attention on key aspects, these approaches assume a static set of factors that predict successful collaborations. In this project, an alternative to these types of functional or instrumental methods of partnership development was created through a particular type of action research known as co-operative inquiry. Through the iterative stages of reflection and action, a new conceptualization of collaboration evolved and a subsequent model developed. The model is based on criteria derived from the experiences of the community members and accounts for the dialectical relationship of the individual agency and the collective non-profit sector. Through the process of the research, a transformation in thinking, purpose and practice occurred, resulting in a new metaphor for living and working in the community.

The Internal Strengths and Challenges of Community Grassroots Committees Addressing Homelessness in Prince George.

“…Grassroots committees have been working within the constraints and limitations of continuing federal, provincial, and municipal government budget cut backs and re-prioritized funds that seek to place blame on the homeless, instead of addressing the comprehensive structural problems that cause homelessness. This increased dependency on government funding has created what Mullett, Jung, and Hills (2004) state are "competitive structures within the community and antagonism between agencies that had previously worked together in harmony" (p. 146). As a result, this community competition has limited the work that committees across Canada can achieve, because the government has been systematically pitting community groups against each other.…”

“…Mullett, Jung, and Hills (2004) describe a collaborative model for community grassroots committees to combat these external challenges that are characterized by four key principles including:…”