What Makes Funder Collaboration Effective?

(Photo by iStock/Orbon Alija)

The past decade has seen a steady uptick in the number of funder collaboratives along with a surge in the volume of funds flowing through them, now over $2 billion annually. There is no shortage of webinars, books, and articles tell those of us in the philanthropic field that by working together we can be more than the sum of our parts.

Yet while most collectives report on field-level outcomes, they rarely document the realities of working together. At the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI) we wanted to know what makes collaboration between our funder members work (or not), and how we can do it better. We assessed sixteen substantive instances of collaboration between our funders over the course of four years, ranging from joint evaluations to piloting shifts in grantmaking practice to joint investments in a specific geography or issue. But these collaboration case notes were not a collection of “greatest hits”: There was no requirement that the collaboration be successful (and certainly not all were!).

Factors for Impactful Collaboration

Consistent with recent literature, we found that (under the right circumstances) collaboration can be a benefit to both funders and grantees. Those we interviewed found some kind of utility in every one of our 16 collaborative efforts—be it the process, product, or both.

Drawing on the detailed case experiences, five factors stand out as integral to the chances of collaborative success.

1. Clear, Aligned, and Measurable Objectives

While there can be different objectives for any one funder engaged in a collaborative effort, those outcomes should be mutually reinforcing and include metrics for gauging success.

It matters that the topic of collaboration is relevant to and aligned with what funding institutions are already interested in and working on. In cases where things did not proceed well, problems were often rooted in unclear, differing, or conflicting expectations.

Above all, objectives should be made explicit to all from the outset. Understanding institutional differences—and developing a plan to work through them—can speed progress, especially when the number of people and diversity of perspectives among collaboration stakeholders is high. Specificity is your friend. When dealing with broad, vague, or cross-cutting topics, carefully set expectations and make a collective, conscious examination of whether the collaboration will add enough value to be worth the cost. There should be a clear rationale for how the collective will achieve impact beyond what the individual funders or practitioners involved could achieve alone.

Illustrative example: TAI funder members shared an interest in harnessing data use for accountability and agreed that they needed to better understand roadblocks at the local level. TAI carried out scoping and workshops first in Nigeria and then in Colombia, where funder members were working on data use in the anti-corruption and mining sectors. While all funder members were initially involved, not all made grant investments; ultimately, only two members funded testing grants building on the findings of the joint scoping. The grants were designed with a shared learning agenda, and a learning partner was contracted to both maintain coherence across the four projects, and distill high-level learnings for funder members. The uneven funding commitment led to some frustration among members. And, since the mix of learning and grantmaking objectives was not fully clarified at the start, grantees were initially frustrated and confused about the purpose of both the grants and the role of the learning partner.

2. The Right People in the Room With a Clear Model for Decision-Making and Trust

One inhibitor to success was misaligned individual and/or institutional participant profiles. Different levels of seniority, decision-making power, and functional versus substantive knowledge can stall momentum, as can differing internal systems and processes. As one funder member noted, “With large organizations, chain of command can make it difficult to act nimbly. [A collaboration platform] allowed us to be more quick and flexible … which is so important if you want to lead.”

Give a lot of thought to the model or governance structure of the collaboration, based on the opportunity at hand. Try to ensure that decision makers have the necessary authority, bandwidth, and/or knowledge. Once it is clear who is committed to the collective initiative, look to reinforce the relationships between them. Trust matters: Funders see few avenues to reflect and exchange information, and even fewer of those opportunities during which they feel they can be fully transparent and coordinate to ensure their efforts are complementary Trust in peers makes open and robust dialogue, debate, and decision-making possible.

Illustrative example: When organizational health and effectiveness (OE) emerged as an area of member interest, a working group focused broadly on OE emerged organically from this desire for peer learning. The Secretariat hosted a series of member learning calls on organizational health, capacity, and resilience, funder policies and practices around exiting a field or grant, and holistic grantee security. While most participants found something useful in the effort, different institutional cultures meant not everyone had as much time or human resources to dedicate to the process; differing levels of expertise around OE created disparity in incentives, priorities, timelines, and ultimately how much each participant benefitted from the collaboration; and different organizational structures posed a challenge for clear and consistent counterparts to be identified.

3. Efficient and Timely Information Sharing

There is real value in proactive information sharing to spark and sustain collaboration. Visibility of new and in-progress work is important to invite and sustain inter-institutional collaboration. Communications on progress also proved useful for funders to reach out to peers not yet involved and invite participation.

In the TAI cases, an accessible and responsive coordination team that understands the field context was a key enabler for funder engagement and repeatedly cited as a critical factor in shepherding success. This can be especially true for collaborations involving new financial investments.

