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Collaborations, Partnerships, and Mergers Worth
The operating environment for nonprofit organizations has become increasingly
competitive and characterized by scarce resources. In effect, it has become paramount for the
organizations to find ways that can provide additional resources to allow the organizations
expand their current scope of resources. Often, the organizations do not have the capacity to
inject the resources without support from other organizations. They are, therefore, forced to
get into collaboration with other organizations whose primary focus is maximizing profit as
well government organizations (Worth 205). The major advantage of the collaboration is
providing synergy and allowing then to scale up their operations and effectively serve their
mission. The following chapter summary discusses several principles relating to the
collaborations, mergers, and partnerships including the different forms in which such
partnerships manifest.
Different principles inform the need for partnerships, collaborations and mergers.
These factors could be both short term and long term, but they must be denominated by the
need to enhance internal efficiency and serve the mission of the organization. The first driving
force for collaboration is the need to have synergy and enlarge the social value generated from
the abundance of resources. To this end, a nonprofit organization must perform due diligence
and ensure that there is a convergence of value and objectives among all the partnering
organizations or agencies (Worth 206). An enlargement in depth and breadth from the other
set of drivers for partnerships is another driving principle. The principle requires that the
primary focus of organizations coming together be informed by the need to reach more people
and serve them better by enhancing the quality of services provided (Worth 207). Thus, it is
incumbent on a nongovernmental organization to determine the level of control to give to the
partnering to avoid dilution in the discharge of the mission. At the same time, it is critical to
ensure that the partners feel that they are part of the broader objective. Thus, the nonprofit
organization which has the longer hand in negotiations must focus on mainstreaming the
organizational objectives in the harmonized plan originating from the collaboration (Worth
208).
The need to refine or expand the resources of an organization is another underlying
driver for collaboration, mergers, and partnerships. The principle of effective collaboration or
mergers requires that the resulting operations have efficiency gains. In effect, there ought to
be a decline in internal costs of management. Besides, the need to have economies of scale
should, also, be central to the process of collaboration or partnerships (Worth 209). The
economies of scale might result from the injection of human skills or financial leverage. The
former helps nonprofit organizations expand the scope of their operations, whereas the latter
provided the financial resources to facilitate such expansion. Besides, the sharing of best
practices has emerged as one of the driving factors for collaboration and partnerships. The
sharing increases the knowledge base and provides a platform where the staff can collaborate
in generating new ways of performing functions (Worth 209). The factor is of particular
importance because of the changing legal framework on the management of nonprofit
organizations.
