In 2017, the second year since the launch of the SDGs, TPI continued to build momentum around its vision for a world where cross-sector collaboration for the SDGs is mainstreamed, scaled and optimized.

Global engagement and promoting cross-sector collaboration

This year, alongside  the International Chamber of Commerce, TPI led private sector engagement in the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC)’s second High Level Meeting in Nairobi. In addition to leading the plenary session on the private sector and sitting on the steering group for the plenary session on multi-stakeholder partnerships, TPI co-hosted a day-long Business Forum on the role of the private sector as a partner in development, led a side event on in-country platforms to catalyse collaboration for Agenda 2030, and, with colleagues from PRC and CLI, launched the Promoting Effective Partnering (PEP) initiative.

TPI staff and advisors spoke and facilitated sessions at a wide range of conferences, events and webinars throughout the year, including the 2016 World Cancer Congress in Paris, the second High-Level Meeting of the GPEDC in Nairobi, the Global Green Growth Forum 2017 in Copenhagen, the Royal Society of Medicine’s event: “Global Health Partnerships: Buzzword or Breakthrough?”, the 2017 OECD Forum in Paris, the BOND annual conference, the European Commission’s European Development Days 2017, and Global Partnerships Week 2017.

Building systemic, institutional and individual capacity across all societal sectors to develop and support effective partnerships.

Throughout 2017, TPI worked with a range of organisations to support their institutional capacity at various levels: conducting a full Fit for Partnering assessment for World Vision, in order to support the implementation of its strategic initiative on effective engagement in cross-sector partnerships; working with UNICEF on a broad action research programme to maximise results for children through public and private sector engagements, in particular multi-stakeholder initiatives; supporting Sightsavers to develop their internal capacity to work in consortium; working with the European Food Safety Authority to support their new Business Service department (BuS) to expand and improve the partnering culture within the EFSA; supporting FEMSA in their stakeholder mapping, engagement and management efforts; working with the United Nations Kosovo Team to support their strategy to engage business, and working with CARE Rwanda to review the implementation of its partnerships strategy and produce recommendations for further strategy development, as well as a case study on a key pilot partnership.

The Partnering Initiative continued to update and develop its flagship Building Effective Partnerships for Development training, aimed at individual partnership practitioners. During the financial year, TPI held open trainings in Oxford, Barcelona, and Washington DC. In June 2017, TPI and the UN Global Compact ran an exclusive session for UN staff on the latest trends and insights around partnering with business. Working with Bupa and the UICC, TPI developed a training course on effective partnering against NCDs, consisting of an online mastercourse and a one day workhop.

TPI has also continued to support global level capacity building through developing tools and guidebooks. With BUPA and the UICC, TPI developed a guidebook for non-profit organisations who wish to partner with companies against Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs): Better Together: Unleashing the Power of the Private Sector to Tackle Non-Communicable Diseases. In collaboration with the Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business, TPI has expanded its set of tools specifically designed to support partnerships for inclusive business; the most recent tool is the ‘go/no-go’ checklist for an inclusive business partnership, which outlines eight essential criteria for moving forward with a partnership.

Research and dissemination of best practice

Over the last year, we have continued to expand and intensify our collaborations with our peers to research and disseminate best-practice in cross-sector collaboration.

• The Promoting Effective Partnerships Facility (PEP) is an ongoing collaborative initiative funded by the Dutch Ministry for Development, focusing on two core elements: knowledge development and dissemination and providing access to support for partnerships.
• TPI has also been supporting the Evidence for MS Platforms project,  aiming to identify the evidence needed to assess the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder platforms, and help platforms assess their contribution.
• TPI worked with the German platform for multi-stakeholder partnerships, Partnerships2030, to organise an international knowledge exchange for MSP Support Platforms, which took place in October 2017.

