Services: Partnerships
Effective partnerships leverage development results that even the most capable groups can not achieve on their own.
Partnerships provide a proven approach for promoting stability, peace, prosperity and environmental sustainability around the globe. Through partnerships, organizations can work together to achieve development results larger and more enduring than those they can create working on their own. Though many agencies understand the benefits of partnerships, they often lack appropriate tools and skills for planning and managing them.
SI provides innovative services to help organizations to design and manage more effective partnerships and networks. Our approach draws on groups' intrinsic knowledge and positive experience in collaboration to create a strong foundation for effective partnerships.
Range of Services
- Partnership Design-working with groups to assess readiness for partnering, conduct due diligence, discover common values and interests, and create shared objectives, strategies and processes for effective collaboration.
- Partnership Evaluations and Capacity Building-assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of partnerships and developing organizational capacity to sustain them.
- PROJECT details
-
Central Asia—Building Civil Society Networks: Counterpart International, 2003-2005
SI supports Counterpart International with capacity building assistance to strengthen civil society networks in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan under USAID's Civil Society Support Initiative (CSSI). SI uses an assets-based approach to institutional capacity building called Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to forge stronger partnerships and improve network financial sustainability, demand-driven service provision and the network management structure. SI's work has resulted in strengthened partnerships, shared vision for the associations, improved services to client organizations and governance structures.
-
Strengthening Partnerships in Health: Pan-American Health Organization, 2004
PAHO increasingly relies on relationships with other donors, foundations and private sector groups to help support its technical health cooperation agenda in Latin America. SI worked with PAHO's executive management team to create and deliver an innovative training program on Designing and Managing Public-Private Partnerships in Health. Thirty senior managers and department directors gained skills to plan, manage, monitor, evaluate and sustain health partnerships. As a result, each technical division made significant progress in building existing partnerships with foundations, donors, Ministries of Health and pharmaceutical companies.
-
Building Evaluation Partnerships: World Bank, 2001
SI worked with the Operations Evaluation Department (OED) of the Bank to identify best practices in evaluating partnerships with other donors including USAID, DFID and the Swiss Development Agency. SI employed an appreciative evaluation approach to help the partners better understand partnership assets and best practices, and to further partnership development. The approach left a deep impression on the Bank's Evaluation Partnerships manager who continued to build the partnerships using the appreciative approach. OED later conducted a global conference on Evaluation Partnerships showcasing the appreciative evaluation approach.
-
Strengthening Partnerships for Large Scale Environmental Conservation: World Wildlife Foundation, 2000-02
Working with leading environmental NGOs funded under USAID's Global Conservation Program (GCP), SI worked to strengthen partnerships for trans-boundary environmental conservation. SI designed and facilitated annual partnering retreats with USAID, WWF, Nature Conservancy, World Conservation Society and others that created a shared understanding of methods, knowledge, good practices, and successful coordination approaches for large-scale environmental efforts in Kenya, Philippines and the Amazon. These partnering retreats enhanced the partner's ability to forge a broad common agenda for large-scale environmental conservation.
-
Building Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture: University of California, Davis, 2001-03
The California Food and Fibers Futures (CF3) Project is a consortium of ten California universities/colleges and six growers associations, working to promote sustainable agriculture in California's $30 billion agricultural economy. SI enhanced CF3's capacity for designing and managing collaborative sub-projects with clear results and measurable indicators of success. SI also led activities to strengthen CF3's internal teams and external partnerships. Through these efforts CF3 enjoyed stronger performance of its subprojects and was better able to leverage the deep capabilities of its partner members to promote sustainable agriculture.
-
Building Capacity of National Organizations
Download PDF
Using integrated approaches to partnering and institutional development (Impact Note No. 12)