Step Eight: Collaborating With Others

In the emerging world of online news sites, the opportunities for collaborating can seem overwhelming.  Should you collaborate with a local university and use student reporters?  With legacy media and share content?  Should you aggregate links from your competitors?  Will you create content to be purchased by a national media outlet?  Or for use by your local TV stations?

Examples of successful collaborations abound.  The Voice of San Diego teams with a local television station.  California Watch of the Center for Investigative Reporting shares stories with dozens of California newsrooms. The St. Louis Beacon not only works with the PBS station in St. Louis, but also has offices there.  The Investigative Reporting Workshop and the Center for Public Integrity have an ongoing collaboration with PBS Frontline.  The Watchdog Institute in San Diego has partnered with the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ABC News on an expose on federal wind energy grants.  NPR, the Center for Public Integrity, and five small centers collaborated on a nationwide report on sexual assaults on campus.

Clearly, when it comes to collaborating, there’s no shortage of options.  But like any good relationship, it should be meaningful - and a win-win for all partners.  So before you embark on a collaboration, you need to ask yourself:  Is this the best partner for my organization?  How do I set up collaboration?  How do I make sure it works? 

For a start, go back to your mission statement.  Think about what kind of collaboration would best help you achieve your goals.  Is your potential partner a good fit?  Does the collaboration play to the strength of your partner and you?  Does each organization gain something, such as access to a larger audience, additional resources, expertise, more content and enterprise stories?  What’s the reputation of your potential partner?  Would a relationship add to or detract from the credibility of your nonprofit?

Great collaborators focus on relationship building.  They work best when they are based on mutual respect, trust and communication.  At the same time, collaborations do not have to involve traditional competitors.  Think outside the box about bringing other groups into the mix.  Know any talented technologists?  How about graphic designers, marketing professors, university survey research operations, business school entrepreneurial classes, law school pro-bono clinics?

You may need different rules and arrangements for different collaborations.  If you’re working with a university, determine from the outset what roles the students and their professors will play, and how closely you’ll supervise the students’ work.  Fact checking will also be an issue if you’re working with community groups. 

How can you find the perfect match?  Consider joining professional organizations such as your state’s newspaper and broadcast associations and national journalism groups.  Attend conferences and build connections.  You could set up a tabletop display as an exhibitor at events, handing out cards and collecting others in a fishbowl.  These can be great opportunities to develop partnerships with like-minded people.

Once you’ve established a collaboration, it’s essential that you touch base with each other as the work develops.  A simple e-mail usually suffices once the detailed plans have been developed.

Remember, organizations don’t collaborate.  People do.