Collaborations

Several development initiatives increase their self-sustainability by forming collaborations of all kinds and improving the quality of their existing partnerships.

Many initiatives decide to partner with other projects because they work in the same communities, or perhaps because they address the same development problems even if they sometimes do so from different sectors (such as businesses or government) or by tending to different areas (such as health, education, etc.).  

Collaboration implies sharing resources – such as infrastructure, expertise, knowledge or workspaces– and responsibilities with other initiatives. This favors the self-sustainability of each partner because it avoids the duplication of efforts, helps make better use of time and resources, and increases the potential reach and impact of programs. In other words, collaboration diversifies the sources of support available to each of the collaborating projects.

Many development projects also partner with each other in order to offer a broader and more comprehensive range of social programs, which allows them to be relevant to more people without having to assume all the responsibilities, expenses and efforts themselves. Others partner for the same development cause by establishing cooperative mechanisms such as matching funds, where the contributions of one party –hours of labor, for instance– are matched with financial resources by the other party, multiplying the effect of both contributions. Some organizations ask for consultancies in order to learn from the know-how of fellow development projects, while others offer to pass on their own know-how to new initiatives. In addition, some projects assign or prepare bridge builders to help them strengthen and improve their relationships with other initiatives and better leverage the potential benefits of each partnership.