Insights Report: Making Partnerships Work

Making partnerships work

Who this report is for

The importance of partnerships comes up in every piece of research and learning we do at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. We know that there are already many useful reports and resources on partnerships and collaboration1 , so why have we written another one?

We wanted to dig deeper into what makes good partnerships, and to share the insights of the organisations we fund on how to make them work.

This report is for funders like Esmée who want to get better at supporting and being part of partnerships, but also for anyone in the non-profit sector who is planning a new alliance, committed to working collaboratively, or struggling in a partnership that isn’t working.

This report shares our perspective on four themes, as well as key lessons from five organisations we support.

1 See page 24 for links to partnership reports, tools, and resources we find helpful.

What we mean by “partnership”

About this report

Non-profit organisations working together, or with the corporate or public sector. This could be in a formal partnership arrangement (e.g. coalitions, commissioning or referrals), but also in more informal ways. This research is drawn from the social justice, community, arts, and environment sectors.

This report is based on research including:

• A review of learning from our grants and social investments. This data was collected from learning conversations and reporting between Jan 2018 to Apr 2024. It includes learning from across our three strategic aims and from organisations working in different parts of the UK.

• Semi-structured interviews with five organisations we support.

• Group discussions with internal staff.

Key findings: at a glance

What makes partnerships work

What doesn’t work

What’s

needed to resource partnerships well What funders can do

• Choosing the right partners

• Being clear on roles and responsibilities

• Creating equal partnerships

• Making time to engage

• Going beyond individual relationships

• Nurturing the partnership

• Changing priorities

• Inequity

• Relational challenges –lack of trust and competition

• Inflexible ways of working

• Financial and capacity problems

• Lack of data collection and sharing

• Development funding to help to lay the foundations

• Unrestricted grants

• Longer time frames

• Extra money for partnership working

• Support with skills, learning, and planning

• Engagement from funders or commissioners

• Fully resource partnership working

• Join the dots

• Encourage collaboration over competition

• Promote equity

• Change how we fund partnerships

• Take time to understand partnership dynamics

• Advocate for the non-profit sector

What makes partnerships work

Ways of working that have been key to effective collaboration between organisations.

Choosing the right partners

• Shared goals: mission alignment, but also shared values or ethics, between the partners. The qualities of potential partners, especially their enthusiasm and imagination, can be as important as the technical merits of a project.

• Complementary contributions: the specific assets and skills of each partner are recognised and valued, e.g.: legal expertise, sector knowledge, clients, local authority relationship, meeting space, admin support, other stakeholders, trust and credibility.

• Mutual benefit: each partner understands what the other is getting out of a partnership, even when it feels like one is doing most of the work e.g. charities may receive no financial benefit from a public sector body, but depend on the local authority or school for referrals to their service.

• Focus: organisations invest time in building fewer, but more impactful and lasting partnerships, e.g.: for work aiming to replicate at scale, concentrating on fewer places and responding to local need, rather than aiming for high numbers of regions or a standardised offer which could dilute the impact.

Being clear on roles and responsibilities

• Internally: when setting up a partnership, organisations recognise and value their own contributions (financial and non-financial) and strengths.

• In the partnership: both partners recognise what each other brings and understand their roles in delivering the work.

• Externally: the shared roles are clear to people engaging with the partnership, especially service users or participants who may not see a distinction between the organisations.

What makes partnerships work

Creating equal partnerships

• The right model: a partnership structure which acknowledges imbalances of power, funding, and resources can make it possible for partners to derive equal benefits from the partnership, even when the organisations involved are very different.

• Fitting the model to the goal: consortium models which coalesce around a shared goal can help get around some of the challenges for collaboration. When funding is limited organisations can become territorial or competitive, and a separate consortium can be seen as an outlier that isn’t about holding onto power but enabling each member.

• Equality of roles: when all partners have equal representation and decision-making power in a partnership, they can derive similar benefits. For instance, in a partnership between 12 different sized organisations, all represented by their CEOs, the smallest organisation (in terms of revenue and staffing) felt they had an equal say in the direction of the partnership, and the same ability to exploit the relationships they built.

• Equality of voice: we have seen an increase in organisations using participatory models, or principles of sociocracy so that members all have an equal voice and see themselves reflected in the decisions and work that emerges.

