Achieving long-term change requires having government—whether local, state, or federal—at the collaborative table as a key partner. However, many collaboratives share that building these partnerships can be challenging, intimidating, or confusing.
To better understand how to build and sustain effective relationships with public sector partners, we talk with Caroline Whistler, CEO and co-founder of Third Sector, a nonprofit technical assistance provider that advises U.S. government agencies on effective ways to reshape policies, systems, and services toward better outcomes for all people no matter their race, background, and circumstances.
This discussion explores the opportunities and challenges collaboratives may face when partnering with government agencies. The conversation highlights:
- Shifting mindsets from a compliance-driven approach to an outcomes-focused approach, where government agencies work alongside their collaborative partners to define and measure progress towards shared goals.
- Why relationship and trust-building are necessary when collaborating with government partners.
- Why sustaining partnerships with government can help collectives reach better outcomes for everyone, but also needs to be recognized as an “ongoing process,” requiring commitment, patience, continuous learning, and a willingness to adapt.
Ways to listen: You can listen below or on your preferred podcast streaming service, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Please find a transcript of this talk further down this page.
Resources and Footnotes
- Third Sector
- Caroline Whistler on LinkedIn
More on Collective Impact
- Infographic: What is Collective Impact?
- Resource List: Getting Started in Collective Impact
Music
The Intro music, entitled “Running,” was composed by Rafael Krux, and can be found here and is licensed under CC: By 4.0.
The outro music, entitled “Deliberate Thought,” was composed by Kevin Macleod. Licensed under CC: By.
Listen to Past Episodes: You can listen and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast, here to share resources to support social change makers working on cross-sector collaboration.
The Collective Impact Forum is a nonprofit field-building initiative that is co-hosted in partnership by the nonprofit consulting firm FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions.
In this episode we’re talking about the importance of building partnerships with government. To achieve long-term change, it’s often required to have government—whether local, state, or federal—at the collaborative table. However, we hear from collective efforts that building these partnerships can be challenging.
To better understand how to build and sustain effective relationships with public sector partners, we talk with Caroline Whistler, CEO and co-founder of Third Sector, a nonprofit technical assistance provider that advises U.S. government agencies on effective ways to reshape policies, systems, and services toward better outcomes for all people no matter their race, background, and circumstances.
In this discussion we explore opportunities and challenges collaboratives may face when partnering with government agencies, including the importance of taking an outcomes-focused approach and how it can be helpful to see public sector partnerships as an ongoing process that requires commitment, patience, continuous learning, and a willingness to adapt.
Interviewing Caroline for this discussion is Collective Impact Forum executive director Jennifer Splansky Juster. Let’s tune in.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s podcast. I am Jennifer Juster, executive director of the Collective Impact Forum.
In today’s conversation we are going to be exploring the topic of effective partnership with government. More often than not on the Collective Impact Forum podcast we enter with the perspective and expertise of people working in nonprofits and sometimes in philanthropy, and we also know that in place-based collaboration such as collective impact partnership with government is absolutely essential. People working in government, folks working in the public sector must be part of the work of collective impact efforts if these collectives are actually going to shift results at scale.
For example, a collaborative focused on health equity can only move the needle so far without engagement with a department of health. A collaborative focused on improving education outcomes can’t make a whole lot of progress without deep engagement with schools and school districts. But partnering with government can be different given the different opportunities and constraints and cultures that may present themselves.
So to help us begin to explore this, I am delighted to be joined by Caroline Whistler today, co-founder and CEO of the organization Third Sector. Third Sector’s mission is to transform our public systems to advance improved and equitable outcomes. They’re a technical assistance organization that advises government agencies on effective ways to reshape their policies, systems, and services toward better outcomes for all people no matter their race, background, or circumstances.
So, Caroline, welcome, and I’d love to start by asking you to more formally introduce yourself and tell us about what brought you to your current work.
Caroline Whistler: Thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. It is a pleasure to be here.
I actually come to this work with Third Sector really from a background in the nonprofit sector. So my very first job out of college I was an AmeriCorps member in the Boston area and I was helping nonprofits to figure out how they could grow a sustainable revenue model, and when you talk to nonprofits there’s really only three things you can do as a nonprofit to sustain your revenue. You can raise philanthropy. You can sell a service in some way, or you can work with government and get government contracts.
