The members of a prospective collaborative have many important decisions to make together. Experienced funders said that clarity on these issues early on is essential for good relations and success. Every collaborative has distinctive goals and benchmarks against which it measures the outcomes of its own work. However, there are also common, agreed-upon indicators that say a lot about the collaborative itself and its successful functioning. This tool includes a guide to aid the start-up process, as well as a list that collaborative members can use to rate a collaborative’s success and open up a healthy conversation.

"Theory of Change Online or 'TOCO', is an accessible, easy-to-use learning tool for creating and implementing a Theory of Change. It provides users with a flexible drawing canvas for building, editing, and soliciting feedback."

Adobe Connect is a web conferencing platform for web meetings, eLearning, and webinars. With Adobe Connect for Web Meetings, you can: engage in complete mobile-to-mobile collaboration, with the ability to host, present, and collaborate anytime, anywhere on virtually any device; help ensure easy meeting access for all participants with no desktop client downloads; create your own personal digital office in the cloud with a customized URL that’s always on, and content and layouts that remain in place; [and make] interactive, customizable, and indexed recordings.

Attentiv is a software platform for effective meetings. Build an agenda, take notes, assign action items, automatically generate meeting minutes and most importantly, get real time feedback.

“Campfire is a web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms in just seconds. Invite a client, colleague, or vendor to chat, collaborate, and make decisions. Link to a room on your intranet for internal communications.”

“With its instant whiteboards, Conceptboard provides a central platform to communicate with your team, clients and suppliers by reducing misunderstands and your email amount. Feedback on visual content is as easy as with pen and paper, but there is support for tasks, reports and lots more. Conceptboard simplifies and improves collaboration on visual content and accelerates collaboration processes within your team. You save your budget for advancing in your projects instead of paying travel expenses and project delays.”

“Fuze offers reliable, pixel perfect, hi-definition meetings and video conferencing solutions that are compatible with any device, from anywhere in the world.” Features include: “multi-party HD video conferencing; rich media sharing; desktop and app screen sharing; remote control; Fuze Telepresence; Call Me; chat; cross-platform compatibility; easy integration into your communications infrastructure; meeting recording; reusable meeting space; content publishing; annotations; and auto-reconnect.”

GoToMeeting is the extremely simple, extraordinarily powerful way to hold unlimited online meetings with up to 25 attendees. [You can] start a meeting and share your screen with just a click; collaborate face to face with HDFaces video conferencing; [and] save with integrated audio conferencing (via VoIP and telephone). Attendees can join from a Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone or Android device.

iMeet is a cloud-based web conferencing tool with a host of features including the ability to meet with up to 125 people, HD video chat with 15 people, and cloud-based file storage. iMeet allows you to record meetings to share afterwards and offers social network integration to connect with friends and coworkers. You can host or attend a meeting with any device without the need for a dial-in number or passcode.

ooVoo is a video chat and instant messaging app for desktop, mobile, tablets and Facebook, allowing group video chat with up to 12 people with multi-stream and high definition video calls. ooVoo users can also make free voice calls and send instant messages to other ooVoo users. In addition to its normal video chat functions, ooVoo offers some great add-on tools like the ability to send files, share your screen, and add YouTube videos to your conversations.

ReadyTalk is an audio and web conference platform designed to handle everything from a small virtual meeting to hosting a large webinar. ReadyTalk is fee-based and provides several different plans to suit individual needs. In addition to web and video conferencing, ReadyTalk offers a suite of mobile conferencing apps to allow you to participate with online meetings and webinars on the go.

WebEx allows you to “meet with colleagues across your organization, or halfway across the planet. Meet online and share files, information, and expertise... You can do almost anything with WebEx that you can do in person, minus the travel time. Use WebEx specialized products to: present dynamic online events and webinars; deliver online training and eLearning experiences; provide outstanding remote technical support; build stronger relationships with in-person telepresence experiences delivered over the cloud; and share knowledge, experience and ideas across your organization.

“Salesforce Chatter makes business processes social, so you can collaborate in real time—in context—from anywhere…. Chatter makes it easy to share ideas, documents, and anything else with your coworkers, instantly.” Chatter features include: “file sharing, profiles, status updates, activity feeds, workflow approvals, groups, Chatter communities, Chatterbox, social intelligence, Chatter messenger, Chatter desktop, Chatter mobile, Chatter for Sharepoint, contacts, dashboards, reports, answers and ideas, calendars and events, tasks and activities.”

"CiviCRM is web-based, open source, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations. As a non profit committed to the public good itself, CiviCRM understands that forging and growing strong relationships with constituents is about more than collecting and tracking constituent data - it is about sustaining relationships with supporters over time. To this end, CiviCRM has created a robust web-based, open source, highly customizable, CRM to meet organizations’ highest expectations right out-of-the box. Unlike proprietary software, each new release of this open source software reflects the very real needs of its users as enhancements are continually given back to the community. With CiviCRM's robust feature set,  organizations can further their mission through contact management, fundraising, event management, member management, mass e-mail marketing, peer-to-peer campaigns, case management, and much more."

