Collaboration Case Study 
Tiptown Collaboration Development



The Tiptown neighborhood is a distressed, core city neighborhood made up of working poor, new immigrant populations, small, struggling minority-owned businesses, and few amenities. The residents are highly mobile. There are some institutional resources -- a social service agency, two elementary schools, a police sub-station, a local church, a neighborhood council, and the Tiptown Community Development Corporation. A year ago representatives of some of the local organizations formed an informal group to try to jointly improve the housing stock, deal with absentee landlords, and acquire properties for renovation or new housing. They’ve had some small successes, notably cleaning up two properties that were used by drug dealers. A local funder provided a small planning grant to help the group get going.

The group has been meeting for a year. They believe in shared leadership, and rotate meeting locations and leadership between the partner organizations. They are trying to write a vision statement and plan as a group, but progress is slow. Some core members attend every meeting; some rarely attend.  Some partnering organizations have not made a commitment to the collaboration beyond sending a representative to the meetings.  There is some question about who is an actual member of the group and about how decisions are made.   Neighborhood residents show up occasionally to talk about their concerns. The group finds they repeatedly have to go over issues they’ve discussed in prior meetings. Many attendees don’t understand the purpose and goals of the group, and bring up unrelated issues that are important to them (e.g. one three-hour meeting was spent discussing a shooting at the gas station the week before). Some residents are bad-mouthing the group, saying they are only concerned with raising money for their own organizational budgets. Their planning grant period is nearly ended, and they don’t have a plan completed.








1.  Using the Collaboration Readiness Assessment, identify the areas that indicate the group is doing well and is ready to collaborate.




2.  What does the Collaboration Readiness Assessment suggest might be areas that the group needs to strengthen?




3.  What components of a Collaboration Charter would be most important for this group to discuss and agree to? 

 
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Fieldstone Alliance		 October 2006