What next? Eight Ways to Unleash Catalytic Collaborations in Cities.
As Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: A Playbook for Catalytic Collaboration has shown, when cities, social entrepreneurs and communities collaborate, they can significantly accelerate progress toward solving seemingly intractable social problems, and simultaneously making progress towards achieving the SDGs. We identified eight common practices that can be tailored to join forces, and tap into a shared abundance of resources: talent, funding, regulatory and policy tools, human resources, experiences, and empowered citizens. Together, local governments, social entrepreneurs and the communities they serve (and empower!) can have an immediate and sustained impact to improve the quality of life in cities.
This is the blog version of Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: A Playbook for Catalytic Change that I wrote in collaboration with Manmeet Mehta and David Lubell, published by Ashoka and Catalyst 2030.
Together, local governments, social entrepreneurs and citizens can have an immediate impact.
Despite their geographic and thematic range, our case studies followed a shared path to collaborative change among social entrepreneurs, municipalities and communities.
For example, instead of setting out to change a system, the protagonists started out by solving a very specific problem. Albina set out to fix a municipal waste collection problem in the way an engineer would; Armida replaced problematic incubators; and David tried to overcome a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in Nashville. But their paths soon digressed from the conventional quick-fixes, as they kept listening and looking for what we may call the real needs of people, the root causes, and problematic human and organizational behaviors. In many ways, we could read their stories as telling us that the framing and reframing of the problem is more important than any particular solution. Sefton, for example, kept going back to residents to see what they really needed, only to discover that Community Meals were as much about food as social contact.
This willingness to reframe a need is conditioned by a set of values around humility, inclusion, integrity, empowerment and evidence. In interviews, Albina kept referring to her deep respect for human relationships that was instilled in her childhood and let her turn her urgency and frustration at the dehumanizing treatment of waste-pickers into building bridges rather than accusations. Armida, as a pediatrician in a public teaching hospital, naturally applied scientific methods like randomized control trials to social interventions. They were open to unlearn past assumptions and flexible to explore new, collaborative solutions acceptable to everyone. All stories show a deep empathy and faith not just in people they were serving, but their respective partners in government or social entrepreneurship.
From here, the journeys follow similar stages of learning, experimentation, and eventual scaling — whether locally or to new communities.
But scaling, it is revealed in these stories, isn’t simply a matter of a solution being adopted more widely. Instead, the scaling always involves an almost obsessive desire to reframe the problem involving the people they serve, and a continued use of data and evidence to find what works. What emerges is a shared (and audacious!) vision for transformative change, backed by a practice that combines listening, inclusion, evidence, experimentation and trust to change a broken system.
In our research, we found eight practices that underpin successful collaboration between municipalities, social entrepreneurs and communities.
1/ Beneficiaries as Changemakers
Albina’s work and United for Brownsville stand out as the most intentional cases of empowering beneficiaries to truly lead change. But important forms of empowerment take place in the work of Sefton and Welcoming also, where beneficiaries are at least part of the planning process or the actual solutions. Next to the degree of power that is extended to residents, what stands out as important is the degree to which these ‘experts at their own lives’ are empowered to learn the skills of planning, negotiation and reviewing evidence. Both recyclers in Peru and families in Brownsville receive training and organizational support to navigate complex systems.
2/ Shared Agency
All stories present examples of a clear and intentional division of labor on the one hand, and a shared exploration of what works on the other. Unlike traditional municipal contracts with suppliers, these collaborations look and feel more like partnerships among equals, seeing eye to eye. They are fueled by a common goal, most clearly presented in the Built for Zero and Welcoming Certification, but consistently practiced at high intervals in Sefton, Wigan, and with SNEHA in Mumbai. There is a consistency in having a shared vision like zero homelessness, followed by practices that bring all partners together to progressively work towards the shared goal. The division of labor can be a seemingly simple two-way collaboration like SNEHA and the government of Mumbai, or complex groups like the Welcoming councils involving dozens of stakeholders to define policies and act as ambassadors to change the culture in communities. Even where the municipal government is not the initiator of change, as it was in Sefton, but brought on board later on as in the case of David Lubell’s work, it is evident and logical that due to its democratic mandate and resources, governments wind up taking a central role in delivery. Welcoming, SNEHA, Ciudad Saludable and Community Solutions take on tasks like knowledge development, research and development, community organizing, experimentation, evaluation, and training. Their flexibility and entrepreneurial skill sets, including independent fundraising, help provide agility to try new things or respond to crises, as well as effectively embodying the long-term mission even at times when other partners drop the ball.