• Equity in partnerships: organisations working for racial justice have had to reflect on how they can identify what a true and genuine, rather than tokenistic, partnership looks like. They have done this through having detailed conversations up front to really get to know each other and understand purpose and intentions.

What makes partnerships work

Making time to engage

• Good partnerships don’t come for free: giving time to building and working in partnership can’t be voluntary, or added on to an organisation’s existing work.

• Value participation in partnerships: when organisations cost out and pay for the time taken to build and work in partnership, the partnership becomes more valued in impact terms by their board and the staff involved.

• Skilled staff are key: people with the right networks are key for strategic partnerships, but a skilled coordinator is just as crucial as a CEO when holding relationships is their job.

• Uncovering the benefits: when the evidence is not enough to break down the barriers to engagement with an issue, a benefit of working in partnership is that it can create a shared language through which partner organisations can more easily understand the benefits of engagement to them and their agenda.

Going beyond individual relationships

• Broad and relevant goals: to change culture or policy, partnerships can look beyond the views of individual organisations and aim for outcomes which are relevant and realistic for the wider sector, and respond to broadly held challenges.

• Reflect partnership work back into the organisation: in a partnership, individuals contribute both on behalf of their organisations and with their own expertise. To maximise the legacy of the work, their contributions and the work of the partnership needs to be fed back into the organisation.

Nurturing the partnership

• Sustaining partnerships takes time and effort: it’s key to agree a vision at the start, but just as important to keep checking in with partners throughout the work.

• Trust needs to be built up, but also maintained: this is particularly important for working in partnership with local authorities, where it takes time to develop trust and staff changes mean it often needs to be rebuilt. Being embedded in public services is extremely valuable for referrals, building relationships and long-term change, but is a source of many short-term challenges.

• Everything changes: it takes time to understand different needs, and to adapt work in different places, but changes in the funding situation mean that adaptation will be a constant requirement.

What doesn’t work

Factors that can contribute to instability and fragility of partnerships.

Changing priorities

• It is hard to sustain coalitions over multi-year campaigns: organisational priorities and strategies shift and levels of commitment to the coalition can drop. Partnering costs can be a big drain of time and energy if progress is slow.

• Relying on one major referral partner is a risk if they stop delivering, or change strategy with no notice. However, diversifying income streams by working with lots of different partners doesn’t always make for stability, as they may still all change their priorities at the same time.

• Partnerships with local authorities are becoming more fragile – organisations that were once central to local strategies find themselves struggling to engage at all, and impact focus has shifted from the medium to the short-term.

Inequity, particularly in terms of racial inequity

Relational challenges – lack of trust, competition

• Lack of awareness of white privilege in working with Black-led organisations and creatives has many negative impacts, including lack of sustainability for the work and the organisations doing it.

• The financial and operational burdens on small organisations working with big institutions are much greater, and there is an unrealistic expectation that the smaller organisation that brings in the project will do the heavy lifting, for which they are not sufficiently resourced.

• There is a burden placed on individuals within the partnership to be change makers, leading to burnout.

• Even organisations working together in formal consortiums can lack the trust and relationships needed to make partnerships successful. CEO participation in a network can be driven by a need to get together to access commissioned funding or feeling like they should be there, rather than a commitment to joint working.

What doesn’t work

Inflexible ways of working

• Pace between dynamic non-profit organisations and more slow-moving public bodies can be a challenge, especially when it comes to moving at the speed required to deliver a project to funder timescales.

• Universities can be slow and administratively difficult to work with, and voluntary or arts organisations often find themselves fitting around university practices rather than the other way around.

• Local authorities can be resistant or reluctant to work in partnership due to limited capacity, rigid systems, fixed processes and ways of working. Individual staff or practitioners may really want to change how they work, but find it hard to integrate more holistic support for people into their caseloads.

Financial and capacity problems

• Fundraising and income generation are becoming increasingly challenging for partner organisations, but we are also hearing of more funders (statutory and independent) pulling out of agreements.

• Reduced staff capacity makes it hard to maintain communication and engagement, and also feeds into challenges for data collection, and for sharing and understanding impact.

