The First Collaboration Prize - $250,000 Goes to Two Organizations

Third in a series on Nonprofit Restructuring

The national Collaboration Prize was created by the Lodestar Foundation to support collaborations that increase impact and eliminate duplication of efforts among nonprofits that would otherwise compete. In support of this mission, Lodestar seeks to identify achievements in collaboration as models for inspiration and replication in the nonprofit world.

The Prize also seeks to build an information base of effective practice models that can be studied and used by academics, nonprofit leaders, and grantmakers to inspire and advance their work. True to the spirit of collaboration, the Lodestar Foundation has partnered with the AIM Alliance which includes The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

In the summer of 2008, over 600 nominations were received for the inaugural year of the Prize. The collaborations that advanced demonstrated quantifiable evidence that they achieved exceptional impact and substantially eliminated the duplication of efforts through programmatic collaborations, administrative consolidation, or other joint activities.

First-Ever $250,000 National Nonprofit Collaboration Prize Contest Ends in Tie Between Two Successful Mergers – YMCA & JCC of Greater Toledo Area and Dallas Museum of Nature & Science - More

This link is to a series of one page overviews of the finalists (12 pgs - 4MB).