%201.png)
In recent years, collaboration has played a growing part in foundations’ responses to the challenges of our times, from Covid-19 to tackling the climate crisis or systemic inequalities.
In the three years since ACF launched the Funders Collaborative Hub, we’ve seen examples of how working together in a huge variety of ways has helped foundations increase their impact. However, we’ve also learned a lot about some of the practical challenges that act as barriers to collaboration.
There is often a role for both foundation staff and trustees in overcoming these challenges. Staff are likely to do the hands-on work of developing and stewarding collaborations, but they will be working within parameters set by their boards. These range from operating budgets that can constrain how much capacity staff have for collaboration, to delegation frameworks that determine who can make key decisions.
Last month, chairs of ACF members came together to discuss how, faced with growing pressure on their resources, foundations can better understand their role in the wider ecosystem and work with others towards common goals.
As Jamie Ward-Smith, chair of the Co-op Foundation, says: “As chairs, we play a vital role in supporting our boards and staff teams to navigate these challenges, creating the conditions that enable them to make the most of every opportunity to maximise our social impact.”
As the chairs who took part in our event shared their wide-ranging experiences of collaboration, many practical tips emerged on topics such as:
- deciding whether and how to collaborate
- working with your board and staff team
- tips for trustees of smaller foundations
- learning from beyond the foundation sector.
These insights, together with learning from the first three years of the Funders Collaborative Hub, have informed a new resource for ACF members: Funder collaboration: a guide for trustees and staff of charitable foundations. This includes a collaboration opportunity mapping tool, which staff and trustees can use, either individually or as a group, to explore what steps your foundation might take to working more collaboratively.
To access this guide, you’ll need to log in to the ACF website. If your organisation is an ACF member, each of your staff and trustees can set up an individual account on our website which they can use to register for events, access member-only resources and manage the communications they receive. Please encourage your colleagues to do so if they haven’t already.
Insights from chairs of trusts and foundations
We are grateful to all the chairs of trusts and foundations who took part in our event. Our new member resource could not have been produced without the many insights they contributed.
Special thanks to Jamie Ward-Smith for chairing our panel discussion, and to our fantastic panel members, Sonali Siriwardena, Chris Murray and Dr Omar Khan. We’ve shared some highlights from their conversation below.
Sonali Siriwardena, chair of Social Investment Business
“There’s a common perception that when you collaborate, you compromise nimbleness and efficiency, but our experience shows that is not the case. If you are of one mind about what you want to achieve, it is possible to deploy funds rapidly, at a large scale, by drawing on the shared skills and resources of each partner.”
Chris Murray, chair of Fusion21
“The point of collaboration is impact. If each funder had set up smaller funds to do this work separately, our reach and impact would have been far more limited.”
Dr Omar Khan, chair of Trust for London
“Issues of poverty and structural inequality are so vast that even a large funder can’t tackle them by themselves. The Citizenship and Integration Initiative has been successful because, as a group of foundations working with the Mayor, we can facilitate work that has a strategic influence and practical impact, London-wide.”
ACF members, download our new guide now for more insights on funder collaboration and practical tips for foundation staff and trustees.
Join ACF
Being a member of ACF offers connection, collaboration and learning from peers and experts. Our vibrant community of trustees and staff of charitable foundations and grant-making organisations across the UK gain access to extensive benefits.
