Community as a factor in implementing interorganizational partnerships: Issues, constraints, and adaptations

This article reports findings from a community-based study of collaboration among seven nonprofit human service agencies in a very low-income urban neighborhood. The project, funded by a federal demonstration grant, was developed to prevent child abuse and neglect as an alternative to the existing public child welfare system. Findings suggest that privatization, funding uncertainties, and community-level factors posed external stressors that constrained executives' ability to collaborate. The article identifies five key stressors, analyzes how each constrained the partnership, and then discusses specific adaptations made by executive leadership in political, technical, and interpersonal areas that facilitated strategic adjustment and realignment in a very complex interorganizational arrangement and set of relationships. Finally, implications are drawn for nonprofit managers, social policy, and nonprofit research.