We were working with—this is an organization called Nonprofit Finance Fund. We were working with nonprofits across the New England area, across the country, but were truly doing the community-driven work of delivering responsive services, oftentimes had incredible evaluations showing their impact and none of them wanted to work with government. We asked, “Why, why, why, like there’s potentially a lot of resources there.” They said, “It’s too hard. There’s too much compliance on a government contract. It’s too hard even to build those relationships sometimes, and to get those contracts. Government doesn’t always distinguish between an organization that can write that great RFP response and one that actually can deliver results that are most impactful for communities.” You know, we heard that five, 10, 12 times and started to ask the question, “Well, would there be a role for us, for me, and for us as an organization to try to help shift that relationship between the public sector and really the communities in which they’re all seeking to serve?”
Nonprofits and government are trying to accomplish the same thing, which is to get improved and equitable outcomes for all folks in our communities and so that was sort of why I decided to jump in and start Third Sector and really serve our specific niches, to really serve as a partner to the public sector in helping them to understand their communities and the community providers, helping them to really build new relationships and build different bridges than were there before. That’s a little bit about what brings me to this work.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Yes, thank you, Caroline, and I think many listeners are probably relating to that sentiment around desiring to work with government but feeling constrained or challenged by some past experiences that they may have had and so that’s exactly what I’m excited to unpack a bit more with you today. But help us just understand a little bit more about the work of Third Sector so we understand what’s contributing to your perspectives today, the type of agencies do you tend to work with and issue areas where you have greater focus. Tell us a little bit more.
Caroline Whistler: Yeah, so we at Third Sector, we’re a nonprofit ourselves that partner specifically with government agencies, communities, and other stakeholders to really unlock the possibility of our government and social programs to deliver greater quality of life for the people they serve.
We have worked across the country with more than 50 communities at mostly the state and county level where a lot of human services dollars meet the people to deploy over 1.8 billion in government resources to outcomes. So we do this for you know, five to 10 years of our work. We were very responsive to what governments were looking at in terms of areas where they could better spend public resources.
In the past couple years we’ve honed in on four practice areas where we have one, heard a lot of demand from our government clients, but also, really see the possibilities of partnership with community. And so those practice areas are behavioral health where we provide technical assistance to help government agencies shift and reorient their policy, practice, and behaviors to better support and serve people with behavioral health challenges.
The second is early childhood education where we mobilize cross-sector collaborators including families, caregivers, communities, providers and policymakers to help really transform how our government and other providers deliver quality and affordable early childhood services. I know that’s of interest to the folks in collective impact, so excited to dive into that one.
Our other two we have, our third is economic mobility so we specifically here collaborate on aligning program requirements, goals, and service delivery across workforce agencies, educational agencies and support services, and higher education to improve access and also achieve long-term economic mobility outcomes. That one really works across government agencies, which is a particular challenge that doesn’t always happen when resources are meeting communities.
And the fourth is diversion and reentry where we support our state and county criminal legal systems in their housing, health care, and workforce to improve outcomes, in particular for younger generations through diversion programs and investments. We do that through a variety of education and training, mental health and housing supports, and really seek to help provide our governments with tools and capacities to be able to maintain and sustain more prevention and diversion efforts from that sphere.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Yes, and while early childhood education is definitely one area that a lot of Collective Impact Forum colleagues and listeners work, I would say, across all four. All four of those areas lend themselves really as you’ve said, to partnership between government and community and that cross-sector work. So we are right there with you.
I know that one of the areas that Third Sector has done a lot of work is around outcomes-focused approaches. I think it’s a really interesting place to start to understand more about what this work can look like in terms of really contributing to outcomes, which is why we are all in this at the end of the day. So how is working in this way different from how government typically works?
Caroline Whistler: An outcomes-focused approach is really about meeting the needs of the people and their communities and ensuring that we are focused on achieving better improved results over the long term. This is really before, this is core to our approach, part of our secret sauce, if you will, but before even starting a project, Third Sector works with our government agencies, community members, stakeholders in that particular practice area to identify what success would look like, define those outcomes specifically together, and then work backwards from there to develop the strategies and tactics.
I think this is—typically, oftentimes, we may see that government agencies are focused on, they receive, one of the biggest assets they have are taxpayer dollars. They receive a budget and then they’re very focused on let’s just get that budget out on the street, and they’re focused on compliance towards spending that money and meeting basic requirements of the program even though there may be more innovative or responsive things they could be doing. So it can be common for the public sector to find one way or to build one sort of contracting process or find one programmatic approach and keep applying that every year. But that’s not always the most effective or beneficial way of working.
