Executive Summary: Funder collaboration models

This research note explores the various forms of collaborations that funders engage in, including consortia. The note provides definitions, examples, and models for different types of collaborations and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. 

It also explores different approaches to leadership, decision-making, and governance within consortia, with an emphasis on the importance of flexibility and adaptation. 

The note highlights three main investment theses used by consortia, which relate to the types of outcomes they seek to achieve, and it examines enablers and barriers to successful collaboration. These three theses are as follows:

1. Organisation Funders: Collaboratives employing this investment thesis guarantee outcomes largely by supporting high-performing individuals and organisations that fulfill the overall aims of the collaborative. The primary goal of this model is to direct capital to high-performing grantees. The positives of this model include grantees reporting receiving numerous benefits, including a “funder stamp of approval, access to unrestricted capital, multi-year funding, larger grant sizes, and access to more funder relationships. A major challenge is the risk of creating “winners and losers”.
   
2. Field Builders: Collaboratives following this investment thesis aim to develop or strengthen a certain area or set of practices with a focus on improving the enabling environment and providing continuous, long-term assistance to issues and grantees. Field builders frequently hire specialist employees to carry out activities that individual funders or grantees cannot accomplish independently- e.g. gap analysis and strategy development. Under this approach, while grantees benefit from unique advantages such as collaboration with other grantees and capacity building, field Builders and grantees must frequently deal with strategy ownership issues and limited operations funds.
3. Goal Aligners:  Under this model, collaboratives seek results by discovering or developing pockets of strategic alignment among funders to generate coordinated goals and population-level outcomes such as disease or poverty eradication. Funders in this model collectively benefit from making progress on an issue even when their philanthropic strategies differ and are able to direct resources and expertise toward complex problems much more effectively than they could alone. On the flip side, Goal Aligners may have to manage donors’ differing assumptions, diverse goals, theories of change, and operational constraints.

Finally, the note presents working principles for consortia, including the importance of collaborative approaches, adaptive management, and systemic thinking.

Read the complete background note here.