Getting partnerships right: Tips from DFAT's Business Partnerships Platform

CANBERRA — Partnerships are at the core of Australia’s aid program, with the Business Partnerships Platform a key example of how the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade aims to encourage diversity in partners and ideas in overseas development, enabling a greater impact within developing countries. But what makes a good partnership? And what breaks a partnership? As the BPP enters its third round of funding through an India-focused round, closing on April 12, a wealth of learning on partnerships has been established. DFAT and Palladium, the managers for the BPP, are using this evidence base to better inform, prepare, and support partnerships — and even to facilitate better partnerships between DFAT and Palladium. Julie Mundy, partnerships advisor with the BPP and director of training for the Partnership Brokers Association, has had eight years of experience in supporting partnerships. She first saw the need in this area during her three decades in international development, including as CEO of Marie Stopes International. “I completed the flagship partnership brokers training in 2005 while CEO of Marie Stopes and it really resonated with me that partnerships were an invisible factor causing issues in a lot of the international development programs I was involved in,” Mundy explained to Devex. For the BPP, Mundy has been involved in setting up the framework to assist in the partnering approach and the processes used throughout the program, as well as building capacity of BPP management to better facilitate sustainable partnerships. She works with partnerships funded through the BPP to set them on the right path — including brokering partner agreements, conducting health checks, and supporting partnerships when they encounter issues. The process has been important for the BPP, as many of the partnerships were between groups that had never worked together before, she explained. “The original intent behind the BPP was to enable partners to figure out if there was a sweet spot where they could work together and value add as a result of that,” Mundy explained to Devex. “We’re certainly seeing that being brought out in these partnerships and seeing partnerships spinning off a result of that in deeper or broader engagement.” Because many of these partnerships are new, round one of the BPP did see a few partnerships struggling. “Interestingly, they have been able to work through it,” Mundy said. “Largely because of the commitment to the partnering approach, which has meant problem solving has been collaborative. There hasn’t been the blame game.” The issues, she explained, are usually around diversity — the different ways of looking at and approaching things. The BPP has established important lessons that Mundy believed should be shared with any organization looking to enter a partnership to support development outcomes, with a key lesson to communicate. “If you want to build long-term, value-add relationships, it does involve a lot of engagement,” she said. Getting the foundations right For programs such as the BPP, where DFAT contributes up to 50 percent of funding and the remainder is contributed by partners themselves as financial or in-kind contributions, the money alone is not enough to go into a partnership. “There needs to be a clear and good reason why you would want to partner,” Mundy said. “And this means thinking carefully about who you want to build a partnership with and why. I strongly encourage partners to have a good, hard think first about what it is they are trying to achieve and why do they want to do it through a partnership. If they can do it themselves, they should do it by themselves.” One of the key learnings, Mundy explained, that they are trying to educate potential partners on is investing time prior to application processes to go beyond simple due diligence in identifying a potential partner. “We know from cross-sector partners that there is diversity in systems and approaches and value of the partners,” she said. “The private sector can often be very agile in terms of financial forecasting and budgeting while their NGOs partners are constrained around donor requirements. Not understanding issues such as these up front can cause problems as the partnership is progressing. And this has nothing to do with the relationship between partners — generally this is fantastic. It’s often the systems that present the real challenge.” Conversations early on are important in identifying systems challenges — but they are also important in ensuring there is a good alignment in values. And Mundy recommends having a dating-style criteria of what an organization is looking for in a partner. “Things like their value, are they interested in co-creating, are they interested in sharing risk, do they have previous experience in this type of thing, are they open-minded or do they want things run their way and what is their reputation in the field and in-country,” she suggested. Thinking about what you want in a partner and then looking at the landscape for the right fit is an important start for a partnership that can potentially become long-term — and then starting that conversation. Negotiate an agreement For the BPP, a fundamental part of the partnership process is supporting a conversation about the partnership and producing a record of the partnering discussion. All partners are involved in this conversation, which can take the better part of a day, including DFAT and Palladium. “We discuss and keep a record, in a non-legally binding way, of who is going to do what, what contribution people are bringing, what are individual interests, the shared objectives, what are the risks, how we are going to communicate and what we are going to do about branding,” Mundy explained. “There are all the little things that can often make a partnership come unstuck” The resulting document is something partners measure themselves against. The document identifies how they will know when the partnership is successful and they are specific to the partnership. “There is no tick box template we can use in this process,” Mundy said. “But the feedback we are receiving is that is this an important conversation to support the partnership moving forward.” Conduct partnership health checks For the BPP, partners are encouraged to have a “health check” mid-way or two-thirds of the way through a project — or earlier if there are problems or it is requested by the partners. This is important as part of a commitment to continuous improvement in partnerships. “There will be a conversation about what is working well, what — in benefit of hindsight — we would do differently, what we need to change, what is the value add, what additional value can we get out of it or are we missing something that needs to be addressed,” Mundy said, in explaining the process for the BPP. “It is checking the pulse to see if everything is healthy and well, and if not what we can do to address it rather than let things go on and on and on and deteriorate further, and not fix in the project cycle.” A partnership approach should not be to set and forget, Mundy advised. “It is something you need to pay attention to throughout. So we encourage partners, if they are having their monthly meetings, to also refer back to partnering discussions as a check in, to see how they are doing against the agreements. “This might just be a five or 10 minute check-in as part of a one-hour meeting, but a lot have reported how valuable it is.” Plan for the long term The aim for the BPP in particular is to create partnerships that are sustainable — partnerships that go beyond the limitation of the project cycle and can lead to further engagement. The expectation is that the partnerships will continue,” Mundy said. “They may go onto other things, or one or two of the partners may work with DFAT — and not necessarily all or in the same format. Or connections could be made with other partners.” But the aim in entering a new partnership should not be as a short-term experiment. It should aim to be sustainable with long-term benefits — especially considering the amount of work that needs to go into creating a strong partnership to begin with. Contribute to the knowledge base There is a severe lack of knowledge on the good, the bad, and the ugly of partnering for development outcomes due to the complexity of some partnerships. “You can image if you have three bilaterals, four NGOs, two national government, and private sector involved in a partnership what the approval processes would be — especially if they are not good news stories,” Mundy said. But providing information back from the partnership, whether this is publicly or within organizations, is an important part of continually improving partnerships — and their impact on development outcomes. “There is one in particular from the Start Network, and with the PBA we have been doing a continuous series of case studies with them ,which is a great example of contributing back,” Mundy said. “They really struggled in building their partnership and were open in sharing that information.” For sustainable outcomes in the BPP, partners are encouraged to share their stories. And for long-term sustainability of all partnerships, Mundy recommends ensuring communicating lessons are part of the program and partnership design — enabling ongoing learning for all in the sector.