Case Study 23.2 — Lighthouse's Coalition

A composite, illustrative case. Lighthouse Community Services and its partners are composites built to teach the nonprofit/service-coalition version of collaboration; the structures are real. Verify specifics with your funder.

Why this case: collaboration in the service world

Case Study 23.1 followed a research team. This case follows a service coalition — because collaborative proposals are just as central in the nonprofit and human-services world, and they look somewhat different. Lighthouse Community Services runs a reentry workforce program (helping people returning from incarceration find and keep employment). Lighthouse has pursued foundation grants (Chapter 18) and government funding (Chapter 19), but a major new funding opportunity calls for a comprehensive reentry program — and Lighthouse knows that workforce training alone doesn't solve reentry. This case shows Lighthouse building a coalition the funder can believe in.

Step 1 — The work demands a team (Section 23.1)

People returning from incarceration face interlocking barriers: they need jobs (Lighthouse's strength), but also stable housing, behavioral-health support, and employers willing to hire them. Lighthouse does workforce training well and the rest poorly or not at all. So a genuine wraparound program requires partners. Lighthouse applies the necessary-complementary-capability test to each:

• A housing organization — because participants who are unhoused cannot sustain employment (a capability Lighthouse lacks).
• A behavioral-health provider — because untreated behavioral-health barriers derail employment, and Lighthouse isn't licensed to treat them.
• An employer-partnership intermediary — because relationships with willing employers convert training into actual jobs.

Each passes the test; each adds a necessary, complementary capability. Together they deliver a wraparound program none could alone. Lighthouse pointedly declines to add a well-known national nonprofit whose only contribution would be name recognition — a partner that fails the test.

Step 2 — Structure and lead (Section 23.2)

Lighthouse, whose mission and relationships center the program, serves as the lead organization (prime), holding the grant and the fiduciary responsibility, with the three partners receiving subawards for their defined pieces. This isn't a research MPI situation — there's a clear lead — so single-lead-with-subawards fits. But Lighthouse treats the partners as genuine collaborators in design, not mere subcontractors, because the program only works if the services are integrated.

Step 3 — The coordination plan is the program (Section 23.3)

For a wraparound service coalition, the coordination plan is not just administrative — it is the program model, because the value comes from integrating services around each participant. Lighthouse's plan specifies: how a participant moves among the partners (referral and warm-handoff processes); how the partners share information (with appropriate consent and privacy protections); who coordinates each participant's overall plan (a Lighthouse case manager); how the partners meet to coordinate (regular case-coordination meetings); and how disputes or gaps get resolved. And Lighthouse foregrounds evidence the coalition has worked together — prior collaborations among these organizations, or concrete joint planning already done. A funder of reentry services, who has seen "coalitions" that were really four organizations operating in silos, is reassured by a plan showing genuinely integrated services and partners who already cooperate.

Step 4 — Subawards and the prime's responsibility (Section 23.4)

Lighthouse builds the layered budget — each partner with its own scope, budget, indirect treatment, and signed commitment — and accepts the prime's responsibility to monitor the subrecipients and ensure compliance (especially important given the government-funding rules of Chapter 19). It budgets explicitly for the coordination — the case management and partner-coordination machinery that makes wraparound services actually integrate — knowing that unfunded coordination is how service coalitions quietly fail.

Step 5 — One voice across organizations (Section 23.5)

Four organizations contribute to the proposal, each describing its piece. Lighthouse owns the whole document, integrating the partners' sections into one coherent program narrative — so the proposal reads as a single integrated program, not four stapled-together service descriptions. That coherence signals to the funder exactly what the program promises: integration.

What this case teaches

1. Service coalitions follow the same rules as research teams. Necessary-complementary partners, a clear lead, a real coordination plan, layered subawards, one voice — the collaboration craft is the same across worlds.
2. For wraparound services, the coordination plan IS the program. The integration of services is the value, so the coordination structure is central, not administrative.
3. Decline the prestige partner. Lighthouse left out the big-name nonprofit that failed the capability test — discipline reviewers reward.
4. Fund the coordination. Integrated services require case management and partner coordination; budgeting for it is acknowledging the real cost of a coalition.

🔄 Retrieve: Without rereading, name (a) the three partners Lighthouse added and the necessary capability each contributes, and (b) why, for a wraparound program, the coordination plan is "the program," not just administration. (Answers above.)