How do we create focused and compelling partnerships? How do we understand and assess community needs? How do we actively involve the community in the design process? How do we create compelling stories that will help fund and spread the work of the partnership?
Too many collaborations between health systems and community partners start without proper chartering, goal setting, and strategic planning. Each organization has its own distractions and daily priorities; consequently, these relationships often fizzle or trundle along without purpose and energy.
At Do Tank Health, we blend human-centered design with strategic planning techniques to help teams align visions, charter roles & responsibilities, innovate around their collective business model, and move to action.
It often makes sense for two organizations to collaborate because of what they have in common – a shared population, good working relationship, funding dynamics align – but they struggle to really integrate the community into the work that is done. Without that meaningful integration, you may risk building things that nobody wants or failing to generate adoption among the people you serve.
From a programming and service design perspective, we help teams empathize with their stakeholders, conduct primary field research, and test new ideas. Our work in this area often overlaps with the development of Community Health Needs Assessments, and can be a valuable accompaniment to that process.
The fundamental goal is to invite the community to be part of the partnership and not just its beneficiaries. We use design methods to help build powerful business models and services that truly address social determinants of health and the fundamental challenges that people face.
In addition to the supreme goal of improving health outcomes in the community, partners often aim to elicit support from leaders, gain recognition in the industry, and secure resources from funders. They need to tell compelling stories in order to scale their work and make it sustainable.
At Do Tank, we do a lot of work around storytelling. We have created a collaborative grant writing process that helps organizations build better proposals. We help teams architect the rationale, emotion, and aesthetics that will resonate with their audiences. We create videos, playbooks, pitches….but, ultimately, we help partnerships spread the word about their work and earn the resources that will help it grow.
Among other tools, we developed a visual tool called the Community Context Canvas. This is series of canvases helps you envision and then plan dream partnerships to improve your community’s health.
We have decades of experience exploring opportunities to improve healthcare and helping teams unlock their potential to innovate. Let's talk about how we can explore your healthcare organization's biggest ideas and most wicked problems.