Lack of data collection and sharing

• Data sharing is essential for work that is looking to change systems. When people feel swamped by need, it can be hard to build an understanding of the value of collecting and sharing data, and easier to keep on working in a siloed way. Taking a data led approach needs people at a senior or strategic level within partner organisations to commit to data sharing.

• Lack of data sharing is a particular problem for arts organisations working in partner venues. When venues don’t share audience data –due to capacity, but also because they don’t understand the value of sharing it – performance companies find it impossible to understand their reach and demonstrate their impact.

Insights from organisations we support

Drive Forward Foundation:

Building cross-sector partnerships

Drive Forward Foundation supports careexperienced young people aged 16-26 in London to develop the skills, confidence, and motivation they need to move into sustainable and fulfilling employment, education, and training. A key part of their model is partnering with businesses and corporates to create bespoke employment opportunities. They also work closely with local authorities, and government departments, as well as with other charities working to improve outcomes for care-experienced young people.

What factors contribute to effective partnership working?

• Key individuals. The success of a partnership is often down to the individuals involved. Usually, one person in an organisation understanding and advocating for Drive Forward’s work is how partnerships get off the ground.

• Flexibility on all sides. Drive Forward ensure that prospective partners are happy to make changes to their processes to accommodate best practice, and, similarly, recognise that they need to tailor their approach depending on the employer.

• Shared understanding. For Drive Forward, delivering training to new employment partners is crucial for ensuring staff understand what it is to be care-experienced and how they can best support young people coming into their workplace.

• Clear mutual benefits. For example, trying to work with local authorities in a time of budget cuts is made much easier when you can clearly show the financial savings involved.

• Dedicated capacity. Drive Forward have a partnerships team focused on developing and managing their work with partners. While this may not be realistic for every organisation, it’s important to acknowledge that working with others requires a lot of staff time, and this needs to be factored into budgets and planning.

• Celebrating the partnership. Drive Forward hold partner appreciation events to recognise everyone’s contributions and help build a sense of togetherness.

Insights from organisations we support Drive Forward Foundation

What really doesn’t work?

• Money over mission. The financial pressures many third sector organisations are under can mean partnerships are driven by the need to access funding. This can lead to organisations taking on work that doesn’t align with their mission, and which they aren’t necessarily best placed to do.

• Tokenism. Businesses must want to partner for the right reasons and Drive Forward aren’t afraid to turn approaches down if they don’t feel genuine. This is especially important given that young people sit at the centre of these relationships and need to feel safe and supported at all times.

Advice to other organisations

• Be confident and know your worth. Charities can often feel they have less power when it comes to working with businesses and local authorities, but remember they need us too. Don’t undervalue the expertise and networks you bring.

• Learn when to say no. Always be clear on why you’re partnering, and if a partnership doesn’t support your mission, then don’t do it.

“ Be confident – this is what we do, this is what we’re good at, and only look at partners, and funding that support that.”

Anton Babey, Chief Executive Officer

Insights from organisations we support

Northern Roots: Partnering in place

Northern Roots is creating the UK’s largest urban farm and eco-park in the heart of Oldham, transforming a 160-acre site for people, communities, and nature. To make this happen, requires collaborating with a wide range of organisations and place-based groups, across different sectors. The project’s founding partnership with Oldham Council also continues to evolve with the site. For Northern Roots, working with others has not only been key for unlocking resource, but also for expanding their reach, accessing expertise, and bringing different voices into the project.

“ Be very prescriptive about the end goal but prepared to be flexible and change how you’re going to get there.”

Anna da Silva, Chief Executive Officer

Insights from organisations we support Northern Roots: Partnering in place

What factors contribute to effective partnership working?

• Time and effort. All parties have to really invest in this as a way of working and have genuine interest in collaborating with others – and not just as a way of accessing funding.

• Clear division of roles and responsibilities. Partnerships have worked best when each organisation understands what each other are responsible for. However, how this is documented needs to be proportionate to the size and type of partnership. While a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) might be appropriate for large-scale partnerships, and where public funding is involved, Northern Roots have seen that lots of paperwork is often more of a burden for community groups and isn’t always conducive to building trust.

• Communication is key. Things will go wrong, but being in regular dialogue and having consistent check-ins helps problems get aired and worked through early on.

• Acknowledging the power dynamic – particularly when funders are involved. Northern Roots have found it is best to be explicit about where power sits within the partnership in order to consider how this might show up in the work and relationships.

