AccountAbility, with the support of the Ford Foundation, is launching an invitation only online community of practitioners designed to help make partnerships deliver more effectively and efficiently on development objectives.

Managing partnerships is an onerous task. Balancing expectations of donors and beneficiaries, selecting partners, drafting agreements, training staff and aligning individual partners’ expectations with partnership objectives are only some of the challenges faced by partnership managers. But few managers are satisfied with the fruit of all their efforts. Most partnership managers have to learn as they go along, as practical experience and wisdom to help them get their jobs done is in short supply. Collectively though, they hold the key to unlocking huge potential and innovation.

The online community will be a platform for facilitating dialogue and collective action, bringing partnership managers together to share experiences, best practices, and challenges to enhance and improve partnership practices and, as a result, development outcomes.

The platform, called the Collaborative Governance Observatory, arrives at a pivotal moment. The global economic crisis provides those managing and advancing partnerships with UN organizations, business, NGOs, other multilateral offices, and government agencies with a unique opportunity to scale their work. In an era of constrained resources and growing challenges faced by every organization, partnerships have become a strategic imperative.

That being said, now is the time for partnerships to mature - moving beyond experimentation to become efficient, effective and accountable development institutions. In this regard, our experience, backed by research, suggests there are two related areas that will challenge partnerships.

The first relates to partnership governance. Partnerships – big and small – “live” through their governance arrangements. Well-designed, yet flexible systems of governance are essential for effective partnership performance. At their best, such systems manage risk, drive high performance and build capacity. They engage beneficiaries and stakeholders as an extended “ecosystem” helping to deliver partnership success. At their worst, however, they put both partners (investing their money, time, talent, staff, intellectual property, etc.) and the beneficiaries they serve at risk. Research shows many partnerships struggle with governance.

Partnerships often times fall into governance traps. They try so hard to be everything for everybody that they can become paralyzed. Or they become so focused on getting the job done that they neglect to ensure each partner gets the returns on investment they need to stay involved. Or partnerships will focus too much on strategy, opening the door for one participant – such as a lead partner, the secretariat, or a major funder – who “gets it” to run the show. Or partnerships will entertain partners’ whims and concerns to the point where they leave the door wide open for participants to steer the partnership towards meeting their own needs.

As partnerships grow in size and experience, exit becomes tricky. Who wants to be the bad guy who walks away? But what to do? Contracts and memoranda of understanding don’t prepare partners for effective ways to resolve disputes and grievances.

The second challenge relates to partnership accountability. The more partnerships succeed in raising resources and in delivering results, the more stakeholders will call them to account. But partnerships struggle to identify key stakeholders upfront and to devise effective engagement strategies. Who are these stakeholders; partnership beneficiaries, funders, the partners themselves? Many partnerships try to strike a balance. They try to give beneficiaries and stakeholder organizations that represent them a seat at the decision-making table. Instead of the stakeholders’ participation enhancing performance, many times it becomes an impediment to getting the job done. The stakeholders on the other hand often become overwhelmed through structures and systems foreign to their modus of operandi. They then may choose to pursue their non-participatory and sometimes harmful methods of influencing partnerships from the outside.

It is because of these governance and accountability challenges, that the online community will address practical and frequently asked questions such as:

• What are the most effective ways to invest in partnerships to help them achieve scaled impact?
• What are the best ways to engage beneficiaries and stakeholders as “partners” who help the partnership achieve success?
• How can we design governance systems that both manage risk and preserve the innovative and dynamic quality of partnerships?
• How do we help partnerships engaged in leading practices to reach scale?

The community participating in the collaborative governance observatory will work with fellow partnership managers, select thought leaders, and stakeholder representatives to collectively help find the answers for themselves and the partnership movement more broadly. The platform will launch in April 2009 using social networking tools to allow real-time learning, sharing, collaboration, and innovative brainstorming.

Now is the partnership moment. The Collaborative Governance Observatory provides you with the opportunity to support a building community of leaders that will earn partnerships their place as effective delivery mechanisms for development. AccountAbility welcomes inquiries and those interesting in joining the community.

To find out more please contact: Steve Rochlin, Head, AccountAbility North America  or Sunette Steyn, Senior Associate, AccountAbility