During the pandemic, two local YMCA leaders saw great needs in their communities for food security, childcare, mental health, and other wellness services. They took action to meet those broader health and wellness needs by repurposing several YMCAs that normally served as gyms for virtual schooling and additional camp/after-care options for working families. Like many nonprofit leaders during the pandemic, the YMCA staff credits cross-sector partnerships for quickly developing and implementing new, innovative ideas.

One YMCA partnered with the New Jersey Department of Education and other government entities to host a remote location for a charter school. A second YMCA opened summer camps for children with extended hours for working parents and worked with multiple community organizations to offer a free and reduced-price meal program to campers. Said one YMCA leader, “When it [COVID-19] broke out, we were more able to call other partners about what they were seeing.[…] We are reaching out to an entirely new population and that may have been from the network of partners that we have, because we are all struggling.”

The COVID-19 pandemic impelled organizations to forge, or activate, cross-sector partnerships to meet critical community needs.

Inspiring stories of nonprofit creativity in partnerships and expanded collaboration were frequent during the pandemic. Equal Measure saw this theme emerge across projects, including the New Jersey Health Initiatives’ (NJHI’s) Upstream Action Accelerator, Talent Hubs, and an inquiry into early learning system resilience funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Our evaluations elevated different ways partnerships addressed pandemic-related challenges while illustrating that the value of partnerships exists across multiple systems (e.g., community health, education, and early learning). The actions of these initiatives show the potential impact of supporting partnership development through activities that build foundational relationships, such as convenings and peer learning, even before a crisis begins.

New Jersey Health Initiatives grantees began to share resources to meet emerging community needs and overcome unique pandemic-related barriers.

As a component of our evaluation of NJHI, we spoke with grantees about their experiences developing new partnerships, or activating existing partnerships, to address pandemic-related community needs. NJHI grantees were primarily nonprofit leaders seeking to implement upstream health strategies to improve health outcomes in their communities; they struggled to implement basic programs during the pandemic. Many of the grantees described an environment with minimal collaboration among nonprofits. According to the grantees:

• The pandemic created new contexts and barriers that require nonprofits to add new resources and capacities to serve their community. Stay-at-home orders and other COVID-19 safety regulations—particularly during the early days of the pandemic—did not allow for in-person service distribution. Community members were often socially isolated or experienced barriers to using technology, making for another gap in service that nonprofits struggled to fill.
• Sharing resources with other nonprofits or organizations in different sectors allowed for service distribution when in-person services were no longer possible. Nonprofits have addressed challenges to in-person service provision by collaborating with organizations who could provide those resources, such as virtual engagement or safe in-person delivery methods. For example, when nonprofits engaged in food distribution services found that community members were unable to pick up their food in person, they worked together to acquire and share a van for mobile distribution. Cross-sector partnerships arose that would not have existed under other conditions. For example, one food distribution nonprofit engaged Amazon to help meet increasing food security needs in their community through a mobile delivery service. When the initiative struggled to reach socially isolated individuals or immigrant families, the nonprofit partnered with local faith-based organizations who could serve as trusted sources for these families.

Individuals involved in Talent Hubs shifted priorities across partners to align around urgent student needs that emerged from the pandemic.

Talent Hubs are designated sites dedicated to improving postsecondary education attainment through cross-sector partnerships in specific cities or regions; shared priorities and a shared vision are essential to the work. During the pandemic, cross-sector partners needed to continue to support students who were experiencing a new set of pandemic-related needs. Individuals acting as intermediaries—for example, leaders of cross-sector working groups from sectors such as education, business, and community-based organizations—used several tactics to identify and catalyze efforts to shift priorities within their Talent Hub community partnership to respond to these needs:

• Leveraging existing trust and soft skills (e.g., deeper listening, moving slow before moving fast, etc.) to identify new, shared priorities for partners. When the pandemic hit, one Talent Hub leader and her partners knew they needed to shift their work but were not clear on how. She drew on existing trust with her partners and conducted one-on-one calls with Talent Hub team members. These calls did not have an agenda or an explicit ask; rather, they emphasized deep listening to learn about the challenges of students and partners. With this new information, the Talent Hub leader wove together the perspectives of partners when selecting priorities, ensuring these priorities would meet every partner’s needs and increase their buy-in to work together. Other individuals/intermediaries can draw on soft skills such as deep listening, approaching conversations without a specific ask, moving slow before moving fast, weaving together different perspectives, and identifying needs. These practices may help shift priorities toward tasks and strategies that all partners can support.
• Relying on the shared values of partners to bring them together around new priorities during unexpected shifts. In reaction to the pandemic, Talent Hubs leaders implemented new policies and practices to help support students. One Talent Hub advocated for a new debt forgiveness policy, which had been considered before the pandemic, but was only slowly receiving traction. The team emphasized the factors of the adult education experience that supported policies such as debt forgiveness and others that the college system had been working on. The team then helped interdepartmental and cross-institution partners across the college system connect the need for a debt forgiveness policy to the institution’s overall mission to advance access and social justice for adult learners.

Leaders sought connections with the community to understand where the greatest needs for emergency funding were to stabilize early learning systems.

The knowledge of community-based organizations (CBOs) or other partners close to community members should be leveraged during all initiatives, but especially during a crisis. During our exploration of systems resiliency in early learning systems, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we identified tactics that helped stabilize the early learning system during the pandemic and other factors that could potentially contribute to systems transformation. Government partners needed to move quickly to distribute funding, and sought partnerships with CBOs, given their knowledge of community needs and where to distribute emergency funding.

• The need to distribute emergency funding activated connections between state and local entities. State leaders sought to distribute emergency funding to support providers and families who were struggling during the pandemic. However, given their position within the early learning system, they required more “on the ground” insight about how to identify the most pressing community needs. CBOs served as trusted partners whose pre-existing relationships and connections with early learning providers and families provided state leaders with more immediate input on community needs. For example, in Tennessee, state legislators developed a new partnership with multiple United Way locations who had a deeper sense of the community and distributed funding locally.
• Local CBOs have served as trusted partners in the community. In many cases, providers and families were already connected to CBOs, and looked to them for more support. These local organizations had built relationships and trust with providers and families that allowed them to develop strong streams of communication and keep a pulse on the community. During the pandemic and funding distribution, this allowed them to serve as central places for obtaining information and meeting needs that providers and families were expressing.

What roles can funders play? Support relationship building through convenings and communities of practice

Almost two years into COVID-19, organizations may begin to return to some pre-pandemic practices. Yet, this global pandemic continues to affect every sector and the communities they serve. This blog offers evidence that interactions within the nonprofit community can build a partnership infrastructure to activate during a crisis. Additionally, new cross-sector relationships formed during the pandemic allowed organizations to solve problems faster and in new and creative ways, using resources they may not have had access to individually. Philanthropies can play an important role in reinforcing these interactions and relationship building practices through supporting more within- and cross-sector convenings, communities of practice, and other venues for peer learning. These activities can help nonprofit organizations learn from each other, build and sustain relationships, and improve readiness for partners to address challenges.