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Take a brief look at the websites of any big development organisation and you’ll come across the word ‘partnership’. It’s often used to talk about relationships between northern and southern NGOs. Why do so many organisations feel it’s important to work with partners? Do partnerships help to empower other organisations or are they a tool to promote agendas? This article examines some key questions about working together. For a downloadable fact sheet version of this page, click here.
A brief history of partnership
Some development organisations have long been working through local partners. Oxfam, for example, has tried to work with local partners wherever possible since the 1960s. After the ‘lost decade’ of development in the 1980s, many larger organisations such as The World Bank also started to realise their development work might be more successful if they got some buy-in from local governments and organisations. This is reflected in Global Goal 17, Partnerships for The Goals.
What is partnership?
It’s often used to refer to any kind of relationship between two organisations, but a more rigorous definition suggests the following:
Ideally, these elements should be expressed in a partnership agreement.
Why find partners?
There are both value-based and pragmatic reasons to work in partnership. Some aims for working in partnership include building mutual relationships, sustainability, strengthening civil society, learning from each other and empowering through participation. In pragmatic terms, local organisations usually already have relationships with communities and are more sensitive to local cultures and conditions. Partnerships can be more powerful together and share costs. However, partnerships can sometimes be problematic, and there can be disagreements about who is responsible for what, for example.
What makes a successful partnership?
The list could be endless but some factors that can contribute towards partnership are:
Power, equality and partnership
There are criticisms of the use of ‘partnerships’ in development, as the power differences between partners is often so big that mutuality is problematic. For example, when one partner is reliant on the other for funding, they may not be able to express any problems with the partnership for fear of losing their funding. When one partner is more powerful there may be an assumption that they ‘know best’ and so tell their other partner what to do – this is contrary to partnership aims such as empowerment.
How can you create successful partnerships in your organisation?
Partnerships take effort and thought to establish and maintain, and care must especially be taken where there is a clear power difference between partners.