• Unusual alliances. One of Northern Roots’ more unusual collaborative projects has been with the private water company United Utilities where they found that being from different sectors was a real positive and meant they were able to bring very different expertise to the work. And, whilst their reasons for doing the project differed, they were clear on what each other wanted to achieve, which helped to ensure the project served them both.

Insights from organisations we support Northern Roots: Partnering in place

What really doesn’t work?

• Rushing into partnerships. Without taking the time to clarify the objectives of the partnership, what is expected of each other, and ensure there is shared commitment, there’s a risk that the work will go off track and of frustration within the relationship.

• Culture clash. Northern Roots are trying to do something really big, and with small resources. When larger scale organisations aren’t willing to be flexible and adapt their (often long and complicated) processes, it not only slows things down, but takes up a huge amount of energy.

• Lack of handover. Even if there is a strong synergy at the start, changes in leadership and staff can mean that the purpose of the partnerships gets lost or forgotten, and internal support for the work disappears.

Advice to other organisations

• Strategic clarity. Establish what you want to achieve by working in partnership – “Who do you want to reach? What does success look like? And how will you know if something has been successful?” – are all good questions to ask. This gives you clear criteria to help decide on which partnerships are a good fit, and when it’s right to say no, or not yet.

• Identifying local partners. For place-based work, map out what organisations are in your area – think about what you might be able to achieve together, and if there might be opportunities to harness each other’s work and expertise.

• Relationship management. When entering a partnership, make sure there are named contacts within each organisation who are responsible for the relationship. Consider what tools or other practices will help you to manage the relationship long-term. E.g., by agreeing regular review points, or where appropriate, producing a partnership agreement.

• Space for learning. Test out working with other organisations before entering into more formal and long-term commitments together. This gives you time to reflect on what worked and didn’t work, and build on what you’ve learnt.

Insights from organisations we support

Greener UK: Working in coalition

Greener UK was a sector-wide collaboration between environment NGOs established in response to the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Whilst the organisations involved were already collaborating on policy and campaign work, the scope of Brexit felt like both an opportunity and an existential threat to the environment, which they needed a specific, purpose-built vehicle to navigate together. Hosted by Green Alliance, the coalition was supported by a dedicated unit of staff with experience in political convening and influencing legislation.

Greener UK offers a “powerful example of strong sector collaboration having very significant influence”, that “provided additional benefits of working together – including learning, pooling expertise, new relationships, greater trust” 2 . And whilst the coalition formally ended in December 2023, its collaborative spirit has continued, and Green Alliance continue to provide a home for coordinated work in the sector.

“ A bit like cooking a recipe, when it comes to building a coalition, you need to get the ingredients right .”

Ruth Chambers, Green Alliance

Insights from organisations we support Greener UK: Working in coalition

What helped make the coalition successful?

• Varied skillsets. Having partners involved who are committed, determined, and different from each other – this gave the coalition access to a wide range of support and parliamentary, policy, and technical expertise.

• Stable and flexible funding. Having long-term, unrestricted funding meant that during challenging times they didn’t have to worry about where the money was coming from and could focus on the work. And flexibility on how to spend it ensured they were able to respond to the rapidly changing policy environment.

• Senior buy-in and leadership. At the start of the work, having a board made up of senior leaders from different NGOs not only helped the coalition steer tricky decisions, but seeing this engagement and commitment at a senior level created a huge level of trust between partners which endured throughout and beyond the project.

• Sharing learning. The coalition was constantly drawing on its experiences from other campaign work and sharing political tactics and nous, upskilling the coalition as a whole and strengthening its strategic approach.

• Embedding the right culture. While navigating different views takes time and resource, the coalition knew it was important for reaching the best ideas and avoiding ‘group think’. Developing a culture that encouraged and made space for different opinions but where people understood the coalition needed to move at pace and ultimately come to an agreed position was key for managing this tension.

• Creating a coalition of equals. Regardless of how much organisations were able to give (financially, or in terms of staff time), everyone’s voices were equal, and their contributions recognised – with members appreciating that each organisation brought something different.

• Building a legacy. Greener UK was always intended to be a timelimited project, but given its successes, it was clear that this kind of sector collaboration needed to continue. To support this, Green Alliance has set-up a new legislation and governance unit, which will act as a focal point for the sector and help carry the work on.

