Organizations: Cross-Sector Alliances Cross-Sectoral Alliances

¶ … Organizations: Cross-Sector Alliances

Cross-sectoral alliances have become important mechanisms that can be used for the purpose of increasing the degree of service in public education. The three important economic sectors like 'non-profit', 'for-profit', and 'public', are today increasingly involved in different partnerships with several charter schools, and also identify the several benefits and advantages that charter schools derive from indulging in partnerships with other organizations, thus demonstrating the importance of partnerships and alliances between schools and other organizations. It is a fact that the public sector has been providing social services for more than a hundred years, as of today, and it has come to be acknowledged as one of the most reliable and trustworthy sectors that is generally responsible for providing broad and uniform services for the large number of low-income households. (Wohlstetter; Malloy; Hentschke; Smith, 2004)

Today, more and more educators have started to experiment with cross-sectoral alliances so that not only would capacity be enhanced, but the basic educational service would also be dramatically improved as a result of the alliance. The motivating factor behind such cross cultural alliances is the 'decades long reckoning' with the multifaceted and difficult nature of educational reform, and also the awareness that no single organization would be actually able to transform schools into effective and efficient educational systems and learning communities, and the shared responsibility for the well being of a school is leading to more and more so-called non-educators to take on the job of being responsible for the outcome of the educational system, and service delivery would be improved with the development and the growth of the cross-sectoral alliance systems of today.

Since it is a fact that the U.S. Government lacks the ability to cope with the need for the schooling of the multitude of children, and as a direct result, many children, especially form lower income groups, do not met the standards fro reading or for writing and mathematics, service delivery for these children must be improved with urgency and immediacy, so that the resources from for-profit as well as from non-profit organizations can be utilized for the purpose. This type of strategic relationships that span across different economic sectors or cross-sectoral alliances as they are referred to, can be defined as groups of organizations that work together for the common good of issues of mutual concern, that would be solved if the collective action of the entire group is taken into account. Another major advantage of working with such alliances is the fact that certain problems that are beyond the capability of individual organizations can be solved capably and quickly. The phenomenon of cross-sectoral alliances is in fact only today emerging as a common strategy as far as public education is concerned, and the data that has been collected does not accurately describe the actual capacity of these organizations. (Wohlstetter; Malloy; Hentschke; Smith, 2004)

Since an alliance describes the structural relationship between various institutions, which is based on a strategic framework developed through consultations with the school, the purpose of these alliances is manifold. Some of them are: the support of certain stated objectives as regards discipline, teaching, research, product development, and student recruitment. The Division of Addictions, has, for example, formulated a new research initiative in schools that is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, also known as NIAAA. Relapse prevention being a vitally important part of the treatment for alcoholism, research revealed that more than a third of the total number of people who were arrested for drunken driving were repeat offenders, and the links between DUI behavior and psychiatric illnesses has suggested that untreated psychopathology that more often than not leads to the offenses committed under DUI and relapses like risk behaviors, offenses, and fatalities, and it is an amazing fact that studies have never been conducted on these important factors. Therefore, when studies are conducted on these offenders, then the relationship between psychiatric co-morbidity and DUI relapses would become clearer. Individuals would also be sent to certain areas to study the various psychological treatment methods that are generally available to those who are addicted to any substances, and when efforts are made towards co-alliances of these institutions, then the students of the schools would definitely benefit. (Division on Addiction)

It has been stated that the twenty first century will be the 'age of alliances' wherein the collaboration between non-profit organizations and corporations will keep growing in number. The nature of such collaborative alliances would also change, from when it was the traditionally philanthropic, where the donor would benevolently give, and the receiver would receive it gratefully, to where business as well as non-profits and for-profits work together so that they may be able to achieve their mutual goals and contribute their mite to society. On the issue of the promotion of literacy, there exists today a strong collaboration and alliance between the Time to Read National Program, and the media giant, Media Inc. while the time to Read concentrates its energy on local non-profits like for example, the children from Chicago's Off the Street Program, and recruits these children for tutoring by the time Warner Group, and the Time Warner makes attempts to tutor and coach these children, and also gives them free reading and writing material, and even classroom space. (Entering the Age of Alliances)