Chapter X7Library Technology.docx

Chapter X
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Collaboration 2.0 Robin Hastings
Chapter 2
Collaboration
A
ccording to Evan Rosen, author of The Culture Of
Collaboration, the process of collaboration can be
defined as “working together to create value while
sharing virtual or physical space.”1 The Oxford English
Dictionary Online defines collaboration as “the process
of working jointly on an activity or project.”2 Engaging in
collaboration, then, requires only a couple of people and
a plan to work on something of value.

The act of collaboration itself doesn’t require any
technology at all; collaboration can take place between
two coworkers using paper and pens in an office or
using instant messaging and a digital whiteboard online.
Collaboration can easily occur between two or more
people who have never met face-to-face. The act of col-
laborating does not need to be based on technology to be
effective, and even technological solutions won’t work if a
culture of sharing and working together is not in place to
begin with. Most of this report will focus on introducing
new ways to collaborate by using technology—but it will
not do any good if the team you are collaborating with
is not prepared to share information and work together.
A “culture of collaboration” must be in place in order to
benefit from the information in this report.
If the staff at an organization is prepared to share
information, work together on projects (and this some-
times means giving up personal credit for shared credit),
and truly collaborate on projects together, the advice in
this report will help to support those collaborative proj-
ects. Just throwing technology at a culture of individuals,
however, will not change the way things work. To create
a culture of collaboration, policies have to be in place so
that collaborating is easy and desirable. Traditional orga-
nizations reward the individual; organizations that have a
culture of collaboration reward the team. One can throw
at anyone technology that makes working together in
teams possible, but supporting that technology with poli-
cies and top-down encouragement is important. Creating
a culture that is truly collaborative is a bit beyond the
scope of this report, but the resources section can help
to ensure that the soft skills of collaboration are in place
before rolling out the tools.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Work
Collaboration can happen with everyone working together
at the same time—synchronous collaboration—or in stages,
with some people working at different times—asynchro-
nous collaboration. Technology helps with asynchronous
work—forums and message boards are great ways to com-
municate when people are working at different times of
the day, due to either time zone or scheduling issues.
Tools like instant messaging, Web conferencing, and
whiteboard sharing are more appropriate for synchronous
work, as they allow fast communication for participants in
the same virtual location. Time zones and work schedules
will dictate whether a team relies mostly on synchronous
or asynchronous tools to use in a project. While most of
the tools in this report have the ability to support both types
of communication, some are better suited for one type of
collaboration than the other. This report will help to clarify
which tools work best for a given type of collaboration.
Platforms
Before the work can start and the collaboration can begin,
all participants must agree to work on the same technolog-
ical platform—in other words, all must be using the same
tool in order to collaborate. If some people are posting
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information and images to Facebook and others are keep-
ing all of their images in Flickr, there will be issues when
it comes time to put all the data together. Ensuring that
everyone is on the same page and is using the same tool
(or tools) is actually one of the trickiest parts of techno-
logical collaboration solutions. In the past, an organiza-
tion using collaborative tools would purchase something
that would work for it, and it was usually unable to work
with another organization that used a different tool.
While to some extent, this is still an issue with 2.0-style

collaboration, the fact that use of these technologies is
often free or low-cost gives libraries a degree of flexibility
that was unimaginable in previous decades. The cost of
the tools described in this report is in time—the time it
takes to decide on a platform that everyone feels comfort-
able with and the time if takes for employees to become
proficient with the technology.
The issue of cost-effectiveness in employee work
hours illustrates one way that these tools truly are a break-
through for libraries. So many people have a Facebook or
Flickr account already in their personal lives that, in many
cases, they don’t have to learn a whole new skill set to be
able to use these tools to collaborate at work. According
to Facebook, there are more than 150 million active users
as of the beginning of 20093—and that number gets bigger
every day. Wikipedia—one of the better-known wikis in
use today—claims 153,000 active users in a single thirty-
day period.4 When you combine numbers like these with
the ever-increasing tech-savviness of modern librarians, it
is quite likely that librarians on a given collaborative team
will already be familiar with the tools they are being asked
to use. With these tools, the cost of training in employee
hours is likely to be significantly less than it has been in
previous years.
A report released in early 2009 by Compass
Intelligence details the number of business users that are
regularly using social networks.5 Of more than 10,000
working Americans surveyed in late 2008, nearly 60 per-
cent said that they were active on a social networking site.
Almost 35 percent of the respondents said that they were
registered with Facebook, the most popular site accord-
ing to the research. The conclusion of the report dis-
cusses the fact that, for the most part, the business world
is not yet taking advantage of these tools for marketing

or sales. This situation is already starting to change: com-
mercial use of social networking is likely to continue as
companies decide to take advantage of tools that their
employees are already using (see figure 1).
The good news for staff members who do not already
have an account is that the learning curve for most of
these tools is shallow. Millions of people have already
learned how to use most of the tools discussed in this
report with little or no assistance. Since these tools are
designed to be used by the general public, and have been
in great numbers, they have been tested and refined to
make their user interfaces as easy to learn as possible.
The chances that a librarian in a given organization has
already used one of these tools are very good. If this is the
case, that librarian can serve as the library’s knowledge
base and help to bring new users along quickly without
the library resorting to requests for outside help.
In chapter 6, readers will find a conceptual discus-
sion describing the inner workings of these tools and
their uses as collaborative platforms. Each tool has its
strengths and weaknesses and may be more appropriate
for one type of collaboration than for another. This infor-
mation should help librarians evaluate the tools that their
staff are already using for collaborative purposes, thus
making the process of picking a common platform much
easier. Please note that while many tools will work for the
same kind of job, the circumstances of a particular organi-
zation will be the key factor in determining which kind of
site or tool to use for a given project. Familiarity with the
site, as well as its functionality, will likely play the crucial
role in deciding which social networking site (or sites) to
use for collaborative work.

Figure 1
There are hundreds of platforms for online collaboration,
and new ones are popping up every day. [Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial shareAlike
2.0 Germany / Ludwig Gatzke / http://flickr.com/photos/
stabilo-boss/]
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Notes
1. Evan Rosen, The Culture of Collaboration (San Francisco:
Red Ape Publishing, 2007), 9.
2. Oxford English Dictionary Online, www.oed.com (accessed
Nov. 1, 2008).
3. “Statistics,” Facebook, www.facebook.com/press/info.php
?statistics (accessed March 17, 2009).

