Partnerships, collaborations, coalitions, joint ventures—there are many ways to describe what happens when organizations work together toward a common goal. Early in my career I thought this was all about aggregating resources and power—find common ground with others, gain strength in numbers, and move an issue by pushing forward together.
Reflecting on the effective partnerships that the John A. Hartford Foundation has built focused on the unique needs of older adults and the particular perils they face in our fragmented, geriatrically unprepared health care system, I have formed a new perspective. While partnerships and collaboration still conjure notions of mass and momentum in my mind, I now think of another physics concept even more: the lever.
The right partnerships can serve as powerful tools that allow your resources to go farther and create bigger movement on important issues than otherwise possible. We have several examples of this in our past work. Now we’re asking our network to help us think creatively about the new partnerships we will need going forward.
I was reminded of this concept of partnership as lever in a recent conversation with Julio Urbina, Program Director and Vice President of the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation. Half of their grant funding goes toward improving the quality of life of older adults in New York City. Julio told me the story of how his foundation wanted to improve mental health services for older adults in the city. Creating, testing, and implementing a new program was beyond their means. They could have formed a coalition of funders and providers interested in doing this.
Instead, he explored and found that the national-focused Hartford Foundation had already spent millions of dollars developing and testing the IMPACT depression treatment model, proving it to be both effective and cost-effective. In a partnership between the two foundations formed on the basis of sharing expertise and relationships (rather than a lot of money), Samuels was able to carefully steward their resources and successfully implement IMPACT in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The programs continue to make a meaningful difference in the lives of older New Yorkers.
In a similar way, the Hartford Foundation has worked with the federal government to use our relatively small resources in an outsized way. Over the past 20 years, a large part of our strategy has been to develop leaders in academic medicine, nursing, and social work who can prepare health professional trainees in critical geriatric principles. We’ve funded several faculty career development awards in aging research, often pooling resources with other foundations (in a typical “increasing mass” style). The Beeson Scholars program is one example, with outstanding results.
After 10 years of private funding for the Beeson Scholars, we formed a partnership with the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The keys to this partnership’s success were understanding each other’s limitations and strengths and identifying the value that we each could bring. The NIA has comparatively vast resources for research funding and an obvious shared interest in aging issues. The private foundations supporting Beeson Scholars had long emphasized career and leadership development activities in the form of meetings, mentoring, and communications training, which the federal government cannot support. It was a match made in heaven, and an incredible lever for the foundation. After almost another 10 years, this public-private partnership still continues, providing higher award amounts to scholars than before and continuing the program beyond what would have been possible with private funds alone.
Now, as the Hartford Foundation begins initiating new grant programs focused even more squarely on creating rapid and dramatic changes in health care delivery and practice, we need more and more powerful levers, especially considering our modest resources compared to the enormity of the health care system. We will continue to look for strategic partnerships with both larger and smaller organizations, inside and outside the aging and health field. All ideas are welcome as we continue to develop these partnerships that can serve as levers for change.