Evaluating Collaboration in Strategic Alliances

What is it about?

Increasingly, collaboration between business, non-profit, health and educational agencies is championed as a powerful strategy to achieve a vision otherwise not possible when independent entities work alone. But the definition of collaboration is elusive and it is often difficult for organizations to put collaboration into practice and assess it with certainty. The Strategic Alliance Formative Assessment Rubric (SAFAR) is an assessment tool that captures central principles of collaboration and has been used as part of a four-step evaluation process to help alliance leaders, managers, and members to quantitatively and qualitatively gauge, celebrate, and communicate the relative strength of their collaborative endeavor over time. The collaboration principles and corresponding assessment processes described in this article can be used by organizational leaders and evaluators of large- or small-scale initiatives that seek to capitalize on the synergistic power of the “collaborative effort.”

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Why is it important?

Increasingly, collaboration between business, non-profit, health and educational agencies is championed as a powerful strategy to achieve a vision otherwise not possible when independent entities work alone. But the definition of collaboration is elusive and it is often difficult for organizations to put collaboration into practice and assess it with certainty. The content of this article can help enable leaders, managers, and practitioners to quantitatively and qualitatively gauge, celebrate, and communicate the relative strength of organizational collaboration over time.