COLLABORATIVE STEWARDSHIP TOOLKIT

A Practitioners’ Guide, Designed to Support Land- & Seascape Collaboratives 

NEW open-source toolkit with resources and guidance for every phase of a collaborative’s life cycle—from inception to sunsetting.

Land- and seascape stewardship collaboratives may take the form of regional stewardship networks, coalitions, joint ventures, or other partnership structures. Although working in this way isn’t new, the scale and complexity, as well as the expectations of what these groups can do, continues to grow.  

In some regions, collaborative stewardship approaches have become the primary way of working.  “Why should we collaborate?” is no longer the dominant question. Instead, many wonder, “How do we establish and design an effective collaborative?” and “What is needed to build, sustain, or renew or retire a collaborative?”  

Answering these questions is the focus of this toolkit – which includes more than ninety exercises, worksheets, examples and resources. It is for anyone interested in learning about collaboratives but is particularly useful for those who are focused on their operational and administrative needs.

Download the Toolkit here - 13mb pdf

Users are invited to explore the toolkit based on where they are in their collaborative process, and to adapt what is here to meet their individual needs. Its authors have made this living document open source and available to anyone as a statement of their commitment to equity and inclusion and as a way to help continue to build a stewardship movement.  

We are currently working on an interactive web-based version, check back here for the latest this fall!

Please contact the authors, Sharon Farrell and Michelle O’Herron with questions or for more information about the toolkit’s contents. 

This toolkit was made possible through Parks California's Climate and Stewardship Program with generous support from the Laural Foundation and Suzanne Badenhoop and Guy Lampard, as well as guidance from California State Parks, University of Montana Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, the California Landscape Stewardship Network, and the Marine Protected Areas Collaborative Network.