Preparing California CBOs to Thrive in the Healthcare Landscape

The Marin Community Foundation engaged Collaborative Consulting to design and implement an initiative called Accelerating Business Capacity of Aging Service Providers (ABC). This initiative helps participating community-based organizations (CBOs) strengthen their competencies in market research, healthcare financing, service design, business planning, business development, strategic foresight, and other critical business skill sets essential for pursuing and securing viable partnerships with healthcare organizations.

As five CBOs entered the program, we played a vital role in implementing the 3.5-year initiative. Our work included customizing 67 sessions through 15 convenings, while providing ongoing capacity-building assistance to each CBO to help accelerate the deployment of the concepts learned.

The Marin Community Foundation shared the ABC initiative’s experiences with organizations beyond Marin County’s borders, and we co-authored briefs that highlight the challenges, achievements, and learnings of the five participating CBOs.

Each brief explores a different theme related to how participating CBOs have prepared for and built the competencies necessary to thrive in the changing healthcare landscape.

• Learning Brief #1 explores the Adaptive Advantage, demonstrating the importance of adaptability for CBOs by identifying three essentials for increased adaptability and showcasing how two ABC participants grew their capacities to adapt to change.
• Learning Brief #2 introduces the concept of the Two-Curve Organization. It illustrates how two CBOs concurrently maximized near-term opportunities for their core operations while pursuing new models to create future growth.

If you’d like to know more about our work with the Marin Community Foundation and their ABC initiative or with CBOs, government agencies, trade associations, foundations, and healthcare organizations, please get in touch.