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Section Three
Organizing the Coalition

"I predict a bright future for complexity, Have you ever considered how
complicated things can get, what with one thing always leading to another."
E. B. White

Overview of Section

This section discusses at some length several factors crucial to organizing a successful coalition. The section deals with elements involved in the organizational structure of the coalition. It discusses the issue of resources and their connection to the developmental life of the coalition and finally it deals at some length with the structuring of an action plan for the coalition. The action plan becomes the core of the organizational structure and the focus of both internal and external activity.

D. Survey and Interview Results

Some Notes from A Descriptive Study of Asthma Coalitions, Spring 2000

75% of the coalitions were not organized as any legal entity. The remainder had nonprofit, tax-exempt status.
There was a wide disparity in the funding level of the coalitions. Over half operate on an annual budget of less than $10,000, including 38% who reported no annual budget. 35% reported annual budgets of over $100,000.
The major challenge for the majority of coalitions was obtaining the funding that they needed either to survive or to attempt to reach their goals.
About 65% of the coalitions reported receiving in-kind financial support; for some, this kind of support represented their entire budget.

Some Comments From Coalitions on Funding

There were problems as well as opportunities relating to not getting funded as well as problems once the coalition was funded. These comments suggest some of these difficulties.

Our Department of Health was one of sites selected to get a grant. The health department will be helping us on this coalition and at the same time, they are going to be doing data gathering which we feel is the essential to a lot of our success here. So a big chunk of money came from that. Another chunk of money came from one major pharmaceutical company and then we have also gotten some smaller chunks from pharmaceuticals. One thing we have done also is hired a grant writer who is aggressively working the foundations right now. What I think really will happen is when we are launched and have some projects in mind, most likely we will have more success…. we know if we are going to make this asthma coalition work, we have got to be prepared to go out and get money…. we find that if you go to a foundation and say…" we have this wonderful idea and we think we are going to need some funds for it. Would you folks give us $25,000?" Well, the answer is no. But if we can go in and say that we have identified that in a region of the state, people need material to be translated and it is going to cost $15,000 to have somebody do it, then there is a better chance we're going to get the funding from a foundation.

Another respondent had a different view.

No coalition is going to solve the asthma problem. Coalitions should not be depended on to do that but what they can do, for instance, on this home health aide and clean up and other projects is to supply some of the academic people with the preliminary data so they could go after multi-million research grants. Coalitions are not good at that kind of money. I see coalitions as catalysts for almost everything. We should not be in the business of running programs. That’s how I see it. Even with foundation money, those programs should be demonstrations. Elements of that work can be taken over by insurers, providers or state agencies or whatever. So that they have a lifetime, not that the coalition will be running them and forever scrambling after money for supporting them. The coalition, in my view, is a catalyst that would do things that most of the time the individual groups or organizations by themselves are not doing.

A third respondent had moved to using a consultant for funding.

We are in the process of having a contractor submit a development plan for us. So we will be doing a direct field campaign, we’ll be doing an event, we'll be doing other kinds of educational opportunities like a conference that would bring in funding and sponsorship. And that is how we will get our money in the future.

Some Comments From Coalitions on Organization

Leaders reflected on the organization of their coalitions in a number of interesting ways. Here is one of them.

Tasks get completed through the committees. We want them to figure out local needs in those focus areas. When they figure that out, they will come up to the steering committee and say—we want to do a day care survey because we think that managed asthma in day care organizations is difficult. The steering committee may say—go ahead and do it—and they will develop the survey and figure out what is going on in that area and what the needs are. And then craft some kind of program response, with or without money Usually for some reason, it always starts without money and then we go search for money to support it. We start doing a pilot or something, and get the initial framework and then go out after the money for it. So each committee comes up with its own action plan. So, you might have four action plans that you combine into the body of the overall strategic plan. The steering committee has its own action plan. The governance of an organization like this is complex. And for volunteers it is difficult at times to do the things you need to do—for example, pay attention to the process issues and the governance issues that you need to sustain a coalition—like membership, fund raising, public relations, advocacy—those are all under the direction of the steering committee.

Some Comments From Coalitions on Planning

Planning occurred in a variety of formats. Here is one example.

What happened was that a group that worked on the Asthma Summit which in essence was a spin-off from the asthma coalition. Those folk put together the summit and had a lot of input into that. Afterwards, we worked to sort of coalesce what everybody contributed to and that became the start of the plan. We got it down to a certain number of priorities because we couldn’t do everything that everybody wanted. So then, we worked in a core group, which I would call an executive committee. They had seen the whole process from beginning to end. And we came up first with a draft. It was reviewed and we came up with the final version. It was presented to the group in April a week or so ago, and they adopted it and it will go out to all the people who attended the summit. The way this plan is set up, it has its beginning July 1st and having goals met throughout the year with a good number of the goals being completed by June 30th of next year.

Survey Comment Snapshots

Some additional and briefer comments about the same topics:

"Don't just duplicate what you see around you. Press forward. Stay with what you think will work for you but don't be afraid to try something."
"We are too small yet to think about getting too organized. We are just looking for funding."
" Our executive committee has become more organized and our systems more defined. We now have by-laws to guide our development along with a policy and procedure manual."
"We have a great plan and I would have it written up if I had enough people to help implement it."
"There are so many points of view regarding direction, programs and projects. We can’t do all of them and it’s a huge challenge to balance the legitimate passions and interests of everyone."
"It’s a struggle for people with varying backgrounds to realize that a plan is the only legitimate option to sitting around and talking forever."

Tips for New Coalitions

Let everyone know that mistakes will be made and that the coalition will recover from them.
Take a look around at the workload of people. If people are attempting to do two jobs, realize that something is suffering, even if it’s not one of the two jobs.
Try to structure the organization differently than where people work. It provides some energy for people if there is a healthy contrast.
Have someone keep a history of the coalition. It may help someone else later; it might even help the coalition remember their reasoning.
Start small. While the ultimate goal is large, find something the coalition can plan and do successfully and soon.
Celebrate that success.
Take a long look at your resources. They more than anything else tell you what you can accomplish now.
Don’t keep revising your plan to accommodate everyone. Let everyone see what the priority on action is.
If you lose someone because you would not do what that person was interested in, you did not have him in the first place.

The Essential Points

The successful coalition is an effective organization that has been designed to achieve its goals in a specific environment.
Although the coalition is composed of partners that are themselves organizations, it does not follow that the organizational structure of the coalition will necessarily mirror many aspects of these partners.
All coalitions will go through the same basic stages of development. The major variables affecting the quality of this development are a) the resources available, b) the coordinating skills of the leadership, and c) the willingness of the partners to cooperate.
Funding is a critical element for a coalition in its growth phase and critical service issues will need to be delayed until appropriate resources are made available.
Since money frequently follows success, small accomplishments by new coalitions frequently lead to additional resources being made available.
Developing and communicating an action plan is an important first step in guaranteeing the coalition will begin with a united approach to its goals.
The various steps involved in preparing the plan, such as needs assessment, developing a mission, and determining goals and objectives, can be done formally or informally, depending on the style and size of the coalition. Any attempt to avoid the issues inherent in such formative steps will cause continual problems.