Implicit and Explicit Boundaries in Large-Scale Nonprofit Collaboration

• In Event: The Transformative Effects of Communication at Boundaries

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations operate in a turbulent environment (Eadie, 1997), with those challenges multiplied in nonprofit collaboration. Although most research assumes that boundaries within collaboration are recognizable, organizers of collaboration around a large-scale social problem often have difficulties in identifying boundaries. This, in turn, has many implications for how collaborating groups work together.

This case study looks at a 10-county, multiple-organization collaboration convened with the purpose of improving educational outcomes across a community. Given that a collaboration of this size includes hundreds of stakeholders, it begs the question as to what extent the awareness of boundaries shapes actors’ involvement in interorganizational collaboration. Through interviews and surveys, this research explores how community stakeholders communicate across explicit boundaries – such as organizational or regional affiliations – as well as uncovers implicit boundaries that shape stakeholder interactions within the collaboration.

Author

• Katherine R Cooper, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign