Lessons Learned Guiding Principles

• Partnerships can be defined basically as establishing mutual or common interest and working together to accomplish goals; they can be voluntary or mandated.

• Partnerships have some important advantages; they often:

o promote new levels of enthusiasm and “buy in” among stakeholders
o provide value-added to both funders and consumers
o strengthen the level of expertise in a project
o expand service offerings to clients
o allow agencies to venture into growth-promoting projects that they wouldn’t be able to undertake on their own
o provide access to more opportunities for management and staff
o provide economies of scale
o result in better service co-ordination

• Partnership exists on a continuum: cooperation, collaboration, coordination, partnership, each representing different levels of relationship between two or more organizations.  Co-operation is common, and the least demanding. Collaboration occurs from time to time in the life of an organization (e.g., collaboration on a specific project), and is clearly more demanding on the time and effort of an organization than co-operation. Coordination requires collaboration on the development of agreed-upon protocols plus regular contact.  Formalized partnership is the most demanding and the most (potentially) long-term form of relationship. Think twice about forming a partnership if all you really need is more co-operation, collaboration or coordination. 

• Funders sometimes “arrange” partnerships, and if this happens to your organization, scrutinize the deal very carefully.  Ideally, start developing partnerships before being asked to by funders.  The success of a partnership depends on many factors (and pressure from a funder isn’t one of them) and it takes time to find a good match (as well implement a good start up process).



Add your experience (0) | Forward this lesson