The Patterson Foundation (TPF) is an independent charitable foundation in Sarasota, Florida that partners and connects with others to create new realities. Debra Jacobs, the Foundation’s CEO, contacted La Piana Consulting in early 2010 to talk about our experience with strategic restructuring. Jacobs and her team recognized that strategic restructuring – or collaborative restructuring, as they call it – is a powerful way for groups of organizations to leverage resources and capabilities for long-term “thrive-ability.”

TPF was initially interested in exploring how La Piana might provide training and education focused on strategic restructuring to both Foundation staff and the nonprofit and funder communities in the area. That work began in April of 2010. Almost immediately, TPF fielded several requests for financial support for assessment and exploration, including requests from two local community foundations and two disability service organizations – both were interested in assessing the potential for partnership. Thanks to support from TPF’s Collaborative Restructuring Initiative (or CRI, officially launched in the spring of 2010) La Piana worked closely with both groups as they did so. As a result of their explorations, the organizations learned a lot about themselves and the two community foundations have identified a way they can support and strengthen community-wide philanthropy.

The Patterson Foundation’s interest was not limited to providing educational opportunities and financial support, however. Upon learning about our consultant training programs, Jacobs and CRI Initiative Manager Pam Truitt attended a one-day introductory training in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That session, sponsored by the Foellinger Foundation, covered the fundamentals of consulting to organizations exploring or negotiating collaborative restructuring arrangements. Several months later, Truitt participated in the second phase of our program – a three-day intensive combining and extended role-play with case studies and in-depth discussions around contracting, the negotiations process, human resources, external communications, and implementation and integration. TPF realized that building local capacity among consultants was critical to its long-term success, and decided to sponsor a series of trainings in its own region – and then make available ongoing education and support, including mentoring, for consultants who choose to make the facilitation of collaborative restructuring efforts part of their practice. As Truitt said in her blog after the three-day intensive:

As Initiative Manager, I have gone through the training and emphatically state that, at least in the beginning, I could not do this work alone. In addition to learning and being skillful in the technical aspects…consultants must be effective facilitators, understand how to deal with difficult personalities, handle icebergs that invariably surface, guide discussions when appropriate and keep the process moving without favoring one organization over the other. If Wonder Woman were facilitating a nonprofit merger, she would need help!

TPF is also connecting with national funders in the collaboration space, such as the Lodestar Foundation, The Forbes Funds, and The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, to learn and share information.

Over the past two years our relationship with TPF has evolved into a true partnership – one that is collaborative, productive, and extremely rewarding. We continue to work with TPF staff to understand and address the specific needs of their community, providing workshops, training, consulting, facilitation, and mentoring to nonprofits and local consultants alike. As a result of TPF’s commitment and our work together, more Florida nonprofits are aware of and actively exploring options for collaborative restructuring – and able to draw on local resources, both financial and technical, as they do so.

A sense of urgency. Experts like John P. Kotter say it’s a key and necessary ingredient for successful organizational change. Without it, even the best designed efforts amount to little more than going through the motions.

But many nonprofits are so accustomed to working in adverse conditions – doing more with less, making compromises, and inhabiting a reality in which the stretch goal is to be “sustainable” rather than to truly thrive – that they may be desensitized to what urgency really feels like. Like the proverbial frog in the pan of boiling water, these organizations have adapted so well to an increasingly hostile environment that perhaps the impetus to do something about it comes too late.

Take strategic restructuring. It is encouraging that partnerships are now viewed as a positive strategic choice rather than an option of last resort, but the flip side is that we now see more nonprofits coming to the table with the view that collaboration is “nice, but not necessary.” Many of these are on solid enough footing to continue working on their own, but fail to recognize that this also makes them better positioned to engage in restructuring and more attractive to potential partner organizations. Lacking a sense of urgency, they may hesitate to own the process or really invest in moving it along. The risk here is that the window of opportunity to proactively choose a collaborative strategy rather than being compelled to it may not be open for long. Should they find themselves facing a real crisis, they may wish they had acted sooner.

Succession planning is another good example. Five or six years ago, reports like “The Leadership Deficit” touched off a sense of real urgency across the sector. The Boomers are retiring! Who will be left to lead our organizations? The mass exodus didn’t exactly manifest as predicted, as we all now know, but how many nonprofits have taken advantage of the reprieve as an an opportunity to engage in recruiting talent and developing leadership for when the day does come – as it surely will – when new leaders must take the helm?

Nonprofits face an increasingly complex set of challenges and opportunities, from major demographic shifts to competition from for-profit providers to political pressures and global economic uncertainty. The water’s getting warmer.

Do you feel the heat? Is it time to make a leap?