Home - CONNECTIONS.NGO

CONNECTIONS.NGO is a resource hub for NGOs and civil society organizations that want to build, manage, and sustain the inter-organizational partnerships, alliances, and networks that amplify their impact. It provides practical frameworks for every stage of connection — from identifying the right partners to navigating the inevitable tensions that arise when independent organizations work together toward shared goals.

No organization changes the world alone. The most consequential social changes of recent decades have been achieved by networks and coalitions of organizations working in coordination — sharing intelligence, aligning strategies, combining resources, and building the collective power that no single organization can generate independently. But building and sustaining effective inter-organizational connections is genuinely hard. It requires skills, frameworks, and practices that most organizations have never explicitly developed. CONNECTIONS.NGO is built to help.

What You'll Find Here

What kinds of inter-organizational connections are available to us, which are right for our goals and context, and how do we assess our current connection strategy? (Understanding Inter-Organizational Connections)
How do we build strong partnerships and alliances from the ground up — from first outreach through formal agreement to operational effectiveness? (Building Partnerships and Alliances)
How do we sustain connections through difficulty, manage the inevitable tensions between organizational independence and collective action, and know when to exit gracefully? (Sustaining, Navigating, and Evolving Connections)

Our Values

We believe that genuine connection — between organizations as between people — requires trust, honesty, and mutual benefit. We believe that the most durable inter-organizational partnerships are those built on shared values and complementary strengths, not just shared goals and convenient geography. We believe that organizational independence and collective action are not opposites — that the strongest networks are those that enhance rather than compromise the distinct identity and mission of each member. And we believe that the skills of connection — building trust, navigating tension, sustaining commitment through difficulty — are learnable, and that investing in them is one of the highest-return investments any organization can make.

GUIDES

Understanding Inter-Organizational Connections

The landscape: a typology of connection forms (informal networks, operational partnerships, strategic alliances, coalitions, federated structures), the conditions that make connections productive, an honest assessment of the costs and risks of connection alongside the benefits, and a partnership readiness and portfolio assessment framework. With case vignettes on coalition formation in a contested advocacy space and a failed merger attempt that produced a stronger alliance.

Building Partnerships and Alliances

The practitioner’s guide: partner identification and screening, the exploratory conversation, negotiating and documenting partnership agreements, governance and decision-making structure design, and launching operational relationships effectively. Full templates: Partner Screening Matrix, Partnership Agreement Outline, Governance Design Options, Launch Checklist.

Sustaining, Navigating, and Evolving Connections Legal Advocacy and Policy Change

The long game: maintaining connection health through regular review, navigating the most common inter-organizational tensions (resource asymmetry, goal drift, communication breakdown, trust erosion), managing the relationship between organizational independence and collective commitment, evolving connections as circumstances change, and exiting partnerships well when the time comes.