How cross-sector collaboration can transform charities

As the third sector continues to face uncertain and challenging times, collaboration within the sector is absolutely fundamental to creating genuine, lasting and systemic change. 

When it’s executed well, it pulls on the strengths, deep knowledge and insight from across multiple charities. It identifies the root causes of issues and brings together the right expertise, insight and influence to solve them. In principle, this approach offers a powerful, efficient, and fundable means to tackle some of society's most significant challenges. 

Over the last few years there have been some incredible instances of successful cross-sector collaboration, whether in responding to crises like COVID-19, influencing significant policy changes or jointly developing innovative solutions to complex problems. These successes demonstrate what collaboration is all about. Setting aside egos, prioritising the needs of people, alignment around vision and acknowledging each other's strengths.

We have been working with a group of health charities on designing a new direct referral service. This service would support people with serious health conditions to seamlessly access the right specialist charity support when they’re diagnosed. We’re still in the middle of this work, but we’ve been learning some lessons along the way about what’s needed to make a cross-sector collaboration work. 

Agreeing on the problem and determining involvement

User centred design tells us to ‘design the right thing, and design the thing right’. Alignment on the problem you’re there to solve might take time, but it’s an important part of the process. As part of the healthcare charity collective, we started with some roundtables and collaborative workshops, understanding the needs of different organisations and the people they’re there to support. We got alignment on the problem we were tackling, the focus of the group and agreed on the mission, outcomes and importantly, a shared commitment to work together.

It is crucial to consider who needs to be involved at this stage. If you're working on a big, gnarly problem, there may be many organisations that could be involved. But, especially in the initial stages, it might be right to keep the group small so the work is manageable yet still with enough insight, influence and resources to effect the necessary change. 

Creating a shared, equal voice 

Ensuring that collectives feel equal, shared and owned by all of the partners is critical. It’s likely you might be partnering with charities of different sizes, available funding pots and resources. In the health charity collective, we made sure we had open discussions about how to make this fair. If a charity wasn’t able to be involved in a whole day’s workshop, we tried to ensure we had good communication in place, for example, day notes or week notes. 

By working openly in this way, the group has built deep trust in each other. I’ve seen instances elsewhere where this will happen through Slack, dedicated Teams channels etc. Making sure the team feels connected and able to input and influence direction ensures everyone has a shared voice, whatever their size or available resources.  We also share key responsibilities for running the collective. After we were in full swing and meeting regularly, we had a rota of who would chair those meetings. It keeps things fair, on track, and every partner is playing their part.  

Providing autonomy and lean governance 

Autonomy within the team creates the right conditions for creativity and innovation, enabling the team to make quick decisions together and move forward without delay. This isn’t always possible or easy, but clarity on what decisions can be made within the team and what might require other levels of governance is great.   

Enabling the team with the right resources 

Cross-sector collaborations benefit hugely from central or shared resources. These help to oversee project management, maintain momentum, add specialist skills where needed and ensure the project is hitting goals. In the health charity collective TPXimpact has played a convening role for the group, and has been able to support work with service designers, impact measurement specialists and prototypers, a resource that few charities have to spare.  

In my experience, at least, being a part of cross-sector collaborations isn’t always easy, but it is pretty magical! You learn so much from people you might never have met, gain different perspectives, align on a vision, and ultimately, drive forward the change that needs to happen at a scale no single organisation can achieve on their own. I’m seeing new examples all the time of this happening, enabling charities to maximise their impact and create lasting change for the communities they’re here to serve, but now more than ever, there is so much opportunity for more. 

To hear more about the health charity collective, please get in touch with Polly. 

Polly will be part of a panel speaking about cross-sector collaboration in the charity sector at the upcoming Third Sector Conference on the 18th June.