A recent interaction with my kindergarten-aged son got me thinking about building culture in coalitions. Let me explain.

Our dog was barking loudly. My 6-year-old walked towards him.

Me: “Whoa buddy, don’t go near Gordon when he’s barking like that!”

6-year-old: “But he wasn’t growling. That’s what you told me to look for.”

Me: “True. But what do you see when you look at him now. Can you see how the fur on his back is standing up?”

[6-year-old looks]

Me: “When you see his hair standing up like that, it’s similar to when he’s growling. He’s communicating with you. And you want to give him space when he’s like that.”

My 6-year-old hadn’t noticed the hair standing up before.

It was interesting to observe. He needed to be taught the unspoken parts of engaging with the dog.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend, about a coalition she was working with.

The coalition had no written processes around things like:

• Who is responsible for setting annual goals & priorities
• Who makes final decisions around the annual budget
• What are the expectations and roles of the committees

When your coalition does not have an intentional process for sharing this knowledge with all members, it becomes unspoken knowledge.

It’s harder to share the unspoken pieces of your culture with new members if they aren’t written down.
This can lead to unhealthy power dynamics, where long-standing members have more knowledge and power.
In turn, this can make it harder to engage and retain new members.

Photo caption (Above photo): Cleveland Tree Coalition is an excellent example of a coalition that worked proactively on building a healthy culture. Sustainable Economies facilitated their strategic planning process. This photo is from the goal-setting retreat in 2023.

Building culture for coalitions often takes more effort than nonprofit culture building.

I’m not claiming building nonprofit culture is easy.

Rather, there are unique aspects that make it so when I work with coalitions, building healthy governance & culture takes targeted effort. This is largely because:

• You may have dozens or even hundreds of members
• Coalitions rely on many volunteers & fewer paid staff
• Coalitions are missing some of the basic structures that most nonprofits have, like job descriptions for all roles and SOPs for all recurring tasks & processes

For these reasons, you must be proactive about building culture for coalitions.

TIP 1: Design for clarity and ease of use, not for bureaucracy

My colleague James Young shared a helpful observation:

“Great culture is designed so we can foster freedom and latitude, agency and courage, grappling and solving.”

Be cognizant of building enough structure around culture that all members can learn and understand it, without having so many policies that they are burdensome & bureaucratic.

TIP 2: Have an ongoing process for onboarding new members

Onboarding shouldn’t be just one day. You’ll benefit from some form of process that engages new members for at least the first year. They need a place to go as new questions arise.

TIP 3: Define your values & make them actionable

Through working with many organizations, I’ve found it fascinating that each group defines their values slightly differently. “Integrity” can mean something different in each organization. Make your values actionable so members can apply them consistently.

TIP 4: Clearly define purpose & roles of committees

It’s quite frustrating to join a committee and not know the purpose of the committee, or how that committee should work with the other committees. This is something that the Board or executive committee should define, with member input.

TIP 5: Develop clear guidelines for decisions

You should not be looking to the coalition’s bylaws to answer all of your questions. You’ll need to develop a supplemental document that provides more detail on how decisions are made and who makes them.

TIP 6: Set expectations around meeting norms

This is likely going to be a mix of logistics (who schedules meetings, takes notes & how frequently to meet). And how you engage in meetings (what norms do you have around how to run meetings & treat each other with respect). We set up meeting norms for a collaborative of which I’m a member and were surprised to find how much the members appreciated this. It provided consistency across committees and helped tremendously with expectations.

TIP 7: Spend time working together

Don’t expect culture to be built only through annual meetings. Find ways to bring your members together around projects, working towards shared goals. This builds trust – and strengthens your coalition culture.

I have worked with many coalitions and collaboratives over the years and building culture is a common theme that comes up. Make sure to be proactive, knowing that culture is something that you have to put effort to create. Build a healthy culture around aligned values ahead of time, rather than having to build it in reaction to a problem.