So at times what we’re really helping those government agencies to do is to shift their thinking from this like, OK, every year we receive the budget, we spend the budget. We write the report about the budget and rinse and repeat to try to break out and think about more of this outcomes-focused approach. What is it we’re trying to achieve with this money that we put out in our communities each year? Based on the specific project and the target audience and the funds, the funding that is available in a program area, we’ll help our government to find what those best-case scenario outcomes would be though it’s not between us and them. It’s between—we very quickly are like, “did you talk to the folks that are receiving these services and what is their role in determining the outcomes they want to see?”
But that helps us sort of break through this mold just asking the questions, what do want to achieve with this funding and helping them make a mindset shift to again, focus from more of compliance like let’s just spend it, get it out the door, to outcomes, how will our community be better off because of the public funding coming in and what might we need to shift in our approach in our collaborations in order to make that happen. That in itself as you can see why our primary clients are government is because that can often take some time for us to work with them and helping them get ready to make that shift in their partnerships.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Can you give a specific example of one agency that you worked with and how they use this as an approach to maybe shift towards a more, I’m guessing, maybe a more ambitious outcome and how that influenced their work?
Caroline Whistler: Ah, so one example that comes to mind is with the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, which is an enormous, tremendous, over a multibillion dollar in Los Angeles County. With L.A., they were noticing that they, again, have a huge amount of resources, but were not getting the best outcomes. They were seeking to improve their outcomes in behavior health, both for behavioral health outcomes specifically, but also, housing and connectedness and thriving outcomes for their constituents. So we worked with Los Angeles to develop the—actually, it was one of the largest networks of outcome-focused health service provider contracts in the country. So it’s over 196 clinics and over 300 million in annual funding.
So the process we took because L.A. had tried types of outcomes-based contracting before that had not been successful, so the process we really took was helping the Department of Mental Health to engage with their service providers, both the Association of Service Providers, but also with individual clinics that may or may not have been part of the association to really think about and interrogate the current state of service design, of compensation for clinics and nonprofits, of the data collection tools, of the funding mechanisms that were there, all around some of the city’s most vulnerable population.
So it really was a process of discovery, if you will, with those providers first, and then that led to a process of, OK, once we’ve discovered the challenges, here’s our take on what we’re hearing in terms of those overall North Star outcomes goals we want to achieve, not only improved continuum of care and better step-down services but connectedness to housing and thriving and then aligning on the North Star, alignment on the data that would be used to talk and learn and share over time between government and service providers. So it wasn’t like, OK, providers, write us a report after every year. But we’re actually going to look at data together and have it be more of an active exercise which was new for the Department of Mental Health as well.
And then, the other piece was thinking about what are the additional ways that actually through this process the agency might need to shift and show up differently in order to build better trust in relationship with providers. One of the things that, a couple of things they did to be responsive to what they heard was they shifted some of the payment structure to be more upfront payments for providers versus being cost reimbursement for portions of hours, so had some upfront or milestone payments, gave a longer period of time and some flexibility for folks to ramp into this new approach.
They actually created the Department of Mental Health incubator for smaller clinics or nonprofits that maybe weren’t yet contracting with the county but were serving in vulnerable populations or specific population groups that the county really needed the services to go to, so they created incubators and training programs for them, and truly, I think some—I mean, we were shocked like with how this process of discovery led to some new abilities for the government to be responsive in rolling out what ended up being 300 million in contracts, in annual contracts.
That’s one example which I think is both wonderful for the state of L.A., but for us what was also exciting was that that experience was then taken to multiple other counties who looked at that and said, wait a minute, what can we learn from this, how can we use this to shift how we spend our behavioral health dollars in more responsive ways.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Nice, and when we think about collective impact or if we often look forward what we call the five conditions some listeners might be familiar with, we talk about having a common agenda and shared measurement and mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communications and a strong backbone, and I promise you Caroline did not script this but as she was talking, what I heard was alignment around a North Star and understanding kind of what is happening collectively, and that is very much how we often talk about a common agenda, aligning on what data is important to look at, and looking at that data together. We often call that shared measurement, and then some of the results or the strategies that you mentioned sound like what we sometimes call mutually reinforcing activities so shifting how folks are working together, shifting payment structures. Those are systems changes that really only could be made by government, and because these stakeholders and actors were together making these decisions, it really led to systems change through those mutually reinforcing activities.