3/ Build Bridges
There is a notable absence of passing around blame in these stories. Armida is most explicit in saying that she never publicly, or privately, fell for the temptation to blame the government. Albina clearly shows a never-ending appetite to bring new partners to the fold, starting with the municipal and central government and later extending this to business leaders. Sefton and Wigan not only ask the voluntary sector for help, but implement policies that instruct every employee to see eye to eye with residents and organizations. A common thread is the desire to lay the ground and build trust for what is to come. As a result, the partners withstand the temptation to pass blame around or use negative pressure to force a quick win. All this is in stark contrast to how many other actors play out their roles. Power asymmetries mean that many municipalities treat partners, especially if contracted, as mission-less suppliers. Many enterprises and non-profits will, in turn, reduce government to be a sales target for services instead of a creative long-term partner.
4/ Always a Lab
Collaboration seems to thrive in an environment where no party is hung up on a particular solution or way for solving a problem. It is evident that a form of agile practice has emerged, organized around evidence or progress toward the shared mission. Wigan is a great example of a government developing goals in close consultation with citizens and those who serve the community on a weekly basis. Similarly, the sophisticated data practices of Built for Zero emphasize quality, including naming and triaging each case of homelessness, as well as interval to increase the rate of response. In some cases, data is collected by the government and shared among collaborators, in others it is the group putting their data together to get the most complete picture. Data is put to good use in all our examples to see if interventions achieve the desired results. A Lab approach, in this context, means constant experimentation to find what works. In some cases, like SNEHA in Mumbai, the experiments are led by the social entrepreneur in the community, in others, like Built for Zero, they are led by multiple local stakeholders. Research is another common feature, like the year-long process of Welcoming America developing a shared standard in which experts and stakeholders worked together to define what Welcoming looks like. United for Brownsville is an example also of how new ideas can be incubated as bold experiments. It is notable how interventions move at different speeds: progress in Built for Zero communities is measured weekly, while United for Brownsville starts up at a slower pace, appropriate for building trust.
5/ Use all tools
“Always a Lab”, especially in collaboration, is a new reading of what scaling a solution looks like. Many social entrepreneurs, for example, traditionally expect to follow a path where they invent a solution and then seek to partner with government to scale it. Here, the Lab is a form of collaboration that is agnostic to given solutions and instead a collaborative practice that puts the outcome first. It is striking that in almost all examples, the traditional idea of a solution is replaced by a practice of constant experimentation. But the stories also reveal other tools, like the creation of national laws to underpin municipal adoption in the case of Albina in Peru, the development of standards or weekly check-ins. Especially when we look at how the stories develop over time, there are clear moments of discontinuity, where the collaboration steps up to a new level of impact by adopting new tools. This happened in the case of Rosanne going from running supported living buildings to the 100,000 Homes campaign, to Built for Zero.
Using multiple tools is baked into the ‘commissioning’ approach to public service improvement used today in many UK cities, including Sefton and Wigan. What this approach enables governments to do is to include all community services, partners and assets in their planning to improve outcomes. Taken together, the collaborative practices make many more tools available, and the stories reveal a sophisticated sense of timing their use.
6/ The Long View
Social change is a slow process, always at the risk of either being too incremental to be transformative, or being too bold to be achievable. The stories reveal a valuable narrative about how visions for the endgame emerge out of day-to-day practice, helping the collaboration align around a shared mission. Hence, it is important for all partners to accept the true rate of change as a basis for the partnership. In practice, that can also include an open conversation about how each partner can sustain their role — which applies in particular to social entrepreneurs who are often unable to simply fund the long game. This openness is also reflected in the measures to build trust, evident in all stories. Armida and Albina both had worked in local government before starting their non-profits, which they credited with having the initial trust required to partner. Albina built trust with recyclers over years of helping them step out of informality into operating sustainable businesses. In the case of Rosanne, trust was developed through decades of reputation and evidence-building, and by designing a methodology that becomes more demanding over time and where control stays firmly local. It is easy for social entrepreneurs to overlook the role of trust, especially when they feel that they have proved their solution. One important aspect of embracing the Long View is to engage in day-to-day practices that build trust, and plan resources together as trust is growing as a shared investment.
7/ Expectations
We highlighted that false expectations are the #1 reason why so many social entrepreneurs fail to partner with municipal governments. It is therefore no coincidence that the stories of success presented in this report all lack a grand promise of success early on. Instead, like Welcoming America, they simply showed up with humility and a willingness to do and learn. This is a stark contrast of how social entrepreneurs and governments often perceive their encounters: as a pitch, a kind of promise. There are two challenges with the pitch encounter. The first is that it creates a binary environment, similar to an investor pitch, in which a yes/no decision is implied. In reality, much to the frustration of pitchers, few governments work to make such binary decisions. The other is that such a pitch is generally unrealistic. Imagine Rosanne pitching ‘my solution will end homelessness in your city’. These stories tackle complex problems that rely on a broad range of new practices to be adopted across a community. Instead, the better promise implied here seems to be that all parties understand that they are at the beginning of a shared journey, a journey that may take a decade or more at best. Here, the expectation changes to the confidence that despite the urgency, everyone will do what can be done. It is important for all sides to be upfront about the asymmetry of resourcing and make the sustainability of the partnership a shared concern.
