When we talk about bridging divides, political divides often come to mind. With midterm elections just ahead, this may feel especially top of mind. Politics is a real and contested place where differences show up, and where collaboration can feel fraught.
Lately, I’ve been engaging in many places where difference is also evident. I have talked with people of different faiths about how it shows up in their businesses. I have had conversations with peers in numerous fields who may not share my point of view, and life brings many opportunities for personal conversation with loved ones and strangers who disagree with my convictions. A real stand-out experience was our recent Senior Fellows annual gathering, where bridging divides was modeled well by speakers and participants alike, and the conversation stimulated ways we could widen the lens on the differences we can bridge. Especially, I keep pondering a consistent question when it comes to bridging leadership: what can it actually look like?
Bridging divides can be the practical work of bringing every resource a community has to bear on what a community needs. Those resources sit in government, business, nonprofits, schools, congregations, and neighborhoods, and the people who hold them often see the world very differently. Many of the challenges in our region are too big for any one sector or group to solve alone. They call for people to work side by side, and in doing so, affirm the dignity of the people they serve without sidestepping the different perspectives they have.
I believe there is much that we can learn from history. Here are three stories of unconventional coalitions I have been reflecting on lately.
Sacred, Secular, and Civic Collaboration: Philadelphia’s 1918 Flu Response #
In October 1918, Philadelphia was among the hardest-hit American cities in the influenza pandemic. With church services suspended, Archbishop Dennis Dougherty offered what the Church could: its buildings and its people. Over 2,000 nuns, roughly two-thirds of those in the archdiocese, worked as emergency nurses across the city, quickly trained by the health department. They took temperatures, mixed medicines, and fed patients. Members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society volunteered too, driving vans and serving food, and local community members donated tents and vehicles.
After the pandemic, government officials praised the collaboration between the health department, the sisters, and the community, declaring that “without the services rendered by these good women many additional lives would have been sacrificed.” This bears some resemblance to what we saw during COVID-19: the power of unlikely collaborations to serve communities and save lives.
Sacred, secular, and civil, each bringing what they could in a moment of crisis.
Bipartisan Cooperation: The 1990 Clean Air Act #
In the 1980s, the United States faced a severe ecological emergency. Coal-burning power plants released pollutants that mixed with water vapor and fell as acid rain, harming lakes, forests, and buildings.
The rain fell on both political parties, so to speak, and that finally broke years of gridlock. A Republican president and Democratic congressional leaders engineered the compromises needed to bring all regions and both parties on board. The result was an innovative, market-based system that passed with groundbreaking bipartisan majorities.
Business and School Partnership: Strengthening the Workforce and Graduation Rates in Carroll County, Georgia #
In the early 2000s, nearly one-third of high school students in Carroll County, Georgia, were dropping out. Southwire, one of the county’s largest employers, needed workers with diplomas. The local school district and the company began talking. Together they created 12 for Life, a factory staffed by students at risk of dropping out. Students spend four hours in class and four hours working for pay.
Both sides had doubts. Southwire’s board worried about child labor and injuries. School officials worried about scheduling, transportation, and state rules. But they kept going, bringing their questions to the table and working until they had a solution with clear roles. By 2013, 78% of program students graduated, compared with 55% of economically disadvantaged students countywide when the program started. The students were productive, and the plant was profitable.
Two sectors, without all the answers but with a shared challenge, created opportunities for stability and flourishing in their community. Each sector, and the community, benefited (Rivkin and Ma, Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, 2024).
What Makes Cross-Sector Collaborations Work #
These stories span a century and very different circumstances, but they share a few things.
They started with a shared problem, not a shared worldview. The Archdiocese, Philadelphia city officials, and physicians did not need to agree about theology. The Republican executive office and the Democratic legislative leadership certainly didn’t see eye to eye on all things. They needed to agree that the problem in front of them was real.
Each partner brought what only it had. The Church had a trained, organized workforce and buildings. Southwire had equipment and jobs, and the schools had teachers and students. No one was asked to be something they were not or believe something they did not believe.
They worked through doubt. The skeptics in Carroll County were not wrong to raise concerns. The partnership took them seriously and built safeguards, such as a separate building with safety modifications.
Each of these efforts also carried dignity: for patients cared for in a crisis, for students given a real job and a chance to chart their own path, for communities breathing cleaner air. They kept those they were serving central, letting the needs and dignity of those people guide their decisions.
Examples of Collaboration in the Pacific Northwest #
I could name so many examples from our own region. I think of the extraordinary collaboration between a grassroots volunteer community, arts camp leadership, and the National Park Service to turn a college campus into the Sitka Fine Arts Camp so many know and love today. I think of Washington State Opportunity Scholarship’s tri-sector model that addresses workforce gaps by drawing on strength of public, private, and nonprofit strengths. I think of Every Child Oregon, a statewide initiative from The Contingent that began with a partnership between Oregon’s Department of Human Services and local churches to address the foster care crisis, resulting in a model that’s being replicated in other states.
These collaborations did not start with agreement. They started with a shared problem and an awareness of what each partner could bring. I was not in the meetings where these decisions were made, and I imagine each effort faced challenges we will never know about. Collaboration is not easy. But it can be possible, and I believe it is critical.
I hope these examples, and the ones you know from your own communities, prompt each of us to ask what opportunities are in front of us and our organizations as we navigate the differences around us.
Romanita Hairston
Chief Executive Officer