Although the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a collaboration meltdown in many of the case we investigated, CSOs provided flexible voluntary services even during this period. This disengagement happened despite the fact that municipalities had to establish strong, transparent and accountable measures to ensure proper funding allocation and regulation almost overnight. This phenomenon draws our attention to the resilience and sustainability of collaborative practices. Civic ecosystems have to identify and enforce baseline requirements for democratic governance, including remedies for the logistical and capacity constraints that contributed to the near shutdown of local governance mechanisms. Coming up with quick responses to unforeseen circumstances by involving and linking up local stakeholders is in everyone’s interest. Ensuring continuity instead of having to start from scratch again and again presupposes permanent links between the civic ecosystem and the local administration, as well as knowledge transfers and organic development between waves of mobilization, even in the face of occasional stagnation and dead-ends.