Key to Community Partnerships: Don't Walk Away in Anger

In a most recent piece for the Rooflines blog, Miriam Axel-Lute discusses the award-winning documentary film Gaining Ground about the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), a rooted and powerful community planning and organizing group in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

A major storyline of the film is about DSNI's initially great collaboration with the Salvation Army, which was to build a community center in DSNI's service area. The combining of the two organizations' strength seemed like a win-win; but as construction was nearing completion and operational issues began to be discussed, the Salvation Army decided that, to meet their budget, membership rates were to be set at a price that would be unaffordable for many neighborhood residents. Though this upset DSNI and their constituents, the organization stayed in partnership with TSA—possibly through gritted teeth—while working to see if there was a mutually workable solution. As Axel-Lute writes, "It was clearly a difficult dance to do. It would have been very easy to either pull out and denounce the Salvation Army or to throw up their hands and say, 'Well, that's their budget, they did their best, oh well.'"

But DSNI did not.