One of the most remarkable and satisfying benefits of an effective partnership is that working together brings hope. By helping people work together, you help them develop hope of what can be—dreams that never could be realized if they continue to work alone.

But eventually, hope has to turn into realization or fulfillment. When expectations are raised and not fulfilled, hope dies and often turns to disillusionment. Then, there is the critical importance of good communications within a partnership. When positive expectations are realized, and people know about it, you have fuel for even greater hope.

Hope keeps us alive—whether as individuals or as groups working together in partnership. The Viennese psychologist, Viktor Frankl in his book, Man's Search For Meaning, tells of how hope kept him and fellow prisoners alive during the darkest days of the prison camps of the Holocaust. He credits his own ability to survive the death and despair all around him to the fact that hope kept him looking forward, clinging to what might be in the future.

We see examples of this in every aspect of our lives: in marriages, our work, with friends, politics, sports teams, and our local church experience. The energy and vision that powers a Partnership to accomplish the seemingly impossible dream is hope. But if hope is not buoyed by expectations fulfilled, your partnership can succumb to discouragement, if not despair!

Of course, the people and ministries active in your Partnership develop expectations of each other and the partnership itself. But, there are other vital "publics" to keep in mind. While the partnership isn't necessarily responsible to communicate directly with all of these publics, you need to be keenly aware of them, and their expectations, and help those who do need to communicate with these groups do so.

Who Needs Hope?

Most partnerships have at least four different constituencies—four different groups that have some vested interest in what the partnership does and its effectiveness. Depending on the partnership's goal and working context, there may be even more groups who feel they have an interest in your partnership and its outcomes. Your ability to actively serve these constituencies and their expectations is a key success factor for your partnership.

Here's a quick overview of the typical groups you are serving. Each of them needs hope to keep them actively engaged.

• The primary audience—the people you're seeking to reach and serve.
• The partnership itself—its active, working participants.
• The senior staff in the administrative offices of the partner ministries that make up the partnership. They can bless or resist their colleagues' participation and any resources they need.
• The people who give, advocate, pray, or invest their finances to provide the Partnership's resources.

These groups have expectations and to keep their participation or interest active, they need hope that will carry them forward.

Expectations

As a partnership matures, expectations involve more people and more complex objectives. Here are some things you can do to help realistically define and then meet the participants' expectations:

• Work hard to keep initial objectives limited and achievable.
• Make sure everyone understands what the objectives are, how you'll know if you met the objectives (basis for evaluation/measuring), and what the timetable is for the objectives.
• As a partnership matures, in working toward your overall vision you may develop multiple objectives. Or a single objective may have multiple "milestones" as the effort moves forward. Frequently this is helpful, allowing those doing the work and those getting news about progress to deal with more realistic, "bite-sized" steps.
• Define communications clearly: who has responsibility to communicate, by what means (letter, calls, e-mail, personal updates?), with whom, how often, and which aspects of the partnership's efforts are vital to know?
• Remember: once communications have been promised, those promises must be kept. Nothing destroys credibility (of people and the process) sooner than unmet communications promises!
• Finally, while hopes and expectations may be high, people rarely expect perfection. There may be aspects of the partnership's plans that are not achieved 100%. What participants want to know is, generally, how well are we doing and is our working together actually accomplishing anything?! So, timely, reliable communication is vital—whether you have all the good news you would like to report or not.

Realistic objectives motivated by an important vision, clear responsibilities and timetable, and timely, honest communications are key elements for your partnership to have a sense of progress,achievement, and, as a result, hope which motivates everyone to continue.