Goal of Community Collaboration
The goal of collaborations is to bring individuals, agencies, organizations, and community members themselves together in an atmosphere of support to systematically solve existing and emerging problems that could not easily be solved by one group alone. Collaborations should focus on increasing capacity, communication, and efficiency while improving outcomes.
Definition
Collaboration is a process of participation through which people, groups, and organizations work together to achieve desired results. Collaborations accomplish the shared vision, achieve positive outcomes for the audiences they serve and build an interdependent system to address issues and opportunities. Collaborations also involve the sharing of resources and responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate programs to achieve common goals. Members of the collaboration must be willing to share vision, mission, power, resources, and goals. Community collaboratives comprised of partners sharing resources and rewards serve as the backbone for program implementation, thus leading to a greater collective impact.