Show Notes
In this episode of The First Day from The Fund Raising School, Bill Stanczykiewicz, Ed.D., welcomes Soren Kaplan, PhD, nationally regarded educator, consultant, and author, for a practical and energizing conversation about nonprofit collaboration. Drawing from Soren's 2025 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the episode asks a big question: why should fundraisers and nonprofit leaders collaborate when they already have plenty to do inside their own organizations? Soren's answer is wonderfully direct: impact. Big, tangled community challenges like food insecurity, health equity, and environmental protection are rarely solved by one organization paddling alone.
Bill and Soren explore what collaboration looks like in real nonprofit life, including examples from Points of Light and White Pony Express. Points of Light, founded by George H. W. Bush, served more than 3 million volunteers last year by building a network of nonprofits and corporate partners around shared goals. White Pony Express, meanwhile, worked with other food-security organizations in Contra Costa County to pool data, standardize information, and create a heat map showing where services were strong and where gaps remained. That shared picture helped open up new possibilities for collective action, which is nonprofit-speak for “Aha, now we can see the whole elephant instead of arguing over who is holding the trunk.”
The conversation also digs into the mechanics of making collaboration work without turning it into a bureaucratic octopus wearing reading glasses. Soren emphasizes the value of a common goal, shared data, a clearly identified community need, and an external facilitator who can help organizations move past competition and toward synergy. He also introduces the idea of “light governance,” where each nonprofit remains autonomous but agrees to align major strategies and initiatives with the broader collaborative mission. In other words, nobody has to surrender their board, mission, or identity at the door. They just agree not to wander off into the weeds while everyone else is building the road.
Bill and Soren close by connecting collaboration directly to fundraising. Donors and funders increasingly want to see innovation, scale, efficiency, and measurable impact, and a strong collaborative can often make a more compelling case than several individual organizations submitting separate appeals. Soren notes that when nonprofits pool capabilities and pursue funding together, they can sometimes access resources that would be out of reach alone, including the Measure X half-cent sales tax funding that supported underserved communities in Contra Costa County. The takeaway is clear: collaboration is not just a feel-good handshake in a conference room. Done well, it can expand impact, strengthen fundraising, build culture, and give nonprofits a better story to tell. Because when one plus one can equal five, fundraisers should probably sharpen their pencils and start doing that math.
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