The first six months of a coalition feel like progress. Stakeholders show up. Meetings have energy. Working groups form. Then somewhere around month seven, the cadence slips. Action items linger. The same agenda items return meeting after meeting. By month nine, the coalition that felt unstoppable is being kept alive by one or two people sending reminder emails.
What we’re seeing in the field
The stall almost never has the cause people attribute it to. It’s not “people lost interest” and it’s not “the funding ran out.” Interest fades because the structure that worked for convening doesn’t work for delivering. Funding feels tight because the coalition is doing twice the work for half the clarity.
Why it happens
Coalitions are usually built on consensus. Consensus is wonderful for getting people in the room. It’s a terrible operating system for actually shipping work. The decisions that need to happen monthly — who owns this, by when, with what resources, accountable to whom — get treated as if they need full-group sign-off. They don’t. They need clarity, transparency, and trust that whoever owns it will deliver it.
What actually works
Successful long-running coalitions shift their decision model around month four. They keep convening for direction-setting. They move to delegated execution for everything else — with explicit governance about who can decide what, how decisions get communicated back, and how disagreements are escalated. The shift is uncomfortable. It also doubles their delivery velocity.