“Drupal Commons is a packaged form of Drupal (a ‘Drupal distribution’) that contains the majority of pre-built features that a social community or external community site might need to create productive interactions among employees, customers—blogs, wikis, calendars, and much more. It provides a robust community site out of the box so that you don’t have to assemble all of the pieces yourself, all you need to do is invite people to participate.”

Huddle lets you “store, share, and work on files with anyone inside and outside your organization—from your desktop, iPad, or smartphone.” It allows you to “share files across the firewall with your colleagues and partners… comment, assign and assign tasks and approvals—all in one central location—to get work done efficiently and effectively)… and [to create] user profiles [that] allow you to connect with the specific people you need to contribute to your project.”

“KARL is an open source web system for collaboration, organizational intranets, and knowledge management. KARL is simple to use and enables small and large groups to create communities and to share information… Top features include: topic-based communities, powerful search, secured external collaboration, rich text wiki, collaborative blog, layered group calendar, strong email integration, and outstanding security.” 

NetSuite is "one integrated, cloud application to manage your entire organization. With NetSuite's unified business management solution, nonprofit organizations can manage their entire end-to-end operations with a single, flexible, and powerful business application—integrating accounting, fundraising, constituent relationship management (CRM), financials and enterprise resource planning (ERP), inventory management, Ecommerce and more." 

“By simplifying people’s ability to share knowledge, ideas and corporate data, Socialtext removes silos and corporate barriers that have traditionally hampered companies’ ability to respond to change and better serve customers. Socialtext’s enterprise social networking products — including microblogging, blogs, wikis, profiles, and social spreadsheets — provide simpler ways for employees to share vital information and work together in real-time. Delivered in a variety of hosted cloud services, as well as on-site appliances, enterprise customers are provided with flexible deployment options that meet their security requirements.”

“ThoughtFarmer combines traditional intranets with social features to make the social intranet: an easy yet powerful platform for employee communication and collaboration…. Communication features include: news, personal homepage, branding, mobile internet access, photo galleries, calendars, employee directory, navigation, manuals, search, and tags. Collaboration features include: wikis, blogs, forums, groups, documents, direct document editing, expertise locator, and discussion capture. Employee engagement features include: forums, comments, profiles, relationship browser, activity stream, favorites, like, revision history, and notifications.”

“Wiggio.com is a free, online toolkit that makes it easy to work in groups. Over 100,000 groups are using Wiggio to: host virtual meetings and conference calls; manage events with a shared calendar; create to do lists and assign tasks; poll your group in real time; send email, text and voice messages; and upload and manage files in a shared folder.”

Expression Engine is a feature-rich content management system (CMS) with a comprehensive set of publishing features. Expression Engine includes a template engine to build dynamic, content driven websites and comes with 22 add-on modules and over 100 plugins.

“Foundation Directory Online (FDO) is the nation’s leading online funding research tool, developed by the Foundation Center. FDO provides the most current, accurate, and comprehensive information available on U.S. grantmakers and their grants, drawn from reliable sources, including IRS Form 990s, grantmaker web sites and annual reports, and the grantmakers themselves. The Foundation Center has combined its data with the latest technology. These advances have led to improvements such as the ability to keyword-search across an entire database of IRS Form 990s, map and chart the distribution of a funder’s grants, and sign up to receive funder-specific e-mail alerts.”

“Through IssueLab, the Foundation Center is working to more effectively gather, index, and share the collective intelligence of the social sector. IssueLab provides free access to thousands of case studies, evaluations, white papers, and issue briefs addressing some of the world’s most pressing social problems. If you have worked, volunteered, or interned for a social sector organization, foundation, or university based research center, you can create an account and add resources to the IssueLab collection. As long as your materials are free and available to the public, IssueLab accepts annual reports, case studies, datasets, evaluations, fact sheets, issue/policy briefs, literature/research reviews, presentations, reports/white papers, surveys, congressional testimony, and toolkits.” 

“NGOsource helps U.S. grantmakers streamline their international giving through easier equivalency determinations. NGOsource simplifies the task of evaluating whether a non-U.S. organization is the equivalent of a U.S. public charity—a process known as equivalency determination or ED. [NGOsource’s] global reach, legal expertise, and standardized methodology enable a thorough, accurate analysis in compliance with IRS regulations. Backed by a database of detailed information about non-governmental organizations around the world, the data and analysis that NGOsource uses to issue an ED to one grantmaker can be used to issue EDs to other grantmakers. In this way, NGOsource reduces the complexity and costs of EDs for grantmakers and their intended grantees.”

“Zoho CRM gives you a 360-degree view of your complete sales cycle and pipeline. Identify trends, spot opportunities, increase efficiency and reduce costs with the right answers, right now. Sync Google emails and other information with Zoho CRM. Collaborate and share information easily with Zoho CRM for Google Apps.”

“Gapminder World shows the world’s most important trends. Gapminder is a non-profit venture—a modern “museum” on the Internet—promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.” Gapminder is based on the “Trendalyzer software, [which] sought to unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics. The current version of Trendalyzer has been available since March 2006 as Gapminder World, a web-service displaying time series of development statistics for all countries.”