4. “Statistics,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Special:Statistics (accessed March 17, 2009).
5. Amy Cravens, “Social Science: The Business Side of
Social Networking,” Compass Intelligence, Jan. 27, 2009,
http://blog.compassintelligence.com, http://blog.compass
intelligence.com/post/2009/01/27/Social-Science-The
-Business-Side-of-Social-Networking.aspx (accessed March
17, 2009).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
Collaboration
Ludlow, Barbara
Teaching Exceptional Children; Jan/Feb 2011; 43, 3; Education
Database
pg. 4
Trust as an Asset:
Building a Managed Service Organization within MACC (A)1

In December 2002, the state of Minnesota faced a $4.5 billion
shortfall caused, as in many states,
by the national recession and the corresponding decline in tax
revenues. The newly elected
governor, Tim Pawlenty, warned that everyone would need to
share the pain – townships, cities,
counties, nonprofits and individual Minnesotans. The state’s
nonprofit sector, which had
enjoyed years of growth and a reputation for social innovation,
steeled itself for cuts. The
outlook for nonprofits was made worse by dramatic reductions
in giving from the Twin Cities
United Way and private philanthropy. Eighty-nine percent of
Minnesota Council on
Foundations membership reported asset declines that decreased
their giving.2
The state government’s crisis was exacerbated by a pledge for
no new taxes taken by the
Governor during the election. Like many Republican leaders,
Pawlenty had signed a pledge of
the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a citizens’ group that
advocates for smaller, less expensive
government and lower taxes. The message of the Taxpayers
League resonated with many
Minnesotans; polls revealed that the majority of citizens
believed that state lawmakers should
avoid increasing taxes. The League’s President David Strom
took direct credit for change public
in a state that had, historically, seen a positive role for
government. "The fact that we've been
able to, with the help of the governor, convince the majority of
Minnesotans that government is
too big, it's time to cut back -- that's the real power that we
have -- our ability to persuade

people."3
This attitude infuriated many other nonprofit leaders. Although
the League was a nonprofit
organization, to many others in the sector it represented a
philosophy that they directly opposed –
a philosophy that placed the burden for coping with scarcity on
the backs of those who already
had the least. The Minnesota Council on Nonprofits, for
example, launched an aggressive public
media campaign in 2002 to educate Minnesotans about the roles
nonprofits play in providing
public services and meeting the needs of the disadvantaged.
Other nonprofit leaders began to
develop innovative solutions in the increasing challenging fiscal
environment they faced.
Jan Berry, the new President of the Metropolitan Alliance of
Community Centers (MACC),
considered various options. A coalition of thirteen human
service providers in Minneapolis and
St. Paul, MACC would be seriously hurt by cuts coming to state
and county contracts. As Jan
studied the Taxpayers League, she saw how successful it was at
marketing its ideology, at
1 This case study was written by Jodi Sandfort and Timothy
Dykstal both of the University of Minnesota, Humphrey
Institute. Please direct comments or questions to
[email protected]
2 Minnesota Council on Foundations (2002). “Minnesota
Nonprofits, Grantmakers Explore Funding Outlook at
MCF Meeting.” Retrieved 12/11/06
http://www.mcf.org/MCF/forum/2002/mcfmeeting.htm
3 Zdechlik, Mark (2003). “Taxpayers League Puts ‘Fear of

God’ Into Lawmakers.” Minnesota Public
Radio.Retrieved 12/11/06
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/04/15_zdec
hlikm_taxpayers/
1
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.mcf.org/MCF/forum/2002/mcfmeeting.htm
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/04/15_zdec
hlikm_taxpayers/
seeming to be larger and more influential with politicians and
policy makers than it actually was.
As a nonprofit, the Taxpayers League clearly focused
strategically on marketing and systems
change. Although MACC agencies were nonprofits working
towards different ends (providing
human services), Jan realized there was much that could be
learned from the League’s approach.
They clearly articulated their value to taxpayers, funders, and
every other stakeholder. Jan
admits now, “This was a significant shift for me. I had never
thought strategically about human
service organizations before.” She knew any strategy needed to
build upon organizational assets,
moving members out of the reactive position they traditionally
had taken to fiscal uncertainty.
Jan began to focus her attention on how to grow MACC and
push it to work smarter at both the
operational and strategic levels.
A Vision of Deep Collaboration

When Jan became President in 2003, MACC was comprised
almost exclusively of agencies
established in the early 20th century and built upon the
settlement-house tradition of Jane
Addams’s Hull House (See Appendix A). The hallmark of this
approach was deep engagement
with communities to provide services and support, holistically
meeting family needs rather than
the more piece-meal service provision that dominated much of
social services in the 1970s and
1980s. While many of these agencies were exemplary service
providers, most were not
particularly strong in advocating on behalf of their communities
or mobilizing different
constituencies.
In the mid-1990s, the executive directors of these settlement
houses in St. Paul began to meet
informally to share information. By 1997, this informal
gathering had expanded to the other side
of the river, and two years later the organizations decided to
incorporate as the Metropolitan
Alliance of Community Centers (MACC). Spearheading the
founding was Tony Wagner, the
prominent leader of Pillsbury United Communities. “I had tried
for ten years to get something
together,” Tony recalls. “I realized that, as non-profits, we had
to get bigger to command
respect. Otherwise, we were going to get nickel and dimed to
death.” At first, MACC hired a
part-time operations director and over the next few years,
provided some management and
leadership training, formed affinity groups for some staff to
encourage peer learning, and hosted
a few joint conferences.

The biggest idea they explored, however, was for all of the
agencies to provide a single health-
benefits package to their employees. The attraction of such an
idea was obvious - health care is
the biggest expense in any benefits package for employers;
health care costs and premiums were
rising; and the complexity of program choices is challenging
even for experienced human
resource professionals. Why not pool the expertise of the
various MACC agencies and arrive at
one streamlined, more efficient plan? Why not collaborate on
the item that promised the biggest
savings, the soonest? Yet, initial attempts to share health
benefits failed. According to Tony
Wagner, the effort didn’t succeed because executive directors,
rather than human resource
professionals, led the charge; they tried to negotiate deals but
did not understand the details of
the packages. There was also the reality that health benefits
were a charged topics within many
organizations. Some agency boards of directors had preferences
for particular providers and
some employees resisted the idea of the change. In the end, the
leaders did not relish the idea of
confronting their employees over one of their prized benefits.
MACC backed away from shared
health, but worked out a common package for disability and life
insurance benefits.
2
By 2003, MACC was ready to build upon their small successes
and expand its reach. They hired

