TAP: Learning Through Networks

Chance favors the connected mind. It was a connection between SLHI staff and an outside consultant that started the Technical Assistance Partnership in 1997. Connections are what it thrives and expands upon in 2011.

The four C’s – convening, connecting, collaborating and capacity building – continue to define the core of the Technical Assistance Partnership (TAP), a premier Arizona enterprise now entering its fifteenth year of successful operation. In fact, they’ve inspired TAP’s expansion.

TAP still convenes and connects organizations three times each year through TAP Talks that combine topical subjects with networking and collaborative team building to address issues of shared interests. Teams’ path to collaboration and capacity building takes different directions:  geographically- or subject-focused alliances, specific strategic skill sets, leadership groups and more.

More than 800 organizations have participated in TAP since its inception. For FY2011, more than 350 people attended TAP Talks, and 253 participated on one of 38 teams, with their points of focus ranging from a neighborhood garden to far-flung social media.

In FY2011 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.

Within a few months of sharing the concept with others, TAP provided fiscal assistance to eight potential partners and applied on behalf of sponsored programs for three federal grants.

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.

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.