What were the challenges?

• Capacity. Despite being wellresourced, the scale of the challenge still sometimes created a capacity issue. Particularly trying to navigate the different political contexts and timescales of each four nations.

• Sustaining stamina. Work took longer than expected, including because of the pandemic, and in an increasingly hostile and politically volatile environment, and it required a lot of personal and organisational resilience for people to stay the course.

Insights from organisations we support

Committee on the Administration of Justice and North West Migrants Forum:

Connecting policy with practice

Based in Belfast, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) is a human rights organisation that works to protect and promote justice in Northern Ireland. Since 2021, they have been collaborating with North West Migrants Forum (NWMF) – a migrant-led organisation, with over 1,500 members, based in Derry/ Londonderry. Esmée are currently supporting their partnership work to improve policy and practice in relation to the rights of migrants and communities experiencing racial inequity, primarily by funding a new member of staff who will work across both organisations.

What helps make the partnership successful?

For NWMF, when thinking about partnering they need to not only know what they want to achieve, but also what their strengths and weaknesses as an organisation are. By being aware of the gaps in their skills, knowledge, and resource, they can then decide who is best placed to fill them. NWMF were conscious that they didn’t have comprehensive knowledge of Northern Ireland legislation and so working with CAJ to access this kind of expertise made perfect sense. Similarly, for CAJ, working with NWMF helps bridge a gap between the policy and legal side of the issues, and the lived experiences of people on the frontline.

Both organisations see it as being important that they share the same values and objectives. This they discovered by simply getting to know each other – from meeting at events, lifting the phone to ask a question, to then eventually doing small bits of work together.

And it means that whilst their working methods are very different, they’re naturally complimentary.

Getting to know each other in this way also helped build trust. So that when it came to applying for funding to develop the partnership it was really easy to work together on the application and they could both stay relaxed when the relationship became more formalised. It has also allowed for greater independence in the partnership. Both feel trusted to take things forward, without constantly checking in, and this helps the work to flow.

CAJ and NWMF always work on funding applications together and alternate who leads the process with the funder. This has helped create a sense of shared ownership over the work. CAJ genuinely want NWMF to grow and develop, and so they’re not afraid to let them lead – which has not always been the case when NWMF work with larger partners.

Insights from organisations we support

Committee on the Administration of Justice and North West Migrants Forum: Connecting policy with practice

Based on your experiences, what really doesn’t work?

There are lots of organisations who want to work with NWMF on racial and migrant justice, but not everyone wants to empower the community, and often it’s just in pursuit of funding. On some occasions, NWMF have been approached by organisations who have already used their name in funding applications, before having actually spoken to them. This has made them very careful about entering into partnerships and they’ll now only work on projects where they’re able to have a role in shaping the work and what their contribution will look like from the start.

CAJ have also found that partnerships rarely work when they are driven by money, or if they are developed in response to top-down requests from funders. The objective of working together has to be about a specific issue you want to resolve, the resources come next. Otherwise, you risk creating projects for the sake of it. Where there is natural collaboration, it is often already happening, without directives from funders.

“ It’s mostly about the skills and commitment of the people involved in the partnership – it’s people who make things happen and bring about change.”

Lilian Seenoi-Barr, North West Migrants Forum

What’s needed to resource partnerships well

From our learning, there is clear evidence that partnering is resource intensive, time consuming and needs to be properly resourced to be successful. From a funder’s perspective, these are the key resource needs that have emerged from our learning.

Development

funding to help to lay the foundations

• Development funding to explore and set up a partnership has been described as “like the oxygen needed to climb the mountain”. Practically it buys time and expertise, but it also encourages people to keep going through the difficult times.

• Small amounts of funding to test out partnership work, and do bits of work together informally, can be important for building trust ahead of putting in a larger bid.

Unrestricted grants

Longer time frames

• Unrestricted funding enables organisations to work more flexibly in partnerships.

• More time is needed, both for funding and for expectations of impact. Collaboration is time intensive, and slow (and slows down even further as the number of partners increases).

What’s needed to resource partnerships well

Extra money for partnership working

• Co-ordination and administration, extra time to engage at senior and junior levels, travel costs, support for smaller organisations to engage with larger ones that have more capacity, all need more money to resource.

