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ECB Partnerships: For the future, of the future

Published on 1 July 2010

When organisations work together, change occurs at a faster pace as expertise is shared, learning fostered, common issues tackled collectively, and duplication avoided. Partnerships that work effectively can also help to leverage additional financial resources. Learning from ECB Phase I suggested that a definition of key concepts – including partnership – would have yielded clearer gains for ECB during that period. ECB Phase II is therefore taking a much more intentional approach to partnership with peer stakeholders and initiatives. This is demonstrated, for example, by the development of a Partnership Framework for Phase II. This framework is aligned to current thinking on partnership and builds on the experience of ECB member agencies as well as other organisations. It echoes the emphasis placed on partnership by the humanitarian reform agenda, which recognises that partnership is critical for effective action and sustainable outcomes.

The focus of partnership working in ECB Phase II is on ensuring that the ECB consortia in particular can draw on cutting-edge tools, approaches and research that exist throughout the humanitarian sector. This is with a view to helping them better achieve their goals; the whole purpose of partnership is to add value to both outputs and outcomes. Partnership arrangements work best when they build on the synergistic capacities and common ambitions of those involved. They also work best when time is spent on building relationships of trust. Partnerships don’t just happen. Rather, partnership working is an ongoing process that requires effort and nurturing. The role of those who support and facilitate partnerships is often ‘not even obvious’ yet the skills required for ‘seeding’, fostering and nurturing partnerships are increasingly recognised as the skills of ‘tomorrow’s leaders’. They are associated with being able to connect diverse groups, a willingness to carry risk, the ability to inspire, and with modesty in terms of personal achievement – in other words, with non-directive leadership (The Brokering Guidebook; The Partnering Initiative, 2009).

Take, for example, ECB’s work with the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) of Kings College in London. ECB and HFP share common thematic and operational interests that include: a commitment to disaster risk reduction; enhancing strategic leadership; enhancing staff and institutional capacity; promoting effective innovation; and emerging issues in accountability. In terms of a common approach, both programmes seek to develop methodologies and tools that are operationally relevant, can serve the wider humanitarian sector, and that are developed through partnership. And both initiatives place a high value on learning from their work and experience.

ECB and HFP have been engaged in discussions on how to combine their mutual interests and expertise since October 2009, primarily through direct engagement of HFP with ECB’s consortia in Bangladesh, the Horn of Africa, and Indonesia. Each meeting has resulted in a series of important reference notes that form part of the project’s collective learning on partnership. Development and maintenance of both the personal and professional relationships has helped to foster trust, develop credibility, enable open and candid communication, and allow space for creative and innovative thinking about how the two initiatives could work collaboratively together.

Consequently ECB is now at a point where, alongside HFP and with the input of various project stakeholders – including representatives of the ECB consortia – we have three Concept Notes describing how these consortia and HFP may work together (from ECB’s Year 3, August 2010). These concept notes define the rationale, programmatic focus and benefits to both ECB and HFP of the potential collaboration, and are specifically focused on helping the consortia to fulfil a number of activities articulated in their Consortia Engagement Plans. This collaboration also presents important joint fundraising potential. Partnership processes and discussions have also been taking place between ECB and People in Aid and The Sphere Project, as well as a number of other ‘sector partners’. Subsequent editions of this newsletter will contain information on those partnerships as they develop over time.

A summary of the critical factors for successful partnership:

ECB and the partner have clear synergy / shared aims and objectives
The partnership offers fundraising potential
The partnership would better enable sustainable outputs and outcomes
The proposed partners offer a clear ‘multiplier effect’
Multiple ECB results statements are addressed
The partnership offers a way to address the conundrum of field / HQ / sector links (an identified gap in the humanitarian sector)
The proposed partners are known, respected initiatives
The partner shows sufficient flexibility in response to the sometimes heavy collaborative and consensus-based nature of the ECB process
Each partnership has a 'partnership champion' in order to properly scope as well as nurture and sustain the partnership over time.
Find out more about who we work with

If you have any questions, contact us at info@ecbproject.org

This article was written by Rachel Houghton, ECB Sector Partnerships Manager

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