TAP: Learning Through Networks

Network building matters as much as it ever has, and the Technical Assistance Partnership (TAP) continues its rich tradition of helping nonprofits develop new kinds of networks while it helps them developing new capacities.

Now in its sixteenth year, TAP recently expanded its own capabilities.

• At its core, it still convenes and connects organizations three times each year through topical TAP Talks and collaborative, shared-issue solving TAP Teams. TAP Teams still result in geographically- or subject-focused alliances addressing specific strategic skill sets, leadership, and hot-button issues. More than 850 organizations have participated in TAP since its inception. In FY2012, over 300 people attended TAP Talks, and 347 participated on one of 38 teams, with their points of focus ranging from a neighborhood garden to far-flung social media.
• Two years ago SLHI began offering a slate of fiscal sponsorship resources when it became abundantly clear that new types of technical assistance would create a better path for health improvement in Arizona. Options were needed for collaborative groups being thwarted in their progress without 501(c)(3) recognition, as well as for established organizations that were masterful in achieving community goals – but perhaps not equally masterful in the back office. TAP provided fiscal assistance to sixteen partners in FY 2012. It’s another “flyer,” taken 15 years after the first one that started it all. For that reason, TAP continues to grow and thrive. We are grateful to TAP participants and to the many consultants who contribute their time and talents.

Connections, collaboration and networks: they are not just how TAP thrives, but how we all do.

Read much more about the history, lessons and future of TAP in Learning Through Networks: The Story of a Remarkable Collaborative and its Implications for the Future of Organizational and Community Capacity Building, a capstone publication released in FY2011.