To aid timely information flows, insist on consistent points of contact and establish thresholds or triggers to re-visit them. Differing or inconsistent levels of funder participation were cited as a barrier to success. Put bluntly: No one wants to be the only one putting in the work (or money). Call out a lack of participation early and address it head-on, but keep all funders updated even if they are not yet active.

Illustrative example: Playing a bridging role between funders and grantee partners, the TAI Secretariat produced a review of the Natural Resource Governance (NRG) funding landscape as well as a scan of emerging field trends and gaps. Both documents were circulated ahead of, and referenced during, a two-day gathering of both grantee partners and donors designed to foster understanding of each other’s geographical and thematic strategies and priorities in support of better coordination. The joint sensemaking served as a "forced reflection," as one funder termed it, on whether the NRG community (funders and implementers) was adequately identifying and responding to emerging issues such as climate change. It clarified areas for collaboration and complementarity and informed several subsequent shifts in funder portfolios.

4. Adapt as You Go

As the collaboration evolves, purpose, process, and roles should be revisited and, as needed, revised. Create feedback loops during the collaboration and consolidate and reflect on learnings from the process as well as the actual data and information gathered to inform implementation (and future work).

Keep abreast of changing funder priorities. Philanthropies can be fickle and major strategic and institutional re-organizations will likely be outside the realm of control, but disruption can be mitigated by building in an awareness of upcoming institutional strategy cycles and acknowledging, upfront, the changeability inherent in all funders’ planning. Moreover, discussing implications of funder strategy shifts can be ripe areas for collaboration in and of themselves. For example, a collaborative can be a valuable space for any funder to share changes in approach and to navigate resulting exits from a portfolio together with existing and potential funders in the same field.

Illustrative example: TAI responded to a major external shift with the onset of COVID-19 through Secretariat-convened member discussions around the shift to virtual work life, challenges and responses to supporting grantees, the creation of a “COVID-19 Monitor,” and subsequent efforts to highlight specific trends and needs within the development community looking at longer-term trends for transparency, participation, and accountability (TPA) work and the role of civil society in pandemic recovery. TAI subsequently decided to move from having fixed strategic themes (such as tax, protecting civic space and data use) to a functional structure, aligning around what members fund in common, how they fund, and influencing the broader funding landscape. This shift drew on insights from documented collaboration and was a recognition of the fact that foundation strategies do change regularly: What is an issue of shared priority at the start of a collaborative strategy period, is often not by the end of the period.

5. Embed Utility for Field Partners

While funding entities are the principal protagonists of collaboration, our experience has shown the importance of considering and building in value for grantee partners as well as funders. Consulting with grantee partners can increase confidence in problem definition and design of any collaboration, and partner demands can be a direct inspiration for new forms of collaboration. As one member noted, "we as funders use our power and resources to support organizations and causes mainly through grantmaking but we...have a power in our hands that has not systematically and strategically been used."

Grantee partners also appreciated information shared via donor collaborations. Knowledge products generated in the course of collaborations were among the most appreciated outputs by funders and grantee partners alike. It can be more efficient to do analysis collectively. As one member explained, “If we wanted to get similar outcomes [without TAI] we’d have to commission a lot more research independently to look at trends in the field and scope opportunities for investments.”

An illustrative example: TAI members experimented with using their collective “voice” and convening power to directly advocate on issues that complemented grantee partner efforts on TPA issues. They developed a sign-on protocol for signing letters and jointly writing pieces like this op-ed to draw attention to funding gaps. Exploring what could be done together using the TAI “brand” gave funders more confidence to push past their comfort zones and reinforce grantee advocacy demands. Establishing an intentional process through which TAI’s voice could be used allowed responses to be nimbler and more flexible, and therefore potentially more relevant. In some cases, members were able to use the collective TAI voice when they were unable to use their individual brand. In others, members were able to use TAI’s collective sign-on to prompt their own organizations to sign on individually, and/or get high-level buy-in within their own institutions on certain topics. Grantee partners responded positively, encouraging funders using their individual and collective influence more often to help promote grantees’ own agendas, raising the visibility of - and hopefully more resourcing for - their work.

Keep on Documenting!

Our case notes demonstrate the value of investing in tracking and documenting specific collaborations so that our practice evolves based on real-world experience. Only by pinpointing barriers to and enablers of collaboration, can we have more confidence in how to design and implement future joint efforts and better weigh a collaboration’s potential against its opportunity cost.

We hope other collaboratives will follow suit with more practical case examples and shared learnings on the nuts and bolts of fostering collective donor action. We can grow philanthropic insights into the “how” of collaboration to inform the continued proliferation of pooled initiatives.

Read more stories by Michael Jarvis & Chantal Pasquarello.