Jan Berry into a new position of President. It was not a risky
decision. Jan, who had directed a
Minneapolis-based youth services organization, was known in
the community for her innovative
programming, her long-term vision, her ability to connect the
dots and make relevant
connections between the challenges of practice and larger ideas.
In short, she was what one
colleague termed “an innovator of high order.” At the same
time, the board knew that by hiring
Jan they were asking for change. From the start, Jan make clear
her intent to steer the alliance to
an unprecedented level of collaboration. In Jan’s eyes, the
board was, “A bunch of guys who
wanted to change, but didn’t know how.” MACC had received a
small grant of $30,000 for
strategic planning but were unsure of how to spend it. There
were a number of questions on the
table that kept surfacing for the Board. Should MACC remain
small and relatively nimble, with
all its essential functions retained by its individual agencies?
Or did MACC have to be bigger to
exploit economies of scale? Should it grow? And, if so, in
what direction?
During the first months of her tenure, Jan began to
systematically explore these questions,
spending a day with each member agency, asking questions and
listening to responses. Through
these conversations, she learned that these agencies shared a “a
very beautiful set of values” –
that their work was neighborhood-based, focused on the poor
and disadvantaged and that they
were passionate that it should create social change by
combating prejudice and teaching
tolerance. These values and passion grew directly from the

settlement-house tradition and were
an asset that MACC could use to enrich the collaboration. Once
articulated, these values became
a touch-stone to appeal to when the going got tough. And it
was tough. Despite the espoused
values of collaboration and the small, early achievements, there
was considerable distrust among
the agency leaders. They were, at base, competitors in the
tough environment for public
contracts, staff talent, and private funding.
To curb the distrust, Jan interviewed the CEOs during her first
few months and deliberately
asked what they thought about each other, then shared their
opinions with each other. The
technique, which Jan borrowed from family-systems theory, was
meant to lower barriers to
communication and take power away from what was not being
said. Jan recalls, “I told them
things that they wouldn’t tell themselves.” Then, at the 2003
annual meeting, she challenged
each leader to publicly recognize an asset that another executive
director brought to the
collaboration. “It was uncomfortable for them to hear good
things about themselves,” Jan
recalls, “but they all did it, and they all loved it.”
From Jan’s perspective, trust was an essential foundation upon
which other innovations could be
built. As Jan thought more strategically, she realized that the
MACC human service providers
resembled a credit-card company in the late 1960s that,
ultimately, became Visa International.4
Initially, the industry was failing as banks undercut each other
in pursuit of the lowest-common
customer. Each bank had to administer its card individually,

creating high costs and razor-thin
profits. What VISA provided was a way to centralize the
payment process and de-centralize its
marketing, encouraging banks to “create, price, market, and
service their own products under the
Visa name.” While the card adheres to certain common
standards and each bank honors the
other’s card, banks continued to compete for customers. In
short, member banks had to be
intensely competitive and intensely cooperative at the same
time. Jan recognized that the
individual agencies that made up MACC were in much the same
situation the banks before the
4 Dee Hock, The Birth of the Chaortic Age (1999) reviewed in
Michael M. Waldrop, “The Trillion-Dollar Vision of
Dee Hock.” Fast Company, October 1996, 5:75.
3
“birth” of VISA International: performing the same social
good, serving the same kinds of
clients, but distrustful of each other and fearful of change.
As the agencies worked together to craft common disability and
life insurance policies, they hit a
stumbling block which provide an important test to their
evolving collaboration. When agency
staff explored different options, it seemed that many involved
large financial differentials; some
organizations would save money from the pooled benefits plan,
while others would need to pay
significantly more. The MACC board considered what to do.

They ultimately decided that any
initiative needed to be financially neutral for all agencies;
some organizations would need to
sacrifice short-term savings to assure that their partners would
not have to shoulder the additional
costs. As Jan recalls, “It was a transformational moment when
they began to see a larger
common good and move beyond merely ‘what was in it for
me.’”
These conversations sparked another idea – why not develop a
“common backroom” or managed
service organization (MSO), whereby participating agencies
would cut costs by sharing
administrative functions like finance, human resources, and
information technology. [See
Appendix B] Yet, when Jan followed up with CEOs, the idea
was met with a tepid response.
Rather than pushing the idea, Jan began to consider how to grow
the organizational membership
of MACC, particularly with agencies that shared the core values
and brought other key skills in
the areas of community organizing and marketing which would
enable MACC to move more
strategically in the policy environment. In 2004, five agencies
accepted MACC’s invitation to
join, including the ARC Hennepin Carver, which works with
disabled people; the Tubman
Family Alliance, an anti-family violence group; and Family and
Children’s Services (FCS), a
large social-services agency in Minneapolis. The growth added
diversity to MACC as well as
fresh perspectives. While all but one of the original agencies
were headed by men, the new
additions were led by women. Not everyone, though, was

entirely pleased with the growth.
Brad Englund, CEO of Loring-Nicollet Bethlehem Community
Centers in Minneapolis, liked the
shared missions and goals of the original group. “We all came
out of the settlement-house
tradition, and we all served low-income families,” he says. “We
had similar histories. The
organizations that were joining us are fine organizations, but
they changed the nature of the
alliance.” One of the new organizations, for example, focused
programs on adolescents, alone,
rather than their whole families. Another organization’s niche
historically had been mental
health services. As a result, its culture was more professional,
bureaucratic, “beige” in contrast
to the more informal and “colorful” culture that existed in the
settlement house organizations.
These differences brought into sharp relief questions about what
held MACC together. Molly
Greenman, CEO of Family and Children’s Services, explains
what drew her to the collaboration.
“I had been through the ‘collaboration craze’ of the 1990s,” she
says. “It was all funder-driven,
and not necessarily effective. I was looking to partner with
people with whom we had a
relationship.” In fact, Molly maintains, the quality of the
relationship might trump other factors
in building the alliance, like similar programs or the need to
cultivate strengths where her agency
itself was weak. “We need to work with others who shared our
values.”
However, it was difficult to represent this internal relationship
building – and the strength that

