by Jean Funk, Project Director Minnesota Prevention Resource Center

What a paradoxical time we are in, in so many ways. One of the most challenging dilemmas is that we are in a time of collaborating as well as a time of reemerging need to compete. These are two different ways of operating in the world, certainly not mutually exclusive, but definitely at opposite ends of a continuum. As people and programs working in prevention, we have been compelled, encouraged, forced by funders, as well as running with open arms to the table of collaboration. It is the buzz-word, the mode of operating, sometimes seen as the panacea or another "magic bullet" of what will work in prevention. We have phrases like, "it takes a whole village," and "prevention is everybody's business" to remind us that collaboration is essential if we are truly going to be able to find solutions to today's problems. We are asked by funders, "who is collaborating on this grant proposal? Do you have all sectors of the community represented? Do you have as many prevention programs working together as you can? Do you have people who have never worked together before, coming together to find solutions?" This collaborating is time consuming and very often frustrating, but we have been seeing results. Some of the articles in this newsletter point to some of those results and they are positive.

But what I see coming on the horizon-and many others do as well- is a new time of competition among people and organizations that have been doing pretty well operating in the collaborative mode. As budget cuts work their way down from Congress, and as block grants become more the way of doing business, and as there is less distinction made between problem areas, i.e. categorical funding, we will need to compete for the shrinking amount of money directed toward prevention. That means we will probably find ourselves competing with each other for the limited prevention dollar. Competition and collaboration are a little like oil and water, I'm not sure how well they will mix. Can we both collaborate and compete? How much of one will cancel the other? Which one will win out? and to what end? with what consequences? We welcome your ideas and responses and will devote a portion of our next IMPACT edition to report on some of your viewpoints.