8/ Values
Sefton and Wigan talk openly about looking for partners that are not just capable, but share their values. The stories reveal shared values not just around the mission, but the way collaboration is practiced in all the above practices. Listening, trust building, shared problem-solving, respect for data and evidence, a sense of the long-haul. It seems that in particular a shared focus on outcomes, on the beneficiaries and their needs is the most basic principle of these stories. This focus is institutionalized in all the stories: rigorous reporting of homeless cases, adherence to the indiscriminate Welcoming Standard, implementation of the “Ley del Reciclador”, provision of meals and social contacts, reporting and resolution of social and healthcare cases in the community. These are creative approaches to turning an intangible value into a shared truth, the basis of partnership.
In the following sections, we will highlight how city leaders and social entrepreneurs can get started in putting these findings into action.
For City Leaders: Eight Ways to Get Started With Social Entrepreneurs.
Here is how professionals in city or local governments can get started to put the Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: Playbook for Catalytic Change to use.
This is the blog version of Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: A Playbook for Catalytic Change that I wrote in collaboration with Manmeet Mehta and David Lubell, published by Ashoka and Catalyst 2030.
1/ What Have You Learned?
What can you learn from this report, and the stories it presents? How could the practices presented here inspire change in your city politics and operations?
2/ Create A Point of Contact
Offer a central contact point to provide technical assistance internally to put the guidelines into practice. This contact point should also be trusted and approachable by social entrepreneurs.
3/ Find Out What’s Going On
Collect experiences from within city halls of people working with social entrepreneurs to identify your pioneering practitioners and collect their experiences.
4/ Create a ‘Yes’ Culture
Can your leadership create an environment that defaults to “Yes, here is how we can collaborate”?
5/ Develop Model Pathways
Help guide your relations with social entrepreneurs:
What different endgames you can plan for? E.g. improve services, improve outcomes, or tackle a chronic problem.
What stages can be expected and what support can you provide at each step of the way?
6/ Imagine Your City at its Best
Here’s a cheat: You can start with the stories presented in this report to imagine how your city could have been at its best at each step of the way.
7/ Share the Learnings
Learn more about social entrepreneurs and share the learning across the city leadership. Be mindful of the distinction between social business (e.g. a shoe company that donates part of its proceeds to a good cause) and social entrepreneurs (like the cases presented here, organizations that set out to solve a social problem)
8/ Convene Social Entrepreneurs
Convene local social entrepreneurs to co-create a statement on how the city intends to engage with them. This should explain your definition of social entrepreneurship, your rationale to build relationships, and tangible instructions and practices that can be used by any city official in their relationships. Make these guidelines public.
For Social Entrepreneurs: Seven Ways to Get Started With Cities.
Here is how social entrepreneurs can get started to put the Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: Playbook for Catalytic Change to use.
This is the blog version of Cities and Social Entrepreneurs: A Playbook for Catalytic Change that I wrote in collaboration with Manmeet Mehta and David Lubell, published by Ashoka and Catalyst 2030.
1/ What Have You Learned?
What are your take-aways from this report? How can you use the practices presented here to advance your mission?
2/ Develop Your Offer
Develop an opening message for your relationship with city officials. How can you educate them about what it means that you are a social entrepreneur and not a supplier, and invite them into building a relationship? Can you explain your value without making oversimplified promises about your solution?
3/ Re-Frame Your Perceptions
Revisit your perceptions of government. Are you at risk of reducing city governments to being simply a buyer or funder of your solutions? How can you develop a definition that truly gives credit to the creative resources, experiences and journeys of change for government?
4/ Be Open About Money
If there is an interest in a partnership, develop a practice to speak openly about your financial sustainability or other needs in the context of your collaboration. It is critical that you can be upfront in a situation of highly unequal power and resources.
5/ Invite Your Beneficiaries Along
If you serve or empower beneficiaries, for example people with disabilities, make them part of your conversations with government officials. It is one of the most effective ways to keep the conversation focused on constructive outcomes and improvements.
6/ Lobby Together
Network with other social entrepreneurs in your community and consider forming a local chapter to a national network (if there is one, like SEND in Germany), or else create your own group to provide mutual support and develop a common voice with governments.
7/ Remember: It Takes Time!
Try to bear in mind that it will take years to build the kind of trust that is extended to people like Armida, Albina or Rosanne. Regardless of how proven your organization is, the personal trust and rapport you develop are going to require time.
One work-around is what Welcoming America does by building relationships with other leaders in the community who have the trust of the government.
