Community Partners & Reopening Schools: Is everyone at the table?

I’ve written before about the power and necessity of community collaboration in today’s world. In too many communities there are three main entities involved in decision making: schools, business, and government. Our country has over 1.6 million nonprofit organizations including community organizations that offer support services for families, children, and individuals. In the United States there are 63 million volunteers with over 380 billion dollars in annual giving. With the intense human capital, nonprofit organizations are the third largest workforce category in the country.

In all, our nonprofit force is nearly double that of our educators. All too often nonprofits are embedded in communities where they are an invisible force behind our schools.

An informal poll of ten school districts demonstrated that only three were actively connecting with all nonprofit organizations in their community during normal operations. During the unprecedented time we are currently in, not one of the ten districts were actively communicating or collaborating specific to nonprofit stakeholders.

Communicating is one thing (and it’s usually one sided and tells constituents your opinion, plan, or stance). Collaboration is two way meeting of mutual goals and needs, where no single organization is telling the other how things will be.