“Quora's mission is to share and grow the world's knowledge. Quora is your best source of knowledge. Ask any question, get real answers from people with first hand experience, and blog about what you know.”

“Delicious is an easy, free tool to save, organize, and remember the links you find interesting on the web. It’s a great place to develop a rich network of people who share your interests.” With Delicious, you can: “add links to Delicious and never lose what you find and share on the web; organize your collection of links and share it with like-minded people; and browse links curated by the Delicious community to discover content you care about.”

“Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet, and the web. With Evernote, all of your notes, web clips, files and images are made available on every device and computer you use: save everything cool and exciting you see online and in the real world; save entire webpages to your Evernote account with the nifty web clipper browser extensions; search by keyword, tag, and even find text inside images; and share your notes and collaborate on projects with friends and colleagues.”

“Mindomo is an online mind mapping tool and collaboration services provider that offers the perfect habitat for developing ideas and brainstorming with your team.”

“Alfresco is an enterprise content platform that you can use in the cloud or behind your firewall. It helps you store and share the documents that every business depends on. Alfresco is built for the portability of the tablet and the power of the cloud. Today’s companies are more mobile and more collaborative than ever. Now you can work anywhere, with anyone, on any device—all connected by the cloud. In other words, Alfresco makes sure you have your content wherever you are.”

“Dropbox lets you bring all your photos, docs and videos anywhere. Any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website. Dropbox works hard to make sure that all your files are the same no matter where you’re working from. You can start working on a computer at school or the office, and finish from your home computer. Never email yourself a file again! Dropbox also makes it easy to share with others. Invite your friends, family, and teammates to any folder in your Dropbox, and it’ll be as if you saved that folder straight to their computers.”

“Google Drive lets you store and access your files anywhere—on the web, on your hard drive, or on the go. Here’s how it works: go to Google Drive on the web at drive.google.com; install Google Drive on your computer or mobile device; throw your files in Google Drive, and it’s right there on your device. Now your files go everywhere you do. [If you] change a file on the web, on your computer, or on your mobile device, it updates on every device where you’ve installed Google Drive.”

NoteApp is a collaborative board application aimed to give your computers and devices the same power of a physical cork board, where ease of use, collaboration and creativity were built in. Originally a DIY-project to fix note-taking habits, NoteApp set out to be something different. Where past tools promoted lists, forced processes like "Getting Things Done", or made assumptions about how people worked, NoteApp's createors wanted something visual. NoteApp is now a family owned-and-operated small business, based out of Montreal, Canada. 

One Spark is an annual crowdfunding festival connecting people with great ideas to the resources they need to make them a reality. One Spark also hosts a speaker summit which brings together some of the most accomplished founders, creatives, makers, and doers from around the country to share their stories.

“IdeaScale is an easy-to-use, yet powerful solution for the collection of feedback and ideas.” It helps users, “empower innovation, bring[ing] out the best ideas from your customers and stakeholders by giving them a platform to share, vote, and discuss feedback. How it works: users submit ideas… others vote on those ideas… and the best ideas bubble up. This process allows you to get feedback from your loyal constituents, understand those constituents, solve problems, and steer innovation by knowing what your community really wants.”

“The Learning Registry is a new approach to capturing, sharing, and analyzing learning resource data to broaden the usefulness of digital content to benefit educators and learners. The Learning Registry is not a website or repository… it's not a search engine… and it's not a replacement for the excellent sources of online learning content that already exist… The Learning Registry is an open source technical system designed to facilitate the exchange of data behind the scenes, and an open community of resource creators, publishers, curators, and consumers who are collaborating to broadly share resources, as well as information about how those resources are used by educators in diverse learning environments across the Web.”

Microsoft Project Online with Project Pro for Office 365 is a flexible online solution for project portfolio management and everyday work.” Features include the ability to: “add teams and projects within minutes with a web-based portal; keep your teams organized in one location—their project site—where they can view project summaries, documents, tasks, newsfeeds, and calendars; easily share and curate what teams are talking about and working on by following people, sites, tags, and documents with newsfeeds; promote visibility with collaborative tools to seamlessly flow calendar, presence, and capacity information across your organization; and collaborate with your team quickly by dragging and dropping them into a Lync meeting for group conferencing, instant messaging, screen sharing, and shared workspaces.”

"Open Atrium is open source collaboration software that enables organizations to securely connect their teams, projects, and knowledge. A powerful solution, Open Atrium’s framework allows your organization to easily integrate your existing software, while remaining flexible enough to change as your organization grows. With Open Atrium, you can better communicate, educate, and inform your organization by creating solutions such as an intranet, social collaboration platform, web portal, or learning management system."

"SlateCRM let's you quickly store, track and retrieve all information for you to get things done. SlateCRM is designed to address the information overload facing every business and office worker today. It's Simple Powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM)." 

“Google+ is an online community platform that allows you to connect and share with others.” Features include: user profiles; “circles” that allow users to organize people into groups for sharing; public communities around shared interests and private communities with selected people; photo sharing; “hangouts” that enable users to video chat for free with up to nine friends at the same time; and a mobile app that allows users to stay connected while they’re on the go.