Lack of flexibility
Lack of flexibility was cited as a challenge to maintaining partnerships and working together. Given the busy schedules and heavy workloads that most partners deal with, a lack of flexibility can be a serious problem. It has implications for scheduling meetings, meeting timelines, and generally getting along.

Family literacy signifies a different approach to literacy development and supporting families. People are often intimidated by change, and are reluctant to try new things.

Accountability problems
Accountability can also be a challenge to building partnerships. Who is the partnership accountable to? Who are the individual agencies accountable to? Who is staff accountable to?

There are different purposes to evaluation, and different methods of being accountable. Agencies and partners may have very different indicators of success, and different concepts of meeting goals. For example, many family literacy practitioners realize that when a program is first starting out, having a class of three people constitutes a success, and that those three people will be the program's best advocates. To other agencies, however, such a small class size may not be deemed sufficient reason to invest time and resources. Partners providing financial support may have criteria that requires a minimum number of participants.

Evaluation poses challenges for partnerships and programs as well. While recognizing the importance of accountability, if we are required to use standardized or quantitative evaluation methods, we run the risk of losing the opportunity for unique, community-based implementation. Similarly, evaluation data required by one agency, or the monitoring and reporting system used by another, may not be appropriate or relevant for the collaborative project.