What collaborative working involves
Partnership between voluntary organisations
Download What is collaborative working? (PDF 129 kb)
- What forms does collaborative working take?
- What kind of work can be done collaboratively?
- Potential benefits and risks of collaboration
- Obstacles and things that can help
What forms does collaborative working take?
- Separate organisations maintain their independence, but work jointly on some activities or functions
- Organisations with resources or expertise offer assistance to other organisations, eg. a large national organisation working with a small local group
- A new organisation to do joint work on some activities or functions
- A group structure where a 'parent' organisation governs a group of 'subsidiary' organisations
- Merger to form a new organisation working as one body on all activities
What kind of work can be done collaboratively?
Almost any voluntary or community sector activity can be done in collaboration:
- Charitable activities, for example service delivery, campaigning, policy work
- Sharing premises or support functions, for example payroll, purchasing, fundraising
- Improving strategic efficiency, for example co-ordination, joint management
Potential benefits and risks of collaboration
Collaborative working is not right for every organisation in every case. Carefully identifying and addressing issues of concern helps establish if collaboration is the right way forward (see Should you collaborate? Key questions)
Benefits include:
- New or improved services
- Wider geographical reach or access to new beneficiary groups
- More integrated or co-ordinated approach to beneficiary needs
- Financial savings and better use of existing resources
- Knowledge, good practice and information sharing
- Sharing the risk in new and untested projects
- Capacity to replicate success
- Stronger, united voice
- Better co-ordination of organisations' activities
- Competitive advantage
- Mutual support between organisations
Ultimately collaborative working should enable you better to meet beneficiary need.
Risks include:
- Outcomes do not justify the time and resources invested
- Loss of flexibility in working practices
- Complexity in decision-making and loss of autonomy
- Diverting energy and resources away from core aims - mission drift
- Damage to or dilution of your brand and reputation
- Damage to organisation and waste of resouces if collaboration is unsuccessful
- Lack of awareness of legal obligations
- Stakeholder confusion
Key obstacles to a successful collaboration:
- Personalities
- Competition between partners
- Lack of information and experience
- Lack of resources, especially at decision-making stage
- Resistance to change
- Cultural mismatch between organisations
- Lack of consistency and clarity on roles and responsibilities
Things that can help overcome challenges:
- Good personal relationships
- Compatible cultures or an understanding of different cultures
- Written agreements
- Experience of change management, leadership and vision
- Resources
- Clear and agreed mutual benefits and collaborative advantage
- A focus on the big picture
- Careful planning
- ICT tools
- The Unit's support, information and materials
"Collaborative advantage will be achieved when an objective is met no organisation could have produced on its own and when each organisation is able to achieve its own objectives better that it could alone."
Huxham and Vangen, 2005
