NPO’s and civil society organisation by nature inhabit a world of relationships. Whether between NPOs and beneficiaries, local NPOs and their partners, NPOs and donors, governments, the private sector, relationships are foundational to everything the sector does. However the term ‘partnership’ has been diminished by misuse and is applied to a range of relationships and at this stage is quite often a devalued term. In addition Network’ and ‘networking’ have become something of a ‘magic bullet’ – buzz-words to be fired in connection with almost any kind of activity or situation.
However many NPO’s and civil society organisations seem to misunderstand the purpose of partnerships - implementing and forming partnerships to secure the survival of their organisations or to strengthen their organisations. (Keeping your “enemies” close)
We need to understand that the best partnerships create programmes which are better than the sum of their individual (organisational) parts, and improve performance and enhance impact of services. Partnerships are not formed to strengthen our mutual organisations, but to strengthen services to our mutual clients. We need to be in agreement that there is strength in unity and that we need to learn from other CSO’s and to share information with others. But how often do we hear “we cannot share skills and ideas -they are going to steal our ideas and services.”
Non Profit Partnerships - Why?
If we really bought into the purpose of civil society organisations partnerships we would not be limiting the possible distribution scope of innovative and impactful services by keeping it to ourselves – we would be happy that more organisations pick up the baton and take these services to more clients and communities.
Part of our concern is based in linking the individual strength of our organisations to our own job security. It is also based in the unbalanced and lopsided partnerships we are forced to form with structures such as governments, conduits and some funders in which we have no or limited power. Whatever the reason, with the possible exception of lobbying, partnerships on grassroots level quite often does not translate to the sharing of resources, ideas and services and delivering more comprehensive, and impactful services to our shared clients.
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