The growth of community collaboratives is fundamentally reshaping the ways our communities address issues and make decisions. We need to be more conscious of this change and guide it in order to support effective governance over time. Like governance, we also need focused information gathering and analysis on the literally hundreds of formal federal, state, and philanthropic initiatives so we can begin the process of systematically learning from our successes and our failures. This work can support future policy and resource decisions. That is essential work for the coming decade.
Collaboration remains hard.
But it remains right. Developing an explicit agenda for the coming decade will help catalyze this work so the outcomes for children, families, neighborhoods and communities are attained. The Program, working through our sponsoring associations, directly with cities, and in partnership with foundations and state and federal agencies, specializes in helping communities and the institutions and organizations that work with them to create truly collaborative solutions to addressing shared problems and achieving better outcomes. PCPS also maintains an active research program that seeks to identify barriers to effective collaboration and strategies to overcome those barriers. Potapchuk specializes in the design and conduct of inclusive large-scale community change initiatives, efforts to strengthen civic capacity, building collaborative frameworks, resolving community conflicts, and reinventing local government to more effectively engage in collaborative efforts.