Collaboration in the Nova Scotia Non-profit Sector: shared knowledge, shared skills, shared sustainability

Abstract

Non-profit organizations face many challenges such as unstable funding, high staff turnover rates and inadequate training. These challenges are further exasperated as the need for social services increases and governments continue to download more responsibility to non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations need to collaborate with one another in order to overcome these challenges and address society’s complex problems. Benefits of collaboration include the ability to share knowledge, skills and training and reduce redundancy in efforts, which would in effect increase the overall capacity of an organization and its attractiveness to funders. Challenges to collaboration involve building trust, communication and identifying common objectives and goals. However, this paper proposes that collaboration is possible in the Nova Scotia non-profit sector, through careful design in the preliminary stages of initiation and a focus on building trust and relationships. As such, a unified non-profit sector can be the solution to issues of sustainability currently being faced by these organizations.