came out of it – to MACC’s funders. While Minnesota enjoys a
relatively rich and diverse
philanthropic community, foundations are drawn to programs
because they provide a tangible
sense of accomplishments as a result of a grant. Investing in
operations infrastructure or
4
community building among agencies does not have not have the
same appeal. From the funder
perspective, MACC’s appeal was like that of a trade
association: an organization, separate from
but constituted by its individual members, that offers its
members a range of services that they
can take or leave. Trade associations also often have a policy
advocacy function that MACC
was interested in building. In this environment, foundations
knew that cost-savings were in
order and that one way to reach them would be to share
infrastructure. The idea of a “common
backroom” had some appeal and a number of funders
encouraged MACC to pursue it, in keeping
with the trade-association model.
Yet Jan and Tony Wagner intuitively felt that such a model
would not sustain MACC in the
long-term. MACC’s membership did not want it to become a
service provider. They cherished
the social missions of their organizations and expected their
collaboration to cherish it as well.
The emerging practices of MACC, where executive directors of
member agencies served on the
board and agency staff participate in affinity groups, required

organizations to invest more of
their time and energy than a trade association required.
MACC’s structure also was quite
different than a trade association model where centralized
decision-making creates efficiencies.
For MACC member agencies, the value added of the
collaboration was as much in effectiveness
as efficiency. As Tony Wagner said, “For nonprofits, our
bottom line is service to the
community. Our return to customers is this service that is built
upon relationships.” Unlike a
simple trade association, MACC had to be efficient where it
matters and effective where it
matters. It had to be big in administration and public policy
and small in program offerings. It
had, in Tony’s formulation—a formulation that got written into
every grant proposal and
mentioned, like a mantra, at every board meeting —“We need to
be big where big matters and
small where small matters.” This articulation of values allowed
the Board to consider new
choices for the growing collaboration.
So while the private funding community was encouraging
MACC to assume a trade association
model, its leadership realized their emerging model was much
more complex. And more
difficult to explain. There were some good reasons, though, to
explore the idea of a “common
backroom.” However, forming a managed service organization
would be far more nuanced than
merely throwing together the operational departments of
different agencies and hoping that they
would get along.
Drawing Upon Technical Consultants

The MACC leadership decided to take a first steps in exploring
this idea. They hired a large
consulting firm with a nonprofit department that was well-
respected in the foundation
community. The firm had the trust of MACC’s board. The
consultants began by assessing the
potential of using the managed service organization to create an
independent, fully formed
MACC organization. They then convened the board for a
planning meeting so that they could
“…articulate their hopes and concerns” about the MSO idea.
Finally, they reviewed MACC’s
financials to try to ascertain the point at which the MSO became
a self-sustaining entity that
would allow MACC to be financially viable.
By December 2003, they presented their report to the board.
They restated the assumption that
had framed their analysis – that MACC would form as a
separate, full-scale management service
organization and gradually assume all the operational functions
of its member agencies. The
core of this idea was that MACC would become the common
backroom for what had been
separate finance, human resources, and informational
technology departments, and would be the
5
central employer of the staff performing these roles. Overtime,
the MACC budget would need to
grow from $350,000 to more than $5 million. Like a trade
association, it would price its services

to member agencies at prevailing market rates: HR services at
$525 per year per employee, for
instance, and financial services at 1% of the agency’s previous
year revenues. Following the
“big where it matters and small where it matters” dictum, the
consultant model proposed both
centralizing strategic decision-making and keeping day-to-day
administrative functions local. In
human resource management, for example, decisions about staff
training, hiring coordination,
and benefits administration would be centralized while
functions like issuing payroll checks or
tracking services would remain with the member organizations.
Above all, the analysis made
two central assumptions: 1) that a critical mass of MACC-
agencies would quickly assent to the
new, centralized system, and 2) that those agencies would
financially support the migration. The
final report also concluded that without these assumptions the
model as proposed was “not
sustainable.” For cost savings to appear, many agencies needed
to migrate to the new system by
2007. Yet there was little that could be done to absorb the
upfront or defray costs of the
migration.
Staff at the Loring-Nicollet Bethlehem Community Centers
analyzed the viability for their
organization and concluded that the costs far outweighed the
benefits. “We already have a
streamlined staff,” Brad Englund insists. “We had made cuts.”
Now, in order for the MSO to be
viable, this new model required Loring-Nicollet to make more
staff cuts and turn over some of
its middle-management capacity to a third entity. Dan
Hoxworth also had deep misgivings about

the model. “It required that we hire new staff and train them—
and the operating cost after all
that was still high. It just wasn’t showing economic savings.”
While still believing in the
essential idea, Tony Wagner realized that the consultant report
exposed the difference between
outsider funders’ assumptions and those of the MACC
membership. “We sold the MSO idea on
efficiency. But outsiders equate efficiency with cost savings,
and they were not immediately
apparent” in this early model. Perhaps most importantly, the
model did not reflect one of the
fundamental values of MACC, one that Jan Berry had spent so
much time developing – that all
organizations had an equal space at the collaborative table.
Under the proposal, larger
organizations were the only ones who would benefit from the
transition. “We knew that the
‘winners’ in any consolidation effort had to share their
winnings, so that the ‘losers’ could
benefit,” says Hoxworth. “The gains to some had to be reduced,
so that others could do all right.”
Deepening the Relationships
As the consultants did their analysis, Jan continued to build the
relationships among MACC
agencies, working a different levels within each. The Board
meetings, for example, were
changed so that every other month focused on learning topics
rather than just business. This
change allows leaders to begin to grapple with deeper issues
together. As Dan Hoxworth
observes, “In MACC, we truly get at compromise and the level
of our discussions are
real…people are honest about where their conflicts are.” Such a

process changed his own
expectation of collaborative groups. When asked to be a leader
of a Council of Agency
Executives for the United Way, Dan relied directly upon his
MACC experience to help him be
more effective as a collaborative leader. Molly Greenman
reflects, “We (executive directors)
give each other courage. We know our values, and we respect
each other. We help each other
be our best in leadership, culture, values.”
The affinity groups of other staff members also gained traction.
The Human Resource,
Financial, Information Technology and youth program staff
began to come together regularly to
6
reduce their own isolation and share knowledge and good ideas.
For many, this was the first
time there was a structure to facilitate peer learning and they
used that resource to improve what
they did each day. Some program staff began to work on joint
programs together and share
information about communities needs. There seemed to be
increasing benefits at all levels of the
organizations from working more collaboratively.
Back to the Drawing Board
In spite of the real limitations of the consultant report, a small
group of MACC leaders continued
to be interested in the MSO idea. No action was taken for seven
or eight months. Yet, the idea

