Big Lottery Fund

Encouraging ‘collaboration’ and ‘partnership’ have always been a focus of our work. We have published resources to help organisations to work together, including:

• Working in partnership: a sourcebook
• Working in partnership – a good practice guide A guide to working in partnership - 112KB

But the current political and economic climate has renewed calls for more and better collaboration between groups to deliver funding. While collaboration can certainly help to promote efficiency and bring a range of wider benefits, we also know that planning and running collaborative ventures takes time, attention and resources.

So in January 2011 we commissioned IVAR to undertake a study that would both review the wider external context and identify areas where BIG’s policies and practice might be sustained or improved in order to allow us to provide better support for collaboration. You can read the full report here This study considers how we might best support groups to set up and run partnerships and other collaborative working arrangements. - 309KB

The main findings include the following:

• While ‘collaboration’ can cover many things, one of the simplest approaches is for organisations to learn from each other. This type of peer learning is popular. Funders like BIG could make better use of online technology and internal communication to promote it.
• ‘Forced’ collaborations often prioritise the form of partnership over the purpose. VCS organisations may often be more interested in promoting efficiency through sharing back office functions.
• To ensure more effective collaboration, BIG (and other funders) should ensure that they give themselves and organisations enough time to think first about what they want to achieve. Only then should they decide what form collaborative working should take
• Funders should be willing to support the cost of that process, especially where they require collaboration.
• There are opportunities to learn more from the collaborative experience of international aid organisations.

Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.