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Keywords: Education philanthropy, education reform, system change, collaboration, collaborative funder partnerships, pooled funding
Background: What We Know About Collaboration
From years of research and practitioner experience on collaboration, our sector has several helpful frameworks and tools to guide the development of funder partnerships. These tools identify common considerations:
* A clear mission: Collaboration is most powerful when it's directed toward a particular end that each foundation cannot reach on its own. For example, GrantCraft advises funders to "stipulate goals and purpose very early on in the process" to avoid "drifting away from what they were originally formed to achieve" (Gibson & Mackinnon, 2009, p. 12). This means that funders need to understand their desired outcomes and be able to articulate how the collaboration - as opposed to independent actions - can help them make progress toward those goals.
* Honest relationships: When the Bridgespan Group set out to find lessons learned from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation's many collaborations, it concluded, "Nearly everyone we spoke to emphasized the importance of developing strong working relationships with partners" (Huang & Seldon, 2014, p. 11). Trust, mutual respect, honesty, and sensitivity to each other's institutional culture are necessary. These conditions are especially relevant when funders are working together for the first time.
* Different forms for different functions: We usually talk about funder collaboration as pooled funding. But collaborations come in many shapes, each presenting "looser" or "tighter" ways to work together toward a common goal. Collaborations can vary in intensity, including "learning together" and coordinating or aligning grantmaking in addition to pooling funding. Looser, but still valuable, collaborations can include developing a common vision or set of practices to guide grants in an area or meeting regularly to assess progress of common grantees.
* Strong backbone management: Funders must establish an efficient structure with appropriate norms for implementing their day-to-day collaboration. There needs to be an approach and a process for convening and making decisions, exploring opportunities for action, and revisiting priorities as the policy landscape evolves. A Grantmakers for Education case study of the Donors' Education Collaborative of New York City reports that funders recognized early on that they needed someone to facilitate strategy discussions, manage grantee work plans, and keep the work moving...