was still percolating. Could they, for example, cut back on the
functions and start by sharing
only financial operations or information technology? Jan also
began to realize that this idea did
not have to become the defining aspect of MACC. Tony
Wagner credits that as one of her most
important contributions to keeping the collaboration alive. “Jan
taught us that we didn’t all have
to jump in at the same time.”
Jan began to bring together the small group of executive
directors who remained interested in the
idea. They, in turn, decided to give it to a committee of the
chief financial officers (CFO) from
six organizations, who had formed relationships through an
affinity group, and were intrigued by
the problem. Somehow, they felt certain that an alternative
model could be developed. By late
2004, the CFO group was ready to present their analysis to the
MACC board.
First, they critiqued the consultant model. Stan Birnbaum, CFO
from Family and Children’s
Services, described how the model had relied upon an implied
three-fold division of
administrative services. As figure one illustrates, the
foundational level focuses primarily on
tactical and transactional activities of day-to-day operations: in
financial management, this is
doing accounts-payable tasks; in human resource management
doing payroll or tracking
personnel files. The middle level, “professional practice,”
consists of those middle managers
who implement professionally guided “best practices” in a
particular area: in financial
management, doing investment; in human resources, creating

performance appraisal systems.
Finally, the top level really focuses on strategic management,
fundamentally setting the course
for how that functional area will be carried out. In the
committee’s assessment, nearly all
MACC organizations—some just traditionally, and some
because of the funding crisis—had
severely compromised these three roles across many
management areas. The consultant’s
model, in fact, required that they further compromise their
middle management by outsourcing
responsibilities to the MSO. The committee began with a
different assumption. If the MSO was
going to add value to MACC organizations, it needed to offer
services at the tactical/
transactional level where organizations face significant
challenges in finding staff and managing
risks. Without the distractions of the day-to-day, agencies
would be better poised to use their
managerial talent. By providing nuts and bolts services, this
approach might well allow the
MSO to enable the organizations to, in the words of Stan
Birnbaum, “solve problems together
that they can’t take on alone.” Yet, it would not probably result
in immediate cost savings.
7
Figure One: Division of roles within each functional
management area
tactical/

transactional
professional
practice
strategic
Second, the committee recast the proposition of the MSO itself.
Rather than being a means to
reducing costs, the whole effort was presented as a means to
reduce risk and improve talent
management in the functional areas. Operational efficiencies
might well result and, over the
longer-term, at larger scale, they could produce cost savings.
Yet, that was not the focus of the
initiative. Third, the committee provided two options for MSO
implementation. The first,
“steady-state” model focused on the implementation of one
functional area at a time and allowed
for a highly controlled, orderly implementation of a full-scale
MSO (See Figure 2):
Figure Two: Steady state implementation
39
Service 1 (HR) ProductionDesign Ramp-up
Year 1 Year 2
Service 2 (tbd) Design Ramp-up Production
Service 3 (tbd) Design Ramp-up Production

etc.
The steady-state model might involve hiring new people, or it
might mean simply moving staff
from an existing MACC agency to the new MSO. But any
hiring would follow a careful design
process whereby the MSO would decide which services to offer
its member agencies, one by
one, and then decide how to staff that service. The second
option was a “rapid-rollout” or
“smooshed” model. This model took the existing administrative
functions of two or more
MACC agencies and combined them (see Figure Three). New
staff would not need to be hired,
but existing staff needed to be willing to work with staff outside
of their current organizations.
8
Figure 3: Smooshed model of implementation
Org 1
admin
Org 2
admin
Org 3
admin

stage 1
Org 1
adminOrg 2
adminOrg 3
admin
stage 2
New org
stage 3
A third alternative existed, although it was not discussed much
in the deliberations. In a “staff-
pooling” model, organizations simply shared existing staff
between them. Neighborhood House,
for example, had an existing relationship to share human
resources personnel with Minneapolis’s
East Side Neighborhood Services. One staff member would
work part-time at each agency.
While Jan had encouraged this kind of sharing, others on the
MACC Board thought it drained
time and energy from the development of a “true” MSO.
In all of these options, though, were not focused on reducing
costs. The steady-state model was
less risky but more costly than the smooshed model: less risky
because the MSO would closely
examine each service before it offered that service, more costly
because close examination took
time and money. The smooshed model was faster and cheaper
but riskier. By throwing together
existing staffs, the model saved on start-up costs; however, it

was not clear whether it would
provide long-term cost savings. That uncertainty, in fact, was
one of the risks, as was the
potential loss of productivity that could result as existing
employees were required to retool,
learned new jobs, and begin to work with a different group of
professionals. Because the agency
CEOs did not want to terminate any staff in the transition, the
benefits of an MSO would be
experienced in the greater redundancy and expertise offered by
a consolidated staff, not in lower
costs. There was a chance that money might be saved in the
long run, but only if enough
agencies joined early enough to offer economies of scale.
The committee noted other risks inherent in both models, risks
that could be minimized by the
third option of the simple staff-pooling model approach:
1. Joining an MSO meant that individual agencies had to give
up control of their financial,
human resource, and information technology systems to a third
entity that they had little
control over. The MSO would not be just a vendor of these
services to its participants.
Agencies would need to be jointly liable through a limited
liability corporation (LLC).
2. Agencies that joined the MSO would find it difficult to get
out of it once they got in. The
LLC would create a hefty exit penalty.

9
3. The MSO would stipulate that participants would have to buy
or contribute to the offering of
all three services—finance, human resources, and information
technology—even if those
services were staged in how they came “on line” (via the
steady-state approach).
4. Contributing resources to the MSO would lower the resources
available to individual
agencies, making it more difficult for CEOs to balance their
budgets.
5. In change of this sort, there are always risks involving
personnel. Would agencies’ cultures
clash? Would their people? Who would supervise MSO
employees, especially if they were
hired before a chain of command was in place?
The MACC board now faced a critical decision. Should the
organization move forward on one
of the three models? Or should it, instead, focus on other areas
of collaboration that had cropped
up as potentially important? To become more effective in
shaping the state political
environment, like the Taxpayer’s League, they needed to do
public education, and make their
values and their programming more visible to the public and
policy decision makers. The

MACC public policy committee was proposing an initiative to
do just that by encouraging
agency clients to register and vote in elections. There also was
a partnership with a large local
realty company in the works that would focus on promoting
home ownerships among MACC
agency clients. There were many ways that MACC could
continue to collaborate and work
toward being big where it matters and small where it matters.
However, the current
environment, with limited funding and a charged political
polarization, required that they make a
purposive and strategic decision around the MSO issue.
10
Appendix A
MACC’s Mission, June 2002:
To assist individuals and families to achieve greater self-
sufficiency by strengthening the
capacity of community-based social service organizations.
Membership:
Minneapolis
St. Paul
*Pillsbury United Communities *Neighborhood House
*Phyllis Wheatley Community Center *West 7th Community
Center
*Plymouth Christian Youth Center *Merriam Park Community