So I could go on but I think it’s a really great example of how, you know, it might just sound kind of like a government process but when done in this way, it can really contribute to collaborative systems change hopefully at its root for the benefit of, you know, in this case residents of L.A. County so I’m jazzed on that example, Caroline. Thank you.
So I’m curious for folks who don’t as frequently work with government, what are some pathways or entry points for nonprofits, CBOs, community leaders to collaborate with the public sector? If I’m a nonprofit and I’m holding a goal, how can I think about more proactively reaching out to the public sector and convincing my colleagues maybe why this is important?
Caroline Whistler: I think there’s two ways that nonprofits and community-based organizations can enter in this space.
So first is that CBOs and community leaders can really serve as partners with government if you view your government employees as partners versus adversaries or folks that need to be conquered. These folks could be really partners where you can help government to do what it’s trying to do which is be responsive to the community, and so this is an area where nonprofits in particular can play a huge role by helping government understand what the community needs and being a bridge to those that are directly affected by public funding.
A lot of times government is approached by advocacy organizations which are two to three levels removed from the folks that are actually experiencing services, and I think what’s so valuable about those that are in the practice of collective impact that government wants to hear from practitioners. They want to hear from folks who are doing the work on the ground. They want to hear from folks who are being impacted by the resources as they hit the ground and they don’t always know how to find those folks. They’re not always the ones walking through their doors so that’s the first way.
To give another quick example, this one’s also from L.A. though we do our work across the country. Third Sector helps support L.A. County’s new department, their youth justice workgroup, in developing a contacting function for a new department which is the Department of Youth Development. So the implementation plan that we helped develop helps the county to send resources to neighborhoods of highest need, equip government staff with tools and a specific framework to deepen community relationships so building, and how do you continue that trust building, that relationship work. It also allows the county to contract with an emerging network of community-based organizations that specialize in therapeutic, family-centered, restorative justice practices that would otherwise have very limited opportunities to do business with the county so this goal—a key goal of the new department is to make some of, really, the resources, right, multiyear contracting opportunities available to community-based organizations and ensure that the funds coming out of the Department of Youth Development are measurably equipping youth and their families to thrive. This is like a tremendous example of how Third Sector brought in and collaborated with local organizations, county staff, youth, and advocates to ensure that the Department of Youth Development staff is specifically structured in ways to be responsive to local needs and that is sufficiently allocating grant funding to those community-based organizations.
This was one example where through that process and relationship, those CBOs that already were doing good in the community, already were successful, folks who already had the trust were then able to build, influence the structure and building of this agency but also ultimately increase their access to county funding that they would not have otherwise had toreceive.
That’s one way truly you can be partners and help connect the community to our government, and the second is I think, you know, philanthropy is a really critical community partner and group that can catalyze and incentivize this type of work by providing additional funds that can help governments and communities to innovate together because the reality is that while government has tons of resources, they’re not always resourced to do collective impact work. Full stop, right? There’s not always a lot of time and resources to do that community engagement piece and so the presence of philanthropy can really help government to engage or create space and capacity and time to do this work because some of the funding they have may not always be flexible in order to do that themselves.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: What advice do you have for collective impact efforts or coalitions when it comes to inviting government in and creating spaces that are mutually beneficial? I mean you’ve spoken to this in part but I’m wondering is there any other tips you have for like let’s say there’s an existing coalition that actually hasn’t yet included government, what are some good first steps they can take?
Caroline Whistler: I think the first step starts with that mindset shift we talked about earlier, to shifting the outcomes. I think sometimes folks can have a lot of hesitations when it comes to working with government. There’s a lot of assumptions we may have including sometimes just the amount of time it could take to engage with a government agency or people, and that it will take a long time to start to see progress. I think that sometimes this can be true. I think the reality is also that collective impact work is a multiyear effort and it’s so important. I spend a lot of time thinking about patience and urgency. How do you hold urgency and patience at the same time as you believe in this work?
And so I think that having the mindset of, you know, we as a community which is inclusive of our government, need to adopt a outcomes-focused approach. Not only is it worth it, it is essential that we help our government partners to understand that mindset, to come on that journey with us to make that shift because it may not be intuitive. They may not be incentivized to do that all the time, is really important.
