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Building and Maintaining the Partnership

Based on the answers to the above questions, you must organize a coalition to develop and implement an action plan. In order to be successful at implementation, you must have a strong, diverse coalition consisting of groups with different constituencies and strengths. Towards this end:

• Develop a steering committee or task force made up of key organizations and individuals.
• Evaluate what skills you need in order to accomplish your goal.
• Set a month and year by which you will accomplish your goal (it took San Francisco 18 months).
• Meet regularly to build necessary skills, add new members, and take initiatives.

The coalition should include organizations working on violence against women, health, and economic justice.

When building the partnership, you must answer a few questions:

• Who will take the lead? It’s best for one organization to always take the lead and coordinate actions. Otherwise important things will not get done, there will be duplication, or one group will end up doing all the work and not get credit. The lead organization should arrange regular meetings, assign tasks, and ensure that they are accomplished.
• What partnerships will you develop?
• Do you already have a relationship with your key partner and if not how do you plan to build that relationship?
• Why should key partners participate?
• How much money do you need and where are you going to get it?
• How much time and resources do you need from the key parties?

One of your lead partners should be a city department that can take the initiative within city government. Possible departments to contact are the Commission on the Status of Women, the Human Rights Commission, and the Civil Rights Commission. In some regions, building a relationship with your government or community partner may require a significant amount of time and effort before you can even get started.

Your partnership should reflect the diversity of the communities you are trying to impact. You will want to use a variety of outreach methods in order to ensure diversity, both through participating organizations and active individuals. You will need to call organizations and meet with them. Be prepared to explain why you think this effort will reduce discrimination, including violence, against their constituencies. Broad participation is critical because it permits the partnership to speak knowledgeably on the range of issues impacting the relevant community, and do it with authority and credibility.

In San Francisco, our partnership had four lead partner organizations. First, the Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights (WILD) was the main organizer. Amnesty International USA Western Region also provided human rights and organizing expertise. The Women’s Foundation (TWF), which is based in San Francisco, also was an active participant. Because TWF provides grants to a broad range of organizations serving women and girls throughout California, they had excellent knowledge about the status of women and girls in California and valuable contacts with community groups with on-the-ground information on what women and girls face in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The fourth main member of the partnership was the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women (COSW), which is a government body. Although this commission had valuable information and statistics about women’s rights in San Francisco, most significantly they provided expertise about government mechanisms and used their connections to ensure that key people heard about our work. Further, they were able to access the government mechanisms with ease. COSW provided the names of relevant government officials to contact and what official channels to pursue or not to pursue. COSW also acted as the main government sponsor of the ordinance.

Once you have developed a partnership, you must ensure that it survives and is effective. Another reality of partnership building is that there will be differences between members, especially between government and community workers. This is a natural result of coming from different ways of functioning. While difficult, resolving these differences will make the coalition’s efforts more effective. The best strategy is to be prepared for miscommunication and use mutual respect and integrity as an overriding vision.

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