• Good and effective convening and coordination doesn’t come cheap, and can be most effective when it is someone’s job, not an add-on to their work.

Support with skills, learning, and planning

• Capability building support to strengthen the skills of each partner to work together.

• Shared learning, training or peer support.

• Help with planning for the end of the partnership – to ensure the work has a legacy, and that the partnership ends well.

Engagement from funders or commissioners

• Partnerships need ongoing engagement from funders beyond the set-up phase. Regular check-ins and review prevent funders losing interest and keep the focus on the work.

• Trust and listening are key. Funders often don’t understand specific contexts and needs, and which partnership dynamics will work for them.

What funders can do

Organisations we fund have shared a lot of useful feedback with us on what funders do well, and could do better, to support partnership working.

Fully resource partnership working

• Recognise the amount of staff time organisations need to put into a partnership, and that partnerships need to be cultivated at every stage, from the initial stages and throughout.

• Be aware of who bears the costs of partnership programmes we are funding. A small charity may need to put more of its resources into a partnership, especially one which aims for systemic change.

Join the dots

• Directly introduce grantees to each other – connecting organisations and helping to broker relationships locally or between sectors. Provide more opportunities for networking so that organisations we fund can identify potential collaborations.

• Recognise that to achieve systemic change, it’s important to bring together people from different parts of the system. It’s what funders like to do when funding a pilot project, but much more difficult when shifting a whole system to joint ways of working. Described by one organisation as “managing a barrowload of frogs”, it is time consuming and expensive to achieve, but necessary for change.

• Support the development of free resources which help organisations in mapping and identifying the right sorts of partners.

Encourage collaboration over competition

• Help build trust and relationships between organisations through connecting and convening.

• Incentivise collective – not individual – efforts in impact measurement, administration, or funding systems.

• Recognise that a funder’s role in a sector is not neutral, and that funder requirements could help transform collaboration within a sector: e.g. by encouraging or requiring organisations to collect basic, consistent data.

What funders can do

Promote equity

• Consider who in the partnership funders hold the relationship with, whose voices get heard, who is doing the work, who gets the credit, and who controls the money.

• Change the funding model to equitably resource and empower smaller organisations, which are often key to the success of partnerships but not given core funding. Help grow their resilience by making more small grants to grassroots organisations.

• Funders have a key role in dismantling systemic racism. When funding organisations in a partnership, check that the organisations are inclusive, and embed lived experience. For “led by and for” organisations, look beyond governance structures and size, and instead look at the productivity of the people, potential of the work, and what they could achieve if you supported them.

Change how we fund partnerships

• Make partnership funding fairer. One partner has to be the lead, which comes with all the power, risk and responsibility. Smaller organisations don’t often have the infrastructure to manage this.

• Make partnership applications easier. They are a big drain on time and effort to coordinate.

• Have a relationship with all the partners. The lead applicant currently gets all the benefits of having the relationship with the funder, and they are also the filter, representing their view of what’s happening to the funder but also back to the other partners. If partnerships could apply together, and be contracted separately, they could each get to have a relationship with the funder.

Take time to understand partnership dynamics

• Identify genuine partnerships. When partnerships are required to access money, some organisations may not have a genuine motivation to collaborate.

• Consider all the partners and find out what the relationships are. Speak to more than just the lead partner.

• Clarify what stage partnership plans are at. Funders are sometimes misled to believe that organisations cited in applications have already agreed to do the work together – when often they haven’t been approached yet.

Advocate for the non-profit sector

• Advocate for the skills and expertise of the organisations we fund with potential partners from outside the sector.

• Challenge misconceptions about the non-profit sector from statutory services or corporates that don’t take voluntary organisations seriously.

So what does this mean for Esmée?

Gina Crane, Director of Communications and Learning

Pulling together so much rich learning and advice from organisations we fund has made two things clear: it takes more time, effort, and money to work in partnership; and the funding system is not set up to support partnership working.

As funders, we know from our own experiences how tricky it can be to set up and maintain a partnership with another funder when our governance is separate, even with all our resources. So why are we surprised when it takes longer and is more difficult for the organisations we fund? It is easy for us to say from a funder’s perspective that organisations “should be working together” when their work looks similar. But how many of the top 300 funders3 can say that what we each do is unique?

