Call a Meeting: The Best Way to Kill Collaboration

Amanda Fisher
Community Engagement Director
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If you’re passionate about poverty alleviation, your first instinct might be to meet with everyone in your community who cares about the issue and start collaborating. But according to Kristin Parker, a community development expert and leader of Shared City (a member of the True Charity Network), that approach may not lead to the collaboration you’re hoping for.

Kristin returned to Charleston, South Carolina, after 13 years of community development work in Nepal. Ready to engage with her local community to tackle problems cohesively, she began by organizing meetings with local leaders who shared her passion. But she quickly discovered a problem: Although everyone cared deeply about the issues, they held entirely different definitions of the problems and their solutions. 

While the group used the same words (i.e., “poverty,” “compassion,” and “charity”), they meant entirely different things. The meetings turned into networking sessions, where attendees discussed resources and programs, shared challenges, and voiced concerns. But Kristin’s initial vision to work collaboratively toward impactful change was not realized due to lack of a shared mindset. She understood that without a common framework and shared language, collaboration would be nearly impossible. 

She also realized a significant challenge was the group’s lack of awareness about harmful charity practices. Most were blissfully unaware their well-meaning programs were actually trapping people in poverty. 

That’s when Kristin discovered the True Charity Network. In the resources we provide, she found exactly what she needed: the language, education, and guiding principles that have helped reshape her approach.

As a True Charity Ambassador, she’s gained greater clarity on the issues and learned better ways to communicate the principles of effective charity. The original meetings stopped, with subsequent efforts focused on building awareness through one-on-one conversations and a group training course called “Effective Charity 101,” which introduces participants to foundational concepts and challenges their assumptions about traditional approaches to poverty alleviation. 

To achieve their vision of a healthy, charitable ecosystem in Charleston, Shared City now follows this framework, emphasizing education before collaboration:

• Awareness: Traditional, one-way giving charity models often do more harm than good.
• Changed Mindset: Develop a deeper understanding of poverty, and how to help people in a dignifying, relational way that does not cause unhealthy dependency.
• Changed Practice: Shift efforts toward developmental and empowering models of effective charity.
• Collaboration: Once mindsets align, real partnership and shared action can take root.
• Healthy Ecosystem:  A sustainable, community-wide effort where organizations work together to serve people in need.

Also, Kristin and her team have learned the importance of celebrating small wins, with each conversation or shift in mindset being a step toward deeper alignment and more effective collaboration.

If launching a coalition to address poverty or homelessness is on your “to do” list, take a lesson from Kristin’s experience: Don’t just jump in by calling a meeting with stakeholders. Instead:

• Listen and learn.  Study effective charity principles. If you are not a True Charity Network Member, join today to access the same tools and training Shared City uses.
• Facilitate shared understanding. Offer educational sessions to create a common foundation.
• Don’t rush into joint projects. True collaboration grows out of a shared mindset and relationships built on trust.
• Track progress and celebrate small wins. Culture change is slow, but it builds momentum over time.

Shared City has learned that true collaboration to alleviate poverty doesn’t work without first establishing a shared mindset. To put it another way, if you want to build a flourishing community committed to effective charity, the steps we’ve covered are not optional; they are essential. 

Learn from them so you can avoid the same pitfalls Kristin fell into and be better positioned to create lasting, transformational change — not just for the benefit of your organization, but for the people you serve.

Are you interested in becoming better equipped to spread the message of effective charity in your community? Explore becoming a True Charity Ambassador like Krisitin.