Membership. Involving a broad base of community representatives is critical to a collaborative’s credibility and success. One guide recommends including people who bring "clout, commitment, and diversity" to the group (Melaville, Blank, & Asayesh, 1993, p. 25). While clout is important, don’t make your group "top-heavy," or it’s likely to break down in turf issues and conflicting priorities (White & Wehlage, 1994). Be sure to include teachers, students, administrators, parents, business and civic leaders, informal community leaders, and advocates; aim for diversity in age, expertise, ethnicity, and perspective. Though a big group can be unwieldy, Samuels, Ahsan, & Garcia (1995) among others, conclude that, "all things considered. . . it is better to start with too many, rather than too few, members" (p. 9).

Some collaborative guides, including SEDL’s, suggest specific strategies for identifying potential members of the collaborative group. Whatever the process you use, keep in mind that, as stated in the previous issue, "It isn’t enough to simply round up the ‘usual suspects’" (U.S. Department of Education, 196, p. 13). Find ways of reaching far into the community and engaging those outside the established circles of influence.

	Involving a broad base of community representatives is critical to a collaborative’s credibility and success.

Leadership structures. Many aspects of collaborative work involve a delicate balance, and nowhere is this more true than in the area of leadership. Especially in the early, start-up stages, a "small core group of leaders" needs to be active in order to "spark" the collaborative (Harwood Group, 1998, p. 2) and, specifically:

to articulate the initiative, build the necessary consensus, manage the change process, weather the storms, and continually refine and redesign the effort without losing the community’s support. (Casey Foundation, p. 11)

Yet it is also important to share leadership roles, and to avoid a leadership style that suppresses the group’s initiative. SEDL staff, for example, have worked with sites in which a school principal or superintendent, as the main organizer and leader of the collaborative, consistently discouraged the group from presenting certain project ideas to the local school board. These administrators’ intentions were good; they believed their school boards would summarily reject the proposals, and sought to head off conflict and frustration. The result instead was that the groups lost much of their enthusiasm for generating ideas – as well as opportunities to learn how to work effectively with the school board.

SEDL’s collaborative process recommends a shared leadership structure – selecting as co-leaders, for example, a principal and a parent, or a teacher and a local business owner. Cathy Jordan, SEDL’s rural development director, also suggests that school administrators consider taking a "behind-the-scenes" role. "Administrative involvement is critical, of course," she observes, "but it’s sometimes more effective to step into the background and take a supporting role." Groups, however, must always keep in mind that schools – and especially the principal and superintendent – are the ones who are ultimately held accountable for what students do and for how school facilities and resources are used.