Each year, the Maryland Food Bank provides more than 41 million meals to people in need. Often, those meals come from traditional sources such as financial contributions, and donations of canned goods, boxes of pasta, and bags of rice collected from generous families through food drives and church donation boxes. But a large portion of the organization’s food also comes from an unexpected source: prison inmates.

The food bank collaborates with Maryland nonprofits and about 50 local farms to send pre-release inmates into the field to glean roughly 800,000 pounds of produce for hungry families. This effort annually provides 650,000 meals, or more than 10 percent of the food bank’s meals.

The effort is part of a growing trend toward greater collaboration between nonprofits and other partners. At a time when nonprofits are getting squeezed by government budget cuts and facing increased need among those they serve, many groups are realizing that they cannot achieve their missions without building new alliances. And, quite often, they find these partners in unexpected places

This spring, BBB’s Give.org brought together leaders from two-dozen nonprofits for the first in a series of roundtable discussions focused on collaboration experiences...The conversations yielded some interesting insights—most notably that nonprofits, large and small, are facing increased pressure to deliver on their missions in creative ways. This pressure is coming not only from government cutbacks and mounting needs, but also from technology—which participants said is pushing many nonprofits to adapt their fundraising tactics, refine their communications and marketing strategies, and confront increasing cybersecurity challenges.

The BBB Give.org’s roundtable represents an effort to help nonprofits start finding more purposeful ways to approach and engage in collaborations in which there is shared benefit and improved outcomes for the partners. Efforts such as these will not only benefit existing collaborations, but also open the door to accelerate more innovative and effective partnerships moving forward.

Read the full article about strengthening collaborations by Peter Panepento at Stanford Social Innovation Review