In the digital age, no one is interested in only your services and products. We’ve grown up in a competitive world. But now it’s a cooperative world: coopetition is becoming the means to success.  We are no longer isolated geographically, culturally, or demographically. Nonprofits may serve local clientele, but their online presence is global. I know that it’s counter-intuitive to recommend your competitors. But in the Web 2.0 world, it’s exactly what the culture demands. I contend that nonprofits must, and should, be ready to retweet, repost, and support competitors online.  Why?

Collaboration doesn’t mean you’re fighting over scarcity of resources. It means you’re making the resource pie bigger.

I’ll go ahead and write the objection that I hear you saying out loud, right now: We’re all competing for limited pools of resources.

Answer: That’s been true for a long time, and it will always be the case. However, through collaborative efforts, you have the potential to bring in even more traffic, clients, and funding sources.

Joe Waters, of Six Figure Cause Marketing, says that he is trying to convince nonprofits to collaborate with cause marketing. He tells me via twitter: “Trying to do that w/cause marketing. Working w/other npos for mutual benefit. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.” Right on.

Two great examples:

John Haydon, a social media consultant, works with nonprofits to help them get more customers, build communities, and increase awareness. Not only that, but he sends out an auto-DM to his twitter followers recommending other consultants. He’s even recommended me, and I’m in the same consulting space as him.

Here’s the beauty of what John Haydon has done – he’s expanded the pie, not cut it into smaller pieces. Every one of the consultants he recommends can potentially collaborate with him on a project, refer projects to him. etc. I’m sure he’s also gotten leads and traffic from those he’s recommended as well. Can your nonprofit create an auto-DM recommending other great local nonprofits to follow?

28 Days, 28 Ideas is an effort of 31 Days, 31 Ideas, eJewish Philanthropy, the JTA, Jewcy, Jewschool, Sisterhood@the Forward and the Jewish Federations of North America. They have banded together this February to create a platform to share one great idea a day for helping the Jewish world. 28 Days, 28 Ideas is also intended to expose media outlets to each others’ readership.  Each organization is posting its ideas, and contributing to the 28 Days, 28 Ideas blog (which the twitter stream promotes). By doing so, they are reaching new audiences, and gathering ideas that could benefit everyone. The participatory organizations are actually making a new pie – Jewish social ventures – that they are now associated with creating!

An award-winning offline example:

EmployAlliance is a collaborative project that won the US Secretary of Labor’s 5th Anniversary New Freedom Initiative Award. It is a collaboration among six nonprofits that find employment leads for their disabled clients. As Dave Stevens, a career counselor at the Chicago Lighthouse mentions, “I now work with people who are blind, so when I get a job requiring sight, instead of letting it go fallow, I pass it along to other local agencies for people with disabilities via EmployAlliance, which in Chicago is under the Chamber of Commerce.”

I’m sure each of these organizations demonstrates success through the number of clients successfully placed. They probably also compete for similar funds. However, together, they are a stronger recruiting team than apart. Make the pie as big as it can get!

Remember that social media is about sharing and giving. Mention great blog posts that your competitors write on your nonprofit’s blog. Share good posts to your nonprofit’s Facebook Page. Tweet about the great work other nonprofits in your town are doing. Support each other’s Linkedin groups.

Get rid of the idea of competition, and embrace the idea of coopetition. Mmmm, more pie.