Services
*Eastside Neighborhood Services *Merrick Community Services
*Sabathani Community Center Hallie Q. Brown/Martin Luther
King Center
*Loring Nicollet-Bethlehem Community
Centers
*Confederation of Somali Community in
Minnesota
Neighbor to Neighbor
MACC’s Mission in 2006:
Unleashing the connective power of communities to build their
own future.
Membership:
Minneapolis
St. Paul
*Pillsbury United Communities *Neighborhood House
*Phyllis Wheatley Community Center *West 7th Community
Center
*Plymouth Christian Youth Center *Merrick Community
Services
*Eastside Neighborhood Services *Keystone Community
Services
*Sabathani Community Center Hallie Q. Brown/Martin Luther
King Center
*Loring Nicollet-Bethlehem Community
Centers

*Confederation of Somali Community in
Minnesota
Arc-Hennepin Carver
The City, Inc.
Family and Children’s Service
LDA Minnesota
Life’s Missing Link
Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center
Tubman Family Alliance
Way to Grow
* denotes organizations that developed from a settlement house
history.
11
Appendix B: Other Managed Service Organizations (MSOs)
One of the early memos from the consulting firm hired in early
2004 to assess the viability of a
single managed service organization (MSO) for MACC, claimed
that “no such model . . . exists
either locally or nationally.” Yet how could that be true?
In the world of health care (which, in Minnesota, remains non-
profit), “managed services
organizations” are not uncommon. Many hospitals, for
example, sell their payroll or billing
services to the smaller providers with whom they work, doing
the more complicated and more
costly tasks that they would otherwise have to do for

themselves. In other nonprofits, a MSO
may step in as third-party organizations to provide temporary
management or management
consulting services for organizations in need of help. Yet,
MSOs have been largely overlooked
in the professional literature.
Yet, neither for-profit nor non-profit MSOs have been much
analyzed in the professional
literature. Arsenault (1998) surveys the risks and costs of the
various alliances available to non-
profits, from a joint venture to a merger, and including MSOs;
and Golensky and Walker
describe a rehabilitation services provider that formed a
separate non-profit “to achieve greater
efficiency and effectiveness by providing management and
administrative services to other
organizations” (2003: 68), a description that, however broad,
sounds close to what MACC was
trying to do with its MSO.
In a briefing paper, La Piana consulting firm concede that non-
profit MSOs “are not very
common.” (Coy & Yoshida, no date). From their view of the
field, three other options exist
other than an MSO for organizations that want to share or
consolidate functions:
“administrative collaboration,” “administrative consolidation,”
and contracting with external
service providers. Of these options, MSOs are the most formal
arrangements of all because in
this model an entirely new organization is formed and a
governance structure must be developed.
The promise of an MSO is that all participating organizations
must come to be on the same page.
The peril of an MSO—as the MACC development team had

identified in their analysis at the end
of 2004—is that getting everyone on the same page may be
more trouble, and take more money,
than it is worth. La Piana briefing thus concludes that
“successful MSOs typically have a
mission related to serving a specific community.”
So perhaps the consulting-firm memo was right: the MACC was
venturing out into uncharted
waters by considering the implementation of an MSO based
upon and focused on solidifying the
collaborations they were development among human service
providers in the Twin Cities. Yet,
although MACC members did share a broad set of (settlement-
house) values, did that provide a
strong enough base to move forward in early 2005?
References
Arsenault, Jane (1998). Forging Nonprofit Alliances: A
Comprehensive Guide to Enhancing Your Mission
Through Joint Ventures and Partnerships, Management Service
Organizations, Parent Corporations, Mergers. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Coy, Bill and Vance Yoshida. “Administrative Collaborations,
Consolidations, and MSOs.” La Piana Associates,
Inc. Retrieved 1/8/07
http://www.lapiana.org/downloads/Admin_Partnerships_briefing
_paper.pdf
Golensky, Martha and Margaret Walker (2003).
“Organizational Change—Too Much, Too Soon?” Journal of
Community Practice 11(2). 67-82.

12
http://www.lapiana.org/downloads/Admin_Partnerships_briefing
_paper.pdf
Trust as an Asset:
The MACC Alliance for Connected Communities (B)1
As the board of the Metropolitan Alliance of Community
Centers considered whether or not to
pursue the vision of a managed service organization in the tight,
fiscal environment facing
Minnesota nonprofits, there were many trade-offs to consider.
While the managed service
organization (MSO) idea had taken up much of their time
recently, there were others projects,
other means of collaboration, that could yield benefits with less
effort. The MSO was such a big
idea, after all, that most of the 17 MACC agencies paled in
front of it. If the real purpose of
MACC was to deepen the idea of collaboration, perhaps time
would be better spent moving
ahead on its public policy platform. In fact, the alliance had
found rare unanimity on the issue of
voter engagement. It could use the close contacts that its
agencies had cultivated among
underserved, underrepresented populations to educate people
about the importance of voting and
to turn out the vote in greater numbers. This program could be
brought on line much less
expensively than the consolidation of administrative functions;
the budget for the 2004

“Community Power Vote” campaign was only $79,500.
Alternatively, MACC could devote more resources to an
innovative partnership developing with
Edina Realty, a large, locally owned real-estate firm that, in its
own field, faced many of the
same threats and opportunities as MACC. For example, Edina
Realty realized that the ethnic
composition of its sale force, like the managers and line staff of
MACC, did not mirror the Twin
Cities at large; they wanted more diversity to both expand their
business and better serve their
existing customers. Just as MACC was an alliance of
independent agencies who grew stronger
when they articulated common goals, Edina was an alliance of
independent contractors who
gained credibility by associating with a greater whole. If the
fundamental purpose of a human-
service agency, was to get people out of poverty, why not work
through a realty company to
make it more possible for poor people to buy their own homes?
The benefit of the partnership to
Edina Realty was more customers; the benefit to MACC was
greater exposure and new way to
further its mission
While Jan Berry and the MACC Board continued to explore
these options, however, the sheer
promise of the MSO continued to be compelling. But what kind
of MSO? In a perfect world
with unlimited time and money, the steady-state model for
implementation had many strengths.
It selected just the right system for each task and carefully built
consensus among the member
agencies around those systems. But funds were not unlimited.
In a less-than-perfect world

