Centraide of Greater Montreal strives to help reinforce the skills and leadership of community stakeholders. In recent years, we have spearheaded innovation within our network of agencies, particularly by developing innovative and tailored training and coaching.
Our program to reinforce skills and leadership lets agencies:
- Adapt to their environments
- Develop their ability to reflect
- Share their knowledge
- Build their internal capacity
- Design new intervention and collaboration approaches within their communities
- And, ultimately, have an impact on improving living conditions and reducing poverty
In line with our priority to highlight local resource-sharing initiatives and contribute to knowledge sharing by and for community agencies, we held a webinar Mutualization: Opening up to a world of opportunities | Pooling and sharing resources.
What is resource sharing?
Resource sharing is when effective tools are not kept by a single organization but instead opened up to an entire sector. This approach is about joining forces and resources so that as many stakeholders as possible in the community can benefit.
The current context of labour shortages, a lack of office space, inflation—as well as a proliferation of innovative projects—compels us to think about how we can make the most of existing resources.
Resource sharing has many benefits. For example, agencies can:
- Reinforce skills and resources
- See things from a new perspective and approach issues differently
- Get inspired by the practices of their peers
- Learn new skills or knowledge
- Improve activities through enhanced capacity
- Expand their influence and reach
- Develop a culture of collaboration
Where to start
Resource sharing can happen when each agency is motivated to contribute. As described by author George Krump in his guide to resource sharing (see link from our toolkit at the bottom of this page), some elements and mindsets are required to make a resource-sharing initiative a success:
- Everyone must have a desire to work together and resolve differences
- Everyone must communicate in a transparent way
- Resource sharing is a tool to improve an organization’s actions and ability to carry out its mission: it is not an end in itself
- Resource sharing does not have a set format that suits all organizations equally
Core concepts, case studies and webinar recording
Download our document, which includes an introduction to the core concepts of mutualization as well as case studies, to learn more about what motivated community agencies in Greater Montreal to share their resources.
Whatch the recording of the webinar Mutualization: Opening up to a world of opportunities | Pooling and sharing resources held on April 26, 2023.
Additional resources
- Listen to the podcast of our partner Dynamo on the future of mutualization: L’ère du CO.
- Learn more about the Ateliers C from the Centre for Community Organizations (COCo) on getting to know and seizing the opportunities of resource sharing: La mutualisation, se familiariser et saisir les opportunités.
- The Depot Community Food Centre also documented its experience with resource sharing. Watch this video for six tips for organizational change: 6 Insights into Organizational Change.
- Find out what inspired our webinar by diving into this guide to resource sharing, Le petit guide orange du partage des ressources et de la mutualisation, by the RCAAQ.
You do like to have more information?
Contact us by email at info@centraide-mtl.org.