How is funder collaboration making a difference – and what’s still holding it back?

Five years ago, the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) set up the Funders Collaborative Hub. The Hub enables funders to share, explore and connect with existing collaborations, emerging opportunities and learning from past collaborations.

As the UK’s membership body for foundations and independent grantmakers, we wanted to strengthen connections and catalyse collaboration, both within the foundation sector and beyond.

The Hub itself is the product of collaboration, with many organisations and individuals contributing time, resources and expertise to support its design and development. This has included, over the last 18 months, work with our Impact and Learning Advisory Group to explore how we can make the Hub as effective as possible for the long term.

To help us reflect on the Hub’s role as infrastructure supporting funder collaboration, we’ve been learning about:

• The benefits that funders aim to achieve by collaborating
• The extent to which they are achieving their aims
• What has helped or hindered their progress.

The landscape of funder collaboration

To date, more than 200 funder collaboration opportunities have been shared on the Hub, relating to more than 40 different issues. Geographically, they range in scope from local to international, although we focus on opportunities that are relevant to our main user base in the UK. Some are established collaborations, while others are shared by individual funders seeking to explore a new area of potential collaboration.

The types of collaborative activity that funders are undertaking (or seeking to initiate) are diverse. Informal activities, such as information-sharing and peer learning, are the most widespread. Mechanisms to pool or co-ordinate funding are also common, as is collaborating to influence policy and practice. There are smaller numbers of collaborations focusing on carrying out joint research or aligning processes.

The benefits of funder collaboration

Given this wide range of activities and areas of focus, it’s no surprise that the benefits funders are seeking to achieve by collaborating are also varied.

In a survey of collaboration leaders last year, we found that the goal of increasing funders’ knowledge was shared by the majority of collaborations. Other intended benefits that many collaborations had in common included:

• Tackling systemic issues
• Working more equitably and inclusively
• Creating economies of scale
• Leveraging additional funding into an area of work
• Reducing duplication between funders
• Increasing efficiency

Most collaboration leaders told us that their collaborations had achieved at least some of their intended benefits, although relatively few had achieved these in full. In some cases, this partial progress reflects the fact that their work is at an early stage. Some collaboration leaders noted that their goals were long-term and they expected results to be slow. However, others commented that after seeing some early success, they had lost momentum or found some of their goals more challenging than anticipated.

What helps collaborations succeed?

The majority of funder collaborations that had achieved all or most of their intended benefits had four success factors in common:

• A clear purpose for the collaboration
• Getting the right people involved
• Trusting relationships between participants
• Learning, reviewing and adapting the collaboration over time

What’s holding them back?

The most common barrier reported by collaboration leaders is lacking sufficient capacity and resources. This is a challenge I’ve heard about regularly from funders, both large and small, over the last five years.

How collaborations are structured and resourced can vary widely. Some operate informally, often reliant on the energy and commitment of a few key individuals. Others choose to invest in dedicated shared infrastructure to support the collaboration. Neither approach is intrinsically better than the other: the most suitable option for each collaboration depends a lot on its purpose and activities.

In a context where rising need and demand are putting pressure on funders’ grantmaking budgets, some may understandably be hesitant to invest in their own operational capacity, or in shared infrastructure that supports this. However, there is a risk that cutting corners can undermine the impact that funders are trying to achieve by collaborating.

When deciding whether and how to collaborate, it is important to start with ‘why’ – to clarify how working with others could help you achieve more than you could alone. By keeping this ‘collaborative advantage’ firmly in mind when setting budgets or prioritising workplans, funders can consider what resource is appropriate to allocate.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that collaboration can help to expand funders’ capacity, particularly for those with smaller teams. For example, a funder interested in participatory grantmaking may lack the capacity and skills to set up their own mechanisms for this, but could find others to partner with who are already doing it well.

Reflections on our role as infrastructure

Learning about the difference funder collaborations are making, and the challenges they sometimes face, is helping us to refine our understanding of how ACF can most effectively support them, both through the Hub and in our wider role as a membership association.

Getting the right people involved is another key challenge faced by some funder collaborations – particularly those at an early stage. As we developed the Funders Collaborative Hub, we discovered that much funder collaboration had been happening ‘below the radar’, between people and organisations who already knew each other. A key design principle of the Hub is that collaboration opportunities are shared openly, making it easier for funders to find and connect with those outside their existing networks.

Beyond that, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to how funder collaborations are designed, structured and resourced. However, there is a wealth of experience available to learn from. By sharing case studies and practical tools, we aim to help funders become more confident in clarifying the case for collaboration in their own contexts – and in pursuing the many opportunities it can bring.