Then I think the other piece is that you’ve got to do the work together so you need to think about ensuring that every point of view has a seat at the table from beginning to end and it can be—I think sometimes when our government partners are invited to tables, it’s because there’s an RFP coming up or folks see them as the checkbook in the room, and they know that. That doesn’t feel good, to be invited as that versus being invited into more of a cocreation process as a community member and to be treated as that as well, and so I think another tip would be to just start inviting your government employees and really, I would say civil servants. It’s great to get the mayor there but the mayor might be gone in four years or eight years. Get the folks that are going to be there before the mayor is there, they’ll be there after he’s gone but really invite them to your spaces from the beginning and have them be part of that work, and then join government.
Government has so many opportunities for advisory councils, for steering committees, regulatory commissions. I think it’s a two-way street, both inviting government in and meeting government where they’re at in terms of joining those committees, trying to build those relationships and trust from that side so you move out of a transactional space and you can be focusing on those longer-term outcomes together.
I’d love to give, you know, one example I have of this that is in the early childhood space is specifically around some of our parent cabinet work in Connecticut. Connecticut was actually, with our support, is one of the first states in the nation to create a more formal-standing parent advisory body on early care and childhood policy and practice. We began providing technical assistance to them to set up this program a little bit before it became public, and one of the things that was most important was how to set up this cabinet in a way that consistently includes the voices, perspectives, and needs of parents and children, and how to make sure that that is connected to decision making, and it’s truly sharing of power with that body.
So what’s been exciting to see with this parent cabinet in Connecticut is that it’s not just another steering committee or advisory body but they’ve truly been able to transfer decision-making authority and real power to them around some of the policy and practice decisions across the state so that’s something that I think gives me hope that we can start to shift the relationship more broadly with government.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: I have heard of children’s cabinets. I have not heard of parent cabinets. That is really interesting. Very good. So tell me what does it mean to shift power in that case to a—you said they’ve really done a good job of even shifting some power to the parent cabinet. What does that look like?
Caroline Whistler: Yeah, so it can look different in different ways. There’s actually like a whole continuum of getting people’s input, to having real shared leadership on decision making but in government I will share just more broadly like for parent cabinet or some of the other work we do. It’s moving from having one-time input or feedback on certain things to have a more consistent body to build relationships and to provide feedback on certain components of program delivery, resource allocation, etc., and in some cases you kind of progress up the spectrum.
Really the body becomes almost like—it’s like they’re like a veto power or around what are some of those North Star outcome goals, not looking at contracts A, B, and C, but like what are the overall goals of what we’re looking towards, what’s the data that we think is most important, and that that body actually has a say or can tell the agency like, no, you’re not getting it right. You’ve got to go back and get some different data sources there, and so that’s what we’ve seen as really encouraging in some of the ways that power is being shared to, again, help to find that North Star and help think about what is the data that’s needed, and also to provide some real context around what is being learned through the data because there may be interpretations internal to government that can be really complicated and nuanced that these folks with lived experience can add to the table as well.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: I don’t know if you’re envisioning the same framework I am. There’s one from that IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation from inform to consult all the way up to empower.
Caroline Whistler: Shared leadership, yeah.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: You have to share leadership. We can put a link in the show notes because I think that’s a very helpful way to think about sharing power and community and resident engagement more broadly so that’s helpful to think through when it comes to these kind of bodies. I think folks often hold some assumptions about constraints or challenges working with government, and I want to hear from you what are some of the real constraints or challenges that folks should hold in mind, you know, whether probably more often than not civil servants are facing as you said when they are trying to engage in their community partnership work.
Caroline Whistler: Well, there are a number of challenges and constraints that government agencies face when engaging in community partnership work. I think I alluded to earlier the limited budget for space but I think the most common, honestly, are probably timing constraints and staffing capacity, and those can be experienced both by our government side as well as partner organization side. I think that is—it’s just a challenge that we all face around limited hours in the day and so that’s where I think, honestly, the trust and relationship-building work or also where philanthropy can come in and help provide some additional space, honestly, to create space and time to be able to focus on some of these collective impact issues is important.
Other challenges, I think that it’s real, you know, trust issues are real in terms of if government were to hold space for input, are they going to take that space seriously? Are they going to take feedback and learn and improve and do better?
