Does collaboration mean consolidation?

Collaboration appears to be increasingly common within the charitable sector, with non-profits viewing it as an intelligent way to tackle the increase in demand of services, while also receiving less and less funding. It seems counterintuitive to partner with your direct competitors, with potential concerns that the smaller of the organisations will be swallowed up by the larger, and while this is a possibility, it’s not a foregone conclusion. A recent article by Stephen Cotterill in Fundraising Magazine explores the ways in which collaboration does not equal consolidation.

Our current time is a precarious one in relation to financial income, and so finding ways to better utilise resources is crucial. Now just a year on from the UK’s first national lockdown, hindsight has emphasised that working towards the overall goal is more important than being the first to get there. With such a sudden loss to income in so many sectors, now is the time to show support for the many that are in the same boat.

However, while collaboration is a clear solution to a loss in funding and resources, not everyone is accepting that this is what needs to happen. Perhaps organisations may relinquish their reservations surrounding collaboration and come together to work towards the same goal, as one.

One of the benefits of collaborative working between charities is the potential to combine the specific skills of one organisation with the resources of another. One organisation’s strengths may help to balance out another’s weaknesses, and vice versa. This combined approach may well result in a stronger overall approach when tackling common challenges.

There is a great deal of co-ordination and organisation required to make collaboration work between charities, but the results that it brings are well worth the work. It may be years before we know the true impact of Covid-19, and all we can do at the moment is work towards trying to minimise the damage where possible. Hopefully charities will begin to see an increase in their funding in the near future, but with things being as uncertain as they are, it makes sense to plan for a less optimistic outlook.

The argument could even be made that there are perhaps too many charities, and that consolidation would result in less competition for funding, and therefore more real, tangible results. Previously we spoke to our Charity Finance and Governance Partner, Guy Davies, about how collaboration and consolidation of charity work results in less overlap and less duplication of efforts. This may even be a more efficient model of working for charities, and is therefore one that shouldn’t be dismissed. Guy also suggests that should someone want to set up a charity in a loved one’s memory, as so many do, that this could be done within an existing organisation as a restricted fund. In this way, the number of charities out there is not added to, but the same impact can be made in someone’s memory.

The saying goes that often ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate phrase to summarise this collaboration between charitable organisations. Who knows – this new model of working could prove more fruitful than some might expect.