#cross-sector

Understand why you’re doing it - paying lip service to a certain field/sector, using it for anecdotal reasons, or as marketing capital will always work against your best intentions. Is there expertise you need that would be valuable to your aim, and do you have expertise to offer that could help another organisation? What prompted the initial thought of collaborating across sectors - do you have a mutually beneficial project in mind? Understanding your motivation will help you to clarify your needs and wants out of the collaborative relationship

What do you need? Is it expertise? Knowledge? A particular skill set? Be clear on this. This will help to ensure you approach the right organisations/individuals, and also prevent potential frustration further down the line when you, or they realise they don’t quite fit the bill.

What can you give? Do you have a platform in the community that could be beneficial to the partner/individual you’re working with? Is there knowledge, expertise or perhaps contacts that may be beneficial to them? Discuss this. Partnerships and collaborations are a give/take relationship and need to be structured as such. 

Clarify what you’d like the structure of the relationship to look like. Is it informal? will you need a structured contract? If it is a funded project, consider the requirements of your funding provider.  Consider organisational partners’ concerns.

Identify risk and accountability - which party will be responsible for what aspect of the project. What would happen if what needs to be delivered isn’t delivered? What risks are involved in the partnership/collaboration - are all needs/wants from both parties being addressed? Are there gaps? Is the trade-off even for both parties? Working across sectors means there will be gaps in both parties knowledge - identify these gaps and address them to prevent risk, later down the road.

This is a short list of considerations to take into account, but the biggest takeaway is to communicate.  

Approach people, talk to each other, make new friends!

Don’t be afraid to approach an individual or organisation you’d like to work with.  Have an introductory conversation/email.  Contacting someone and saying you’re a fan of their work and want to know more is flattering and always a positive - don’t hesitate to initiate the working relationship and have a conversation to set the tone.  

Everyone likes coffee/tea and cake - an informal meeting to chat about things can break the ice and build what can be a great, mutually beneficial relationship.