I think one of the things that we at Third Sector try really hard to do is to make sure that if we are using time from our government folks or from community members or from nonprofits, that it’s really clear to what end, to what purpose. How will this be used, how will this be—and to show and help our governments to show what it means to circle back and be accountable in terms of what’s been changing.
One of the things that I think also affects trust is that we’ve built our government so much in silos, right? Even just we have workforce, we have human services, we have higher education on the economic mobility side, and to tackle these kinds of truly collective impact issues because people experience—do not experience life in silos—is tremendously hard and cumbersome even from the internal government side to try to coordinate and align. So it’s a huge part of, you know, we need to help our government with the mindset shift but then operationally, OK, what does this mean for how you’re going to work, fund, and do differently across your three agencies, and economic mobility is all the work that we do at Third Sector but it’s essential to help kind of mitigate that challenge and really break down—build that trust better by ensuring that people are having a responsive experience with government services which in many ways our government wasn’t set up to do. So we’ve got a little bit of work to do on that front.
I think the last one that I want to talk about as a challenge of course is racial equity in terms of, you know, I think there’s a lot of assumptions that are placed on government and the individuals that work with government agencies, that they do focus or not on racial equity. I think what I will say that we’ve been very surprised as an organization that is committed and values racial equity to discover that there are many civil servants that are really—they are there because they want to improve outcomes for all people regardless of their race, background, socioeconomic status, education level. Don’t count those folks out. They’re the ones that now they’re looking at data, they’re seeing that they’re getting disparate impact on different groups with the funding that they put out on the street and they want to do better. They can’t unsee those results. They want to do differently and they are struggling with—and they need help to think about how do we take this data, now we have this knowledge that we’re not doing great, what do we do next in terms of how we codesign initiatives and think about spending our funding differently so that we are actually improving outcomes for folks across the spectrum. I think that it’s both a challenge and I’m super hopeful because I’ve seen across the country with the good use of data that folks are truly interested in doing better and doing more for the community members.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: So what advice would you give—sort of the reverse question, what advice you would give to folks in government about perhaps showing up as better partners to their community partners and their collaborators in community?
Caroline Whistler: I would say that stakeholder engagement is key. It’s not a box to check. It is key to responsive services, and that relationships are the key to that stakeholder engagement. You’re not going to get what you need from a stakeholder engagement session if it’s the first time that you are talking with those folks. So that’s what I would say to our government folks.
I would also say sometimes even within government, our government partners can think of government as an outside or a separate entity, and it’s not. It’s not something that is independent or adversarial with a community. In many ways our government is supposed to be and is an extension of the community and of the people that it’s seeking to serve. Government is part of our community and in many ways is responsible to the community, and so we do a lot of that education also with our government partners as well.
I think the other thing I would say and advise to government is that whether or not they’ve heard of the term collective impact, the coalitions that are built and have been built in communities with the collective impact umbrella are an incredible way to get to direct access to constituents on the ground that are trying to do the same thing you’re trying to do in government which is to do more and do better for all of the folks in your community and get those better outcomes.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Yes, we are all from our different seats perhaps trying to work toward the same thing and need to be able to name that and build relationships in order to row in the same direction. I’m curious though so you mentioned this a little bit earlier how when we talk about government, that actually can mean very many things. It can mean civil servants. It can mean elected officials.
We have an election coming up in the U.S. Clearly there is a presidential election but there are also many what they would call down ballot like local elections and we’ll see changes in local leadership as well. What have you learned working with government through administration changes, be that federal, state or local leadership change?
I’m curious if you have any advice for folks who are looking a couple months down the line and maybe a little bit fearful of how things might change after an election cycle.
Caroline Whistler: You know whenever there are administration changes, I think some of the concerns are founded because there are opportunities to change. Things do change with administration changes so I will name that, and it can be hard to continue all of the priorities in the same way so go about it with eyes wide open, right? Our government is a reflection of the people and as people’s perspectives change, so does government.
