A Deeper Dive on How to Start a Coalition

First, you need to define your Coalition area (is it a county, state, city?). If you are in an area where a lot of groups overlap, I would recommend creating a small geographic area and build from there. If groups overlap then building up relationships and communication amongst local groups is really important if it doesn’t exist already. Check out the Metro Denver Animal Welfare Alliance, to show what a smaller group can do.

If your state is spread out with a lot of county-wide programs, then focusing statewide is the way to go. I really like the work of the Michigan Pet Fund Alliance. It is a coalition that is really focused on the statistics and providing the tools to help communities assist the animals in their communities.

Finally, if your coalition is going to focus more on education then the Massachusetts Animal Coalition might be of interest to check out. They have always stressed the importance of having regular educational seminars for members.

You can use a Facebook page, create a google, yahoo or meet up group, or something else that you might have worked with. Just make sure it is a platform many are comfortable with! You might find there are a hardy group of folks that are anti-Facebook and you hate to leave them out! Therefore, you may need to have two forms of communication to keep everyone in the loop.

Start by setting up a group and invite as many people as you know that are involved with animal welfare! Invite friends, non-friends and people you don’t know! Open the door to as many people as you can because you never know where that connection may come from for new opportunities!

Unfortunately, many of us need online etiquette training! Facebook tends to bring out our most extreme emotions and we need to realize this is a professional platform where we need to respect each other. When you launch your group, create posting guidelines with rules about moderation. It may help alleviate some headaches down the road!

Organizing the group may take about a month or two, than it’s time to start planning! Decide how often the group wants to meet, what general content will be and review etiquette and behavior. I wouldn’t recommend meeting more than 4 meetings in a year. We need to respect that many have day jobs and volunteer for groups, so time is tight and just making a few meetings a year is going to be tough!

Is the information you are providing something that can just be emailed out? Make sure you can answer the question of “why” a member would come to the meeting. Networking is a huge part, but it can’t be the only thing! Every attendee needs to be engaged and participate in some way. If they aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to want to make the effort to come back and most certainly aren’t going to encourage others to join the meetings!

Reach out and ask people how they liked the meeting. Did they like the schedule, topics, exercises? What recommendations would they have for future meetings?

Lastly, always thank everyone for attending and make sure they know the date of the next meeting before they leave this one! Plan early and often. The more organized you are the better and the easier it is to run a coalition!

Good luck with building your coalition and if you need help on A Deeper Dive on How to Start a Coalition feel free to reach out to me at stacy@communitycatspodcast.com and I would be happy to give you further advise. We all have it in us to be a leader for community cats!