Its About People

1
Its About People

• A protocol that makes coalitions effective.

Wild Utah Project
68 S. Main Street, Suite 400 Salt Lake City, Utah
84101 [phone] Jim_at_wildutahproject.org
2
Gaining control of our future

• The only thing worse that fighting with your
  allies is fighting without them. Winston Churchill

• There is little in our work that we can really
  control.
• We rarely directly control habitat, wildlife, or
  the public.
• However we can control how we behave with our
  coalition partners.
• Trust among partners is central to success.
• Building trust requires a consistent expected
  behavior among partners.
• Once trust is broken, repair comes at a great
  expense.
• Trust is displayed when your partners act on your
  behalf in your absence.

3
Utah Wilderness Coalition Partner Protocol
a) Make decisions with partners before talking to
the press, an agency, or elected officials. b)
Stick to the agreed to message. c) Dont
denigrate the roles or positions of our partners
outside the coalition. d) If a partner has
criticism of another partner over common work,
talk first to the person at the source of the
problem before talking to others. e) Share
equally all information on common issues. f) In
communication to members, the media, funders, and
others give fair credit to our partners
work. g) Plan our work on common issues
together. This includes fundraising.
4
What are the benefits?

• Outside benefits
• Polls show 73 of Utahns support the UWC
  proposal (in an earlier poll).
• We benefitted when our critics did not follow
  this internal behavior in their organization.
• 9.5 million acre wilderness proposal with 170
  cosponsors in Congress.
• Significant improvement in protecting habitat in
  proposed areas.
• Internal benefits
• Fundraising together has increased funds
  tenfold.
• Clear expectations on how to communicate.
• Improved preparation when meeting with external
  decision makers.
• Innoculation against outsiders who want to turn
  partners against each other.

5
What about disagreements?

• Decide internally how to positively disagree and
  work with it.

• Disagreements are healthy and needed.
• If agreement can not be reached, find a way for
  each side to respect their interests and still
  work together.
• Develop a positive message for those outside the
  coalition when talking about a disagreement.
• Limit the scope of common work.
• Respect partner work on unrelated issues.

6
Lessons learned

• Coalition problems can often be traced to not
  following one or move of these practices.
• It takes a continue effort. Recurring training
  is needed.
• These are not absolute but the more of these
  practices that are followed, the stronger the
  trust among partners and the likelihood of
  success.
• The Utah Wilderness Coalition may be unique in
  formalizing expected behavior among its partners.

7
More about the Wild Utah Projectwww.wildutahproje
ct.org

• Heart of the West Conservation Plan.
• A method for biologically based rapid riparian
  assessments.
• Ecologically based livestock grazing methods.
• And more!

8
a) All Coalition partners agree to jointly make
collective decisions regarding the scope, nature
and message relating to our wilderness proposal
and campaign. This means that when new issues
arise . . . , the coalition will endeavor to vet
these new issues within the Coalition, . . .
before a conservation partner communicates with
an elected official, the media, or an agency
decision maker. . . . When we can't come to an
agreement on a common approach, we agree to
respectfully disagree and discuss how we will
handle this disagreement publicly. b) Further,
we agree as coalition partners to stick to our
strategy and message when communicating with the
media, elected officials, and funders. c) We
will not denigrate the roles and/or positions of
our partner organizations outside the
coalition. d) If a partner has criticism of
another partners work on an issue in which we
commonly work, then the criticizing partner
agrees to talk to the person at the source of the
perceived problem before talking to
others. e) We agree to share any information on
our common issues equally with our coalition
partners. f) In communication to our
membership, the media, or funders, we give
fair credit to our partner's work.
g) We plan our work on our common issues
together. This includes fund raising