That said, I think it is important to remember that the people working in government, there is a civil service that is not elected that is often there through multiple administration changes, and so those folks have come into public service to make an impact and they have likely been in their position prior to and will be after those administrations change so really think—that’s honestly where at Third Sector we spend most of our time is operating a little bit below the political fray but really building those relationships with career civil servants and helping them to really adopt a collective impact, outcomes-focused mindset because what we’ve noticed is that those folks, they may start as an entry-level manager and then they grow and then they grow and all of a sudden they’re running the human service agencies for the county that you’re working in so building those relationships, asking them what is the outcome that they’re focused on, engaging with them on that. What is the North Star, and always kind of coming back to that through these different administration changes because in most cases while the strategies may be very different, the tactics and some of the higher-level values of trying to do more and do better for community members are pretty resonant across political spectrums. So what that may mean is that you keep the same North Star, whether the language needs to evolve, whether the different strategies may have more opportunity in different administrations but you keep that same North Star.
I think the last thing I would say is that every—I joke about this—every administration change, every procurement, every sort of funding opportunity that comes out of government, it’s an opportunity to question what are those public sector preferences, traditions, and requirements that have been in place in the past and to openly, you know, explore and question that with your government partners. What of these things that we’ve been doing are required? What are these things that we’re doing because we’ve been doing them for the past 30 years so they’re more of a tradition, and what are the things that we’re doing that are real preferences because I’ve found also that using these transition moments as moments of opportunity to question those can create space and new possibilities for conversations that may not have been able to be had in the past.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: That’s great. Super helpful, practical advice and looking at some of the opportunities that can present themselves to say like why are we actually doing this? Is this something that we have to do because of compliance or is this at least a tradition of our department? Caroline, it’s been wonderful talking with you. I’m wondering if there’s anything we haven’t talked about that you were really hoping to share with listeners today.
Caroline Whistler: I think the biggest thing I’ve learned after being in the outcomes space for 12 years is that you cannot shortcut your way to the outcomes, and people are complicated. So much of how we think about government funding and programs is rooted in what I think is a really false premise which is that we can develop programs in one place at one time with one group of people around a very specific challenge and think that we can just copy and paste that program everywhere or make it a policy and mandate it for everybody.
While I think that evidence-based solutions are important, I think we need to be really honest as a sector and with our government about the limitations of evaluation and what are very complicated and constantly evolving social challenges. So people are not a fixed variable. What they may need one year in one place may not be what constituents need the next year so a big part of what we do at Third Sector is to try to help our public systems shift to a mentality that is focused on continuous improvement which I know is a huge focus of collective impact as well but I think it’s just imperative for whether you’re a nonprofit, government entity, to be constantly looking at the data and be in conversation with communities to keep adjusting, tailoring, addressing problems so that they continue to be responsive to community need versus sometimes the kind of set-it-and-forget-it approach because those need shifts. They shift constantly and that’s a feature of life. It’s not a bug. It’s just how it is so to be truly responsive to community needs is to perhaps be a bit more flexible than we really allow our government to be.
At Third Sector we really try to go in and create some of that flexibility where we can, and I just encourage folks in the collective impact space to take that ethos to your public sector partners in addition to keeping it within your own organizations and collective impact efforts.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Yes, that really resonates. I think we often talk about we are addressing complex problems, there are no known solutions. There’s not a recipe we can follow. If we knew the answers, we would have solved them, and so we have to approach this with the spirit and—not only spirit, a practice of learning and improvement as we go and that’s part of the beauty and importance of having the range of perspectives at the table and then having the data to learn and adapt as you go. That really resonates. I appreciate you naming that as well. So if folks want to continue to follow your work and the work of Third Sector, what is the best way to do that?
Caroline Whistler: The best way is on LinkedIn, Third Sector or Caroline Whistler on LinkedIn, and to visit our website, www.thirdsectorcap.org.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Caroline, to you and your team for the work that you are doing on behalf of communities. It’s been awesome chatting with you today and thank you, everyone, for listening. Wishing you the best.
Caroline Whistler: Thank you, Jennifer.
(Outro) And this closes out this episode of the Collective Impact Forum podcast. If you are interested in learning more about what was discussed, you can find links to resources in the footnotes for this episode. And if you’re enjoying all that we share at the Collective Impact Forum podcast, we encourage you to rate us on your preferred podcast platform, and share your favorite episodes with colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge that this episode was produced and edited on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot tribes. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the past, present, and futures of these tribes.
The Intro music for this episode was composed by Rafael Krux and our outro music is composed by Kevin Macleod.
This is Tracy Timmons-Gray, Associate Director here at the Collective Impact Forum, and your podcast producer. I want to say thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you more in our next episode. Until next time, let’s keep working towards collective impact.
