Wikimedia Conference 2018/Program/12

12. Putting it on the road: how to set up the daily business of managing partnerships (The Partnerships Playbook: Chapter II)

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Speaker(s)

Julia Kirchner (Wikimedia Deutschland), Georgina Fields (WMF)

Length (min)

120 min

Audience / Target group

Anyone interested in how to set up the daily business and mechanics of lasting partnerships

Session Format

Workshop with a focus on the collective impact model and exercises for participants to engage with each other.

Description

The second in a series of three workshops will address the many questions that arise when we implement a joint initiative with one or more partners:

  • How do we coordinate multiple contributions to partnerships?
  • What are proven communication strategies in partnerships?
  • How do we do well on monitoring/documentation and reporting?
  • How can evaluation make partner-projects extra awesome and even get you funding?
  • What is a backbone and why is it needed?

The workshop will demonstrate approaches, tools and templates for the implementation stage of mutual initiatives, helping assure that you engage in partnerships with collective impact.

The workshop is part two of a three part series called The Partnerships Playbook. The three chapters of the playbook will covered all three phases of the partnerships process: (1) how to establish a new partnership, (2) how to manage this partnership and (3) how to sustain it.

Desired Outcome

Participants will walk out of this session with new skills, tools and knowledge for implementing partnerships.

Next Steps and Milestones

Participants can apply the new tools and knowledge in their own settings.

Documentation

The session included presentation of 6 steps, needed to work on daily business in a partnership, with participants working on a samples after each one of them (see more in slides).

  1. Looking at Collective Impact
    Concept of Collective Impact presents it as an effective approach to social change.
  2. Agree to a common agenda
    Theory of Change and its development using a Logic model. Working in groups on a possible scenario of starting partnership, develop a theory of change together, using the logic model.
  3. Develop mutually aligned activities
    First you have to identify who does what best and which partner is contributing what resources, then it is time to make an action plan. Good tools: roadmaps // work packages.
  4. Implement the plan with a backbone structure
    Backbone structure helps maintain overall strategic coherence and coordinates and manages the day-to-day operations and implementation of work. Use tools for managing people and tasks (Trello, Asana, Github, Phabricator, Google docs etc.).
  5. Engage in continuous communication
    Participants made a simulation of an email exchange and defined communication principles they see at work.
  6. Demonstrate impact through shared measures
    Collecting data and evaluating a project is a valuable part of it. Your measures of success should always be connected to the outcomes you want to achieve.
See also

Chapter I, Chapter III