The funding system is currently set up to make us all focus on what makes us different and special, instead of what we have in common, or what we need from others. In contrast, the learning in this report shows the inherent flexibility of social organisations. The organisations we fund are brilliant at making new partnerships and adapting to them in a way that corporate or public sector organisations are not. As a sector, collaborating could be our superpower.

At Esmée, we don’t generally refer to the organisations we fund as “partners”. Not because we don’t want to be seen as partners, but because we aren’t able to act like true partners for all the 600-plus organisations we fund. We try to “join the dots” and make helpful connections whenever we can , but also to bear in mind that problems arise when roles are blurred. We were recently told in a review of our work on Nature Friendly Farming4: “it’s not your job to come up with the ‘solutions’ even though many stakeholders are encouraging you to do so... However, you could increase the capacity of others and support them to work this out together”.

When we do work more closely with the organisations we fund as partners, we try to bring all our assets as a funder to the partnership. We think that our capacity for uncertainty and our flexibility can make us a key “risk absorber” for partnership working.

The f inal word in this report belongs to Take Note, whose Blueprint for funders5 has influenced our thinking and challenged us to improve. We hope that every funder who reads this report will think about their golden principles for funders:

1. Fund partners’ time to collaborate well and be prepared to resource the additional time they spend together throughout the project that specifically nurtures and develops the partnership itself.

2. Create opportunities for the group to come together during the application process, actively supporting the partners to collectively develop their plans for the project in a way that maximises its potential success and impact.

3 Foundation Giving Trends (ACF, 2023)

4 Nature Friendly Farming, mid strategy review (Resources for Change, 2023)

5 Funding Collaborations: A Blueprint (Take Note, 2023)

3. Integrate a way for every partner to have a voice in the application in order to understand their individual commitment to the project and motivation for getting involved.

Appendix

Tools and resources

Some practical tools and resources we’ve come across that organisations may find helpful.

Take Note

Take Note champions the power of collaboration and provide a series of free collaboration tools to support partnership work, and the thinking behind them. We also hosted a webinar on effective partnership working with them exploring the range of tools and heard from Your Next Move’s experience of using the tools.

Find Take Note’s collaboration tools

Watch the webinar on effective partnership working

IVAR (Institute for Voluntary Action Research)

IVAR’s work includes facilitating collaboration between charities, funders and across sectors. They have resources that share learning from their work as well as publications on building effective partnerships and cross-sector partnerships.

See a summary of IVAR’s learning on collaboration

Download: How to build an effective partnership

Download: Talking points for cross-sector partnerships

Tamarack Institute

The Tamarack Institute is a community of over 40,000 engaged practitioners and policymakers who work collaboratively to advance positive community change. Their collaboration spectrum tool helps groups decide where they are on the spectrum of collaboration including current level and ideal level.

See Tamarack Institute’s collaboration spectrum tool

Tools and resources

The Change Agency

The Change Agency work with community organisers and activists in the Australia Pacific region to help people win social and environmental change. They provide a range of tools for organisations and activists dealing with the challenges of working in groups.

See The Change Agency’s tools on working in groups

High Trees

High Trees connect work with people and communities to strengthen skills and build stronger voices. They have a practical guide to collaborative working with tools and templates that can be adapted to support partnership work.

See High Trees’ practical guide to collaborative working

Rising Arts Agency

Rising is a creative agency mobilising for radical change. They published a report and podcast sharing the themes and recommendations from their research into how power affects partnerships in the cultural sector.

See Rising’s power in partnerships report and listen to the podcast

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for sharing their insights with us: Anton Babey, Drive Forward Foundation, Úna Boyd, Committee on the Administration of Justice, Ruth Chambers, Green Alliance, Anna Da Silva, Northern Roots, and Lilian Seenoi-Barr, North West Migrants Forum.

Photo credits

Front cover

© Northern Roots

Page 11

© Drive Forward Foundation

Page 12 © Northern Roots

Page 18

© Committee on the Administration of Justice and North West Migrants Forum Appendix

Authors

Gina Crane

Director of Communications and Learning

Philippa Wilkinson Learning Officer

communications@esmeefairbairn.org.uk www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk