ABSTRACT

This chapter explores approaches to building community capacity through strategies focusing on organizational collaborations, partnerships, and networks of interorganizational relations. It outlines the impetus and rationale for engaging in interorganizational relationships. Strategies for building organizational collaboration in a community fall into three broad categories: establishing or supporting broker organizations that can foster and convene partnerships and networks among existing organizations; creating mechanisms of direct, ongoing communication and collective planning and action among organizations; and supporting or engaging in particular partnerships focused on specific goals and activities. A number of factors influence the likelihood that instrumental interorganizational relations will be usefully engaged and sustained. In the context of community capacity building, these include the extent to which the benefits of interorganizational relations are seen, over time, to outweigh the costs; the degree to which the appropriate stakeholders are selected and participate; and the impact of such contextual influences as community history, racial dynamics, and political power.