The idea that big business and social good do not mix still exists in some circles where corporate scandals and the quest for turning a profit overshadows the ability to see the potential for good. Yet, the complex systems and their challenges facing the world today — climate change, a global pandemic, the need for inclusive growth — require multiple actors and sectors to drive change. Now, more than ever, is the time to forge collaborations between the public and private sectors.

At my organization, we obsess over how to leverage and expand our impact by joining forces with others, improving collaborations and building stronger partnerships. We deeply believe we will never accomplish alone as much as we can with others. We use the term "radical" to encourage our team to always push a collaboration further, even when it is harder than moving alone. Through radical collaboration, we can accept the risks that come with interdependence on other entities with different agendas, while also recognizing that diverse resources lead to innovation.

Throughout my nonprofit's 20 years of existence, we have embedded two areas of collaboration in our DNA: our partnerships with governments and with the private sector. We have written extensively about how we see governments as the ultimate stewards of scale to achieve our mission to transform healthcare delivery for the most underreached. What sometimes gets lost is how the private sector acts as a contributor and driver of change in government systems. It's vital that both the private and public sectors recognize these dynamics and build mutual, high-impact collaborations, leveraging the strengths of both sectors.

For us, private sector engagement has never been focused just on corporate social responsibility. As nonprofit leaders, I believe our engagements should focus on market-driven demand-supply matching, where both the government and the private partner have strategic business reasons to engage. We've found that you can make the most impact acting as the matchmaker at both the strategic and operational levels.

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“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity... it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow’s future.” ─ Melody Beattie

I participated on a virtual panel recently on behalf of retirement plan advisors across the country. It was largely a nuts-and-bolts conversation, discussing the disruptive past eight months and talking about how to best serve employers and employees with tax-exempt plans in an environment where there’s so much up in the air. What was most impressive was how my colleagues opened the session with gratitude. They began by thanking all the financial professionals on the call who had gone above and beyond, despite the societal upheaval and its impact to their businesses. In short, they reacted by simply being there for one another.

Because it’s Thanksgiving week, and your family table will likely look a lot different than it has in years past, I wanted to focus on expressing gratitude to the community for all you have done. Gratitude to the community for all you have done, for even the smallest gestures. It’s also important to be grateful — acknowledging what all of us have for going for us.

Here are some of those reasons to be thankful:

Think about all those organizations that rely upon outsiders to thrive. That might be the youngsters who come to nursing homes to read to seniors. Or Girl Scouts who stack shelves at a food pantry. Or parishioners who used to sing in the Sunday church choir. The pandemic has made mixing populations of old and young impractical due to social distancing requirements. Volunteers and visitors comprise much of the ‘free labor’ that is so vital to a tax-exempt organization’s operations running smoothly — labor that is now curtailed or upended for the foreseeable future. Yet, you managed to do more with less, bringing in creative solutions to deliver on your mission.

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