where time was of the essence, the “smooshed” model of
implementation was more realistic. To
save money, the board decided to select a system for each
function—one financial system, for
example, and one information technology platform—and to
require each agency to adopt it. In
January 2005, six agencies—Pillsbury United Communities,
Family and Children’s Services,
1 This case study was written by Jodi Sandfort and Timothy
Dykstal, both of the University of Minnesota,
Humphrey Institute. Please direct comments or questions to
[email protected]
1
Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, Plymouth Christian Youth
Center, Tubman Family
Alliance, and MACC itself—signed on to the smooshed model
of an MSO and began detailed
planning to start operations one year later.
Notably, this “early adoptor” group also did not include
Neighborhood House, one of MACC’s
most involved members. The hesitation did not come from a
lack of appreciation of the design
or the strength of the collaboration. Rather, the organization
was in the middle of moving into a
brand new, 93,000 square foot community and administrative
center. “The logistics that we
were dealing with were huge,” remembers Dan Hoxworth,
Neighborhood House’s President. “It
wasn’t time to take on anything.” By May 2005, the early
adopter group also had lost one of its
members: the Tubman Family Alliance. Because of financial

stressors, Tubman could not find
the resources to participate in the experiment. Tubman also had
wavered from the start about the
decision to implement in the smooshed rather than the steady-
state model; it wanted the best to
begin with and felt uncomfortable with the incremental
approach.
Planning the Details of Implementation
The leadership did not under-estimate the amount of work that
needed to be accomplished to
realize this vision. The five agency CEOs began to meet every
other week to decide on the
structural details and puzzle out the legal status of the MSO.
CFOs from the agencies divided up
other design details: Stan Birnbaum took the lead in selecting
an information technology
platform. Two other CFOs from the original design group, Dan
Ursin, from Pillsbury United
Communities, and Mike Johnson from Plymouth Christian
Youth Center each, respectively,
assumed the leadership of developing the financial system and
human resource policies.
While cost-savings was not the initial goal, the leadership
wanted to contain costs. The CFO
group knew that complexity drove up costs and that some
savings would be felt as they
implemented a single system. For example, the agencies
ultimately would save money as they
moved from five financial statements to one. As a result, they
recommended an aggressive
schedule for co-locating the MSO staff and move the systems
changes forward. This would be
the first step towards a pricing model that ultimately would help

the budding MSO break even on
the services it was providing its members. There were also
design questions to consider. Some
services could be provided on a “flat fee” basis: the MSO
would charge its members a
percentage of some factor, like their annual budgets, to provide
them. Other services could be
provided on a “professional” basis, with charges based on
planned or actual time spent. The
functional services, though, really influenced how the price
would be set. Finance services were
easy to define: basic financial management services were flat
fee, but any kind of analysis,
forecasting, or research would be charged professionally.
Technology services were more
difficult. If a senior manager were engaged in defining IT
“governance” issues, for example,
was that a flat-fee task, or a professional one?
Over the longer term, though, it seemed that costs should
decrease. The economies of scale and
reductions in complexity that the MSO achieved should allow it
to provide member services
more efficiently and reduce the price charged to members.
Outside vendors (in areas like
telecommunications) might be persuaded to charge less for their
services. The MSO also might
reduce the risk that any one of its member agencies might be
defrauded by a service provider.
Yet, for the MACC leadership, the MSO concept was never only
about saving money.
Fundamentally, the experiment focused upon collaboration and
the deeper lessons—about trust,
2

sharing, and community—that could result. Whatever long-term
savings would eventually
result, they believed, would probably come from fundamental
changes in operations because of
the collaboration itself. In spring 2006, more than a full year
after the process of consolidation
began, the MACC leaders issued a “fact sheet” that put this
principle most succinctly: “The
theory behind the MSO is that the cost of operating sub-
optimally is higher than investing in
efficiency.” In other words, the initial costs where not as
significant as the eventual costs of not
investing in the MSO.
In addition to these concerns about operations and cost, the
implementation planning groups
grappled with the human challenges of consolidation. All
recognized the challenges inherent in
trying to “smoosh” people used to working in a variety of
organizations, with their unique
missions, chains of commands, and cultures. Unless handled
carefully, legal action could result
when different supervisors took over. As Tony Wagner, CEO of
Pillsbury United Communities,
worried, “What if one of my employees doesn’t like the
performance evaluation that he or she
gets from Stan?” As a member of the MSO, however, Tony
realized that he needed to support
the new management and structure, even at the risk of alienating
longstanding and loyal
employees. As Stan adds, “Probably one of our biggest lessons
is that trust and the shared
culture that we were creating is a critical, essential resource.”

Throughout the summer and into the fall of 2005, the two upper-
management teams—the CEOs
and the CFOs—continued to meet, the CEOs weighing the
strengths and weaknesses of various
legal structures, the CFOs selecting systems and ironing out
details of the move. In September
2005, the CEOs created a joint ventures agreement that
specified important details. There was,
for example, a clause that allowed each participant to leave the
partnership until July 1, 2006
without any financial penalty. It also created a formal advisory
group with two representatives
from each of the founding agency boards of director in addition
to the CEO. The group also
realized that they needed to better market the creative synergy
occurring. Rather than calling
their creation a “managed service organization,” they decided to
call it the MACC
“Commonwealth,” a name that conveyed all the richness of the
collaboration.
The MACC board, as a whole, also considered the overall cost
of the MSO and ongoing
operations for the collaboration. The all committed themselves
to raising money jointly for both
components, relying upon relationships with foundations and
other donors that supported their
home agencies. Over three years, they estimated that the
Commonwealth would cost between
$900,000 to $1 million, allowing for costs that would occur
when additional organizations joined
the effort. The launched a formal campaign and were pleased
when the Otto Bremer
Foundation, a modest-sized foundation in St. Paul, stepped
forward to invest $300,000 in the

