Partnered with the Northside

Working In Partnership

Convening partners, finding the gaps, and connecting resources is most of the job. Northside Initiative holds the plan and keeps the sectors pointed at the same blocks, in the same order.

Why it matters

No one organization can hold a neighborhood

A neighborhood is not one problem, so it cannot be one organization's job. Housing, health, work, school, food — every one of them touches the same family, usually in the same week. A nonprofit working alone can do one of those things well and still watch its work come undone by the five it does not do. The only scale that matches the problem is a network.

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”Martin Luther King Jr., written in Birmingham, 1963

Collaboration is how small organizations get large results without getting large. When partners share referrals, a family that walks in any one door reaches every service. When they share a plan, the repair crew, the tutor, and the workforce program land on the same blocks in the same season, and each one makes the others' work stick. When they share credit, funders see one coherent effort instead of a dozen competing appeals — and every dollar goes further on trust.

That is the job Northside Initiative signed up for: not to replace any partner or absorb any partner, but to keep good organizations pointed at the same streets, in a sequence that compounds. The wins belong to the neighborhood; the partnerships are how they happen.

“The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself; but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you even into eternity.”Marcus Garvey