Why Coalitions Drift Into Silos and How True Collective Power Is Built

At a Bay Area coalition meeting earlier this summer, a representative from Healthy Black Families based in Berkeley said:

'We’re so fractionalized that it’s hard to build power.' And she’s right. Across the nonprofit/advocacy ecosystem, we’re not aligned. We need better, more networked strategies that are less shortsighted and reactive. For coalitions especially, we have to stop drifting back into our individual silos once we leave the room. Our connective tissue is what wins movements, and that requires bold, courageous, and shared initiatives that clearly define accountability measures. Our missions are broad and varied, spanning a spectrum of strategies to achieve the highest impact for the communities we serve. To truly build and expand that power, we have to start becoming better at building with each other. Not just alongside each other, or separate from each other altogether."

The diagnosis offered by Tirrea Billings cuts to the core of why so many well intentioned movements stall precisely when they should be expanding. Whether sitting in a grassroots coalition meeting in the Bay Area, participating in a municipal funding committee, or negotiating complex international agreements, the primary obstacle to systemic change is rarely a lack of passion or purpose. It is an architecture problem. Across the advocacy and institutional landscape, we excel at assembling in moments of crisis, drafting unified statements, and expressing solidarity. Yet the moment the meeting ends or the immediate pressure subsides, the gravity of institutional self preservation takes over. We retreat to our respective silos, submersed in our own deliverables, budgets, and reporting requirements. We mistake the temporary excitement of a shared room for the permanent strength of a shared movement.

During my time as a diplomat in the United States Department of State, I saw this structural failure play out constantly on the global stage. Sovereign nations, international organizations, and nongovernmental entities would gather at high level summits to confront interconnected global crises. Speeches were delivered, communiqes were signed, and photos were taken. But without durable operational infrastructure, shared financial mechanisms, and binding commitments, those grand coalitions frequently devolved into parallel posturing. Bureaucracies naturally default to defending their own perimeters. Each agency, bureau, or partner guards its jurisdiction, reluctant to yield autonomy or pool resources for long term strategic execution. The hard learned lesson from international diplomacy is that alignment is never created through shared rhetoric alone. True alignment is forged only when partners build shared delivery mechanisms, accept shared risks, and hold themselves mutually accountable to measurable outcomes.

In my current role directing policy engagement and strategic partnerships within higher education, as well as serving on local municipal social service committees, I observe the exact same institutional friction operating at every scale of public life. Civic organizations, academic centers, and policy institutes routinely fall into the trap of parallel play. Organizations occupy the same issue area, speak at the same forums, and petition the same decision makers, yet their daily operations never intersect in a structural way. They operate side by side, carefully maintaining their individual logos, proprietary frameworks, and separate funding streams. We often label this activity as collaboration, but in reality, it is territorial coexistence. Working alongside one another allows organizations to project the appearance of unity while protecting their institutional comfort zones. It avoids the uncomfortable, demanding work of merging strategies, sharing power, and codesigning initiatives from the ground up.

To move from parallel activity to collective power, we must confront the uncomfortable truth about why our connective tissue remains so fragile. Building with each other, rather than merely alongside each other, requires organizations to surrender a degree of institutional sovereignty in service of a larger mission. That is a deeply difficult trade in an ecosystem designed to reward individual metrics and organizational survival. Funding structures regularly pit advocacy groups against each other for scarce resources, incentivizing institutions to brand their interventions as unique rather than collaborative. Moreover, coalitions often collapse because they fail to establish clear governance and accountability measures from the start. When accountability is vague or informal, larger institutions inevitably dominate the agenda, smaller community groups are marginalized, and trust quietly erodes. Without formal mechanisms for decision making, resource allocation, and conflict resolution, partners will naturally drift back into isolation the moment political or financial friction arises.

Building durable collective power requires us to reimagine coalitions not as periodic meeting spaces, but as permanent civic infrastructure anchored by shared programming. True alignment becomes visible when organizations move beyond cosigning letters and begin coanchoring long term initiatives that no single entity could sustain on its own. We see powerful examples of this shift when academic institutions, grassroots advocacy groups, and civic leaders codesign joint training academies, shared policy pipelines, and comanaged community funds. When institutions build joint programs, they create daily operational habits of collaboration. Staff members work across organizational lines, resources are pooled toward a common goal, and success is defined by collective impact rather than individual exposure. This shared programming becomes the connective tissue that holds movements together through legislative defeats, leadership transitions, and changing political tides.

Tirrea Billings correctly reminds us that our missions are broad and varied, reflecting the complex realities of the communities we aim to serve. Diversity of strategy is a strength, but only when those strategies are networked into a coherent, mutually reinforcing framework. Building with each other requires us to be far more courageous in how we structure our partnerships, design our programs, and hold ourselves accountable. We must challenge funders to invest in collaborative movement infrastructure rather than isolated, short term projects. We must demand that our own institutions prioritize long term public impact over short term brand visibility. Most importantly, we must recognize that institutional fragmentation is not an inevitable reality; it is a structural choice. By intentionally building shared initiatives with clear accountability, we transform coalition work from a series of disjointed conversations into an enduring engine for collective power.