The Funders Collaborative Hub is committed to learning and improving. Our head of practice, Jim Cooke, shares what we’ve learned so far – and invites all funders to build on this by completing our new survey.
Earlier this year, I shared three learning questions that will help us continue improving the Funders Collaborative Hub:
- How can the Hub best contribute to funders achieving stronger practice?
- How can the Hub best engage the people who it is most relevant to?
- How can the Hub deliver value for money as part of ACF’s long-term offer?
We started exploring these questions with a survey of collaboration leaders who have published opportunities on the Hub.
Now we’re launching a wider survey, aimed at all funders. If you work in grant-making – whether or not you have experience of collaborating with other funders or using the Hub – we want to hear from you.
Through this, we hope to learn more about:
- How funders share and access information about collaboration opportunities
- Barriers to connecting and collaborating with other funders
- Perceptions of the Funders Collaborative Hub.
Complete the survey here – it takes five to ten minutes.
Please also share the survey with your grant-making colleagues and networks. It will stay open until 30 September 2025. The more funders we hear from, the better we’ll understand how the Hub can meet your needs.
What we’ve learned so far
More than 60 collaboration leaders told us about their experiences of developing funder collaborations and using the Funders Collaborative Hub.
Reasons for collaborating
Funders aimed to achieve wide-ranging benefits by collaborating. Increasing funders’ knowledge was their most common aim, shared by 76%. Other goals included:
- Tackling systemic issues (47%)
- Working more equitably and inclusively (37%)
- Creating economies of scale (37%).
Progress and barriers
Most collaborations had achieved at least some of their aims. 37% said these were fully or mostly achieved, while a further 40% said they were partially achieved.
Four factors made the biggest contribution to progress:
- Getting the right people involved
- Trusting relationships between participants
- A clear purpose for the collaboration
- Learning, reviewing and adapting the collaboration over time.
For some who had only partly achieved their goals, this reflected the early stage their collaborations were at. Some also noted that their goals were long-term and they expected progress to be slow.
However, others said that after making some early progress, they had lost momentum or found some of their goals more challenging to achieve.
The most common barrier to progress was having insufficient capacity and resources to support the collaboration. However, for those who had made the least progress, being unable to get the right people involved was the biggest barrier.
Many funders made new contacts as a direct result of sharing opportunities on the Hub. The majority of those who were contacted about their collaboration opportunities said that these connections were beneficial for furthering the aims of their collaboration.
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Sharing collaboration opportunities
The most common motivation for sharing a collaboration opportunity on the Funders Collaborative Hub was to engage new participants in an existing collaboration (68% of responses).
Other common motivations included:
- Sharing activities or plans more openly and transparently (48%)
- Connecting with others to explore a potential new collaboration (45%)
- Sharing plans on a trusted platform to enhance their credibility (40%).
Sharing a collaboration’s learning more widely was a less common reason for using the Hub, cited by 32% of collaboration leaders.
There are lots of good examples of collaborations using the Hub to disseminate their learning, even if they are not actively seeking new collaborators. This includes a legacy of resources from some past collaborations. But perhaps we can do more to encourage this use of the Hub, for both past and ongoing collaborations.
As well as the Hub, most collaboration leaders had used other methods to share their collaboration opportunities.
Half had a dedicated website or social media page for the collaboration, while slightly fewer (44%) shared information via the websites or social media of those involved in the collaboration.
More than half had shared information with their existing contacts (63%) and within closed spaces, such as funder-only networks (53%).
Asked if they would have done anything differently without the Funders Collaborative Hub, the most common response (40%) was to share more information via personal contacts. Just 19% said they would have created a dedicated website or social media profile for the collaboration.
As one collaboration leader said: “[The Hub has] been great as a way of having a quick and easy public profile in a relevant space so that we don't have to spend time and money in this initial phase of strategy development on designing our own website.”
Making new connections
We know that collaboration opportunities on the Hub get seen – in the last year they’ve had more than 37,000 page views. Our survey helped us find out more about what happens next.
Many funders made new contacts as a direct result of sharing opportunities on the Hub. The majority of those who were contacted about their collaboration opportunities said that these connections were beneficial for furthering the aims of their collaboration.
Here’s what some of them said:
“We created funding partnerships with a number of funders who saw the opportunity through the Hub. In addition we continue to get questions/queries/connections from funders interested in learning more about [our area of funding].”
“Listing our collaboration opportunity on here undoubtedly helped us reach funders we didn't already have a relationship with more effectively than through social media or direct outreach.”
“Around 70% of funders who have contacted us to get involved in [our collaboration] came via the Hub after seeing the opportunity there. It absolutely increased traffic to us and helped us launch.”
However, not everyone is making the connections they hoped for. 39% of collaboration leaders said that no one had contacted them about their opportunity. A key priority for the Hub will be to explore ways to further increase the number of useful connections it allows people to make.
Through our new survey, which is open to all funders, we hope to learn more about any barriers that might be stopping potential collaborators from finding and connecting with relevant opportunities.
Other support for collaboration
As well as sharing their collaboration opportunities on the Hub, nearly two-thirds of collaboration leaders had used some of the Hub’s other functions, including:
- Our funder collaboration toolkit
- Blogs and case studies about funder collaboration
- Publicising funder events.
Most collaboration leaders who had used any of these additional functions found them beneficial for achieving the aims of their collaboration.
However, a number of collaboration leaders reflected that they could have made fuller use of the Hub. We will consider what else we can do to help funders understand everything the Hub has to offer and how they can make best use of it.
We also recognise that the Hub is part of a wider ecosystem of support available to funders.
Most collaboration leaders had also used other sources of support in developing their collaborations. The most common was informal or voluntary support (cited by 45% of respondents), followed by:
- Other funder infrastructure (35%)
- Paid-for support from external experts (29%)
- Online collaboration resources (24%).
What’s next for the Hub?
Our new survey is open to all funders until 30 September 2025.
This will build on what we’ve learned so far, bringing together a wider range of insights on how funders are collaborating – and the barriers they face. With the support of our impact and learning advisory group, we’ll use this to consider any practical improvements we can make to the Hub.
We will also be seeking views on funder collaboration from others in the charity sector – watch out for updates on this in our newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Thank you to everyone who, by taking a few minutes to share your experience, is helping us make the Hub as effective as possible – so that funders can achieve more together.
Complete our funder survey
Share your experience of collaboration to help us improve the Hub
The Funders Collaborative Hub publishes a range of perspectives. The views expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily those of ACF.
