COMMUNITY GRAFTING

 

Community Grafting is a partnership model that builds durable, mutually-beneficial bonds between sectors by recognizing and supplying natural incentives to each party. 

 

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE of Community Grafting is that incentives to partnership must include (and successfully compete with) the same rewards participants would pursue outside the partnership. 

 

Sustainable collaboration depends on our ability to discover and meet partners' specific short and long-term needs in ways that:  (a) reward continued investment; (b) provide mutual benefit; and (c) do not exhaust partner resources.

 

This model seeks:

 

• Participants from multiple sectors, especially the business and nonprofit communities; but equally suited are municipal and state agencies, elected officials, foundations, universities, volunteers, etc., provided compelling incentives for each partner exist within the project.

 

• Measurable gains toward objectives that are relevant to each partner's sector. Shared goals and novel measurement schemes are not essential, as the strength of the Community Grafting approach is that mutual benefits emerge from the efforts of each participant to meet his or her unique needs. Much like an ecology, the successful meeting of individuals' needs contributes to the growth and perpetuation of the system.

 

• Frank and frequent communication in a common language—one that avoids sector-specific jargon, theories and paradigms—to assure participants' goals are known and being met, and that necessary corrections are made along the way.

 

• Friendships and sustained partnerships that generate future projects with the same devotion to mutual benefit.