Commonwealth over three years. It was, as one leader noted,
“…a real stretch for them.” This
investment encouraged other, more sizable local foundations to
contribute to the campaign.
The “Smoosh” Begins
As long as the work remained at the planning stage, it was
possible to idealize it. But when the
time came, in November 2005, to actually select a physical
space for the new organization, it
quickly became clear that simply calling it the
“Commonwealth” did not mean that the move
would be painless. There was no space at either Plymouth
Christian Youth Center or Phyllis
Wheatley. The choice seemed to boil down to a Pillsbury
United Communities facility in North
Minneapolis or the downtown offices of Family and Children’s
Services. The north
3
Minneapolis facility had ample parking but was cramped inside.
The downtown site had more
space, but many employees from the other agencies were
uncomfortable with the downtown
location and did not want to pay for parking. Moving the
Commonwealth to the site also would
require some long-time Family and Children’s Services staff to
move and they expressed
opposition. To make the final decision, the CEO team chose to
consider cost containment as
their overriding priority; in the end, they chose the downtown,
Family and Children’s Services

space and established a March 2006 date for the move.
The downtown space needed remodeling and, as the work
commenced, the reality of the MSO
began to become clear to larger number of staff. The
complaints increased. Many staff began to
worry that the new administrative consolidation would result in
layoffs. The CEOs, however,
had decided early on that they owed their longstanding
employees the same consideration as the
clients that they served and adopted a ‘no layoff’ policy. Yet,
the rumors continued to swirl.
When the physical move occurred in March, the CFOs (who
themselves moved to the new
location)—Stan Birnbaum, Mike Johnson, and Dan Ursin—
realized that simply smooshing
people would not automatically create a coherent, efficient
organization. To aid the transition,
they carried it out in various stages. First, the staff continued
to carry out their old
responsibilities, just in the new, shared space. A consultant was
hired to assist in team-building
and begin to create a shared culture for the Commonwealth,
even working with a set of Legos so
that staff teams could construct an image of what the new
organization should be. These efforts
paid off, and slowly but surely, people began to feel themselves
less employees of their home
agencies and more employees of the Commonwealth. Yet, the
transition did not work for
everyone; one 19-year employee of one the agencies decided to
leave fueled, in part, because of
her dissatisfaction with the MSO.
In the meantime, the Advisory Board group continued to work

on identifying a legal structure
beyond the joint venture agreement that could both allow for a
full collaboration and protect the
assets of individual agencies. No such structure existed. The
Commonwealth needed to create
one and the stakes seemed high. As the CEOs analyzed the
problem, they had four options.
They could simply retain the joint venture agreement, as
skeletal as it was. They could create a
new, 501(c)(3) corporation: a new non-profit, to mirror the
legal structure of their existing
agencies. Alternatively, they could create a new, limited
liability corporation (LLC) with MACC
as the sole member. Finally, they could create a new, LLC
whose members were the current
MSO members. All of the options, though, felt scary for the
leaders. As Jan Berry remembers,
“each (person) had a moment of ‘remind me again of why we
are doing this.’ They needed each
other to remind them and bring them back into the fold.”
While all options provided significant differences, some were
more significant than others. The
Advisory Board could tolerate a less-favorable tax situation,
they reasoned, but the new legal
entity had to support the transfer of assets from their home
agencies to the Commonwealth. Jan
explained:
“Our Board makes its decisions on the general principle of one
organization, one vote.
But shares in the Commonwealth are based on how much each
agency contributes to the
whole. Our members, at least our bigger members, had to have
some assurance that their

assets would be protected: that they would get out of the new
organization what they put
into it. Without that legal assurance, they would not have
joined.”
4
Based on this analysis, the CEOs decided on the fourth option:
a new LLC owned by its
individual members. That new LLC was formally incorporated
in the state of Delaware, because
Minnesota law did not allow non-profits to be constituted as
LLCs, on January 3, 2007.
Throughout the on-the-ground development of the
Commonwealth, the leadership understood
they were wrestling, not just with occupying physical spaces or
merging corporate cultures: they
were wrestling with maintaining the loyalty of their employees’
hearts and minds. After all,
many people work for non-profit agencies —often for less pay
than they can get in the private,
for-profit or public sectors–because they are true believers in
the agency’s mission. As Stan
Birnbaum put it, “People just hunger for participating in an
organization that has value.” The
real danger of constituting the Commonwealth as a new LLC, a
new corporation, was that in
asking new employees to affiliate fully with a generic
organization whose mission was merely
administrative, the Commonwealth’s managers would kill the
passion and larger good that
motivated their employees, in the first place. “This is high

risk,” Stan added. “If we really
tamper with what holds them here then we have wrecked the
whole thing. What keeps these
people in the non-profit sector is their heart. We must keep
their hearts engaged with the
mission.”
In the longer term, financial statements will prove whether the
Commonwealth is realizing any
financial savings. In the transitional stage, however, how will
the leaders know if the
Commonwealth is a success? Tony Wagner has a simple
answer. “The Commonwealth will be
a success if it attracts new members.” Molly Greenman agrees;
growing the Commonwealth by
approximately two new members each year is critical. If this
growth can’t occur or if any of the
other early adopter leave the LLC, the viability will be seriously
compromised. More members
are necessary to realize the longer-term economies of scale.
Recruiting New Members
One agency that seems ready to take that journey is
Neighborhood House. Their participation
would be a coup for the Commonwealth. For one, it would be
the organization’s first member in
St. Paul—the five early adopting agencies were in
Minneapolis—and reaching the other side of
the river is important given the dynamics in the Twin Cities. As
the Neighborhood House board
evaluates its possible participation in the Commonwealth, they
are both attracted by its array of
administrative services and wary of compromising their own
edge in facilities. Even though
Neighborhood House is not yet a full participant in the

Commonwealth effort of MACC, Dan
Hoxworth, the President, is articulate about the meaning of it
all. “Look at all the money that the
state of Minnesota is throwing into biotechnology,” Dan
remarks.
“They recognize the value and potential of that. The social
innovation represented by the
Commonwealth is just as real as the scientific innovation of
biotech. Our funders are
always asking us to try new things, to experiment, to
collaborate. Well, with the
Commonwealth, we did what they asked us to do. It is time for
them to recognize the
value of what we did and to support it accordingly.”
If new organizations join the Commonwealth, new issues will
arise. What are the minimal assets
new organizations must bring to the table to be viable partners?
Will new members have to
commit to the same, intensive amount of management time as
the early adopters? What other
5
services might be appropriate beyond finance, human resources,
and information technology?
Would adding new members strain the close relationships
among the existing five organizations
involved in the Commonwealth? Yet, Stan Birnbaum believes
the Commonwealth staff will
figure out answers to such question. As he reflected, “The most

important lesson learned (in this
experiment) is how to focus on problems and create solutions.”
In the environment of charged
politics and limited public and private resources, agencies in the
MACC collaborative have
learned much about this lesson.
6
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Chapter X7Library Technology.docx

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