Looking ahead: Plans for the coming year

In 2017-2018, The Partnering Initiative will consolidate and expand its existing areas of work, supporting organisations, partnerships and individuals; innovating, incorporating and disseminating new knowledge, skills and tools and developing and disseminating tool books and training.

As part of its Global Impact Programme, Business Partnership Action, TPI will continue its support of existing collaboration hubs as well as aiming to launch new in-country platforms.

On capacity building, The Partnering Initiative will run its flagship Building Effective Partnerships for Sustainable Development course in Oxford as well as overseas, with current plans including Washington DC & New York.

In September 2017, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) awarded TPI a contract to help leverage strategic partnerships in MCC’s program design and implementation. TPI will be working with MCC to develop the strategic direction, architecture and infrastructure needed for MCC and country staff to engage effectively in partnerships. This is a tremendously exciting opportunity for TPI to bring together the sum of our knowledge, tools and programme components to support a single organisation to holistically drive a step-change in its partnerships.

A recent Monitoring Report published by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) showed that in more than 70 percent of developing countries, the government and the private sector express equally strong interest in strengthening public-private dialogue. This underlines the importance of the Global Partnership as a platform for dialogue in order to explore and share experiences of good practice as well as challenges encountered regarding development-oriented partnerships.

TPI Director Dr Darian Stibbe moderated a high-level panel discussion at the recent European Development Days in Brussels, jointly organized by the European Commission and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, representing the German GPEDC Co-Chair. The panel discussion, opened by OECD-DAC Chair Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and DEVCO Deputy Director-General Klaus Rüdischhauser, examined opportunities for scaling up public-private collaboration in implementing the SDGs. More specifically, it explored actions that could be taken by the Global Partnership to further engage the business sector as a partner in development cooperation.

The discussion underlined the importance of multi-stakeholder-partnerships as a vital instrument for implementing activities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and emphasised the GPEDC’s decisive role as a platform for dialogue. The exchange highlighted the need for further engagement of the Global Partnership in strengthening cooperation with the private sector, and called for a practical approach in implementing joint activities. The official summary can be read here.

A TPI lecture at the Royal Society of Medecine’s event “Global Health Partnerships: Buzzword or Breakthrough?”

When thinking about coordinated health efforts, it is important to note how the global development context has changed in the last few years. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, represent a fundamental shift in approach to development when compared to the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), and this shift has three salient aspects.

For a start, the 17 goals are incredibly comprehensive, covering essentially everything. They also demonstrate the absolute interconnectedness of different development issues. In the context of health partnerships, we can see how Goal 3, “ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”, is intimately linked with goals 1, 2, and 6 – no poverty, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation – and also connects to all the environmental goals. This interconnectedness tells us we need far more systemic approaches to achieving development: we have to transform complex systems by looking holistically at multiple goals at once if we want to achieve lasting change.

The second major shift embedded in the global goals is around understanding the role of business and the connection between prosperity of business and prosperity of society. This means we need to look at an “all of society” approach, engaging business as a true partner in development. And this is where the third shift comes in: we need to see a real increase in effective collaboration across sectors as well as across issues if we want to achieve these targets and effect lasting change in society.

Why do we partner? Because through partnering we can achieve things that we can’t achieve alone, more effectively, more efficiently, and more sustainably. Partnerships are about creating maximum value for all from the resources available, and different sectors bring different resources. In the context of health partnerships, for example, NGOs might have technical expertise, access to communities, and bring legitimacy and social capital. The public sector brings all the resources and experience of the public health sector, the public systems and regulatory framework. Business brings market-based approaches and technological innovation, new services and approaches. Finally, donors provide knowledge, political connections and funding. These sectors can achieve far more together than alone.

When looking at these partnerships and what they can achieve, it is helpful to use a conceptual framework: a partnership spectrum that ranges from delivery to transformation, as illustrated in the graphic below.

These global partnerships can create added value in several crucial ways:

• They can tackle complexity, transforming systems by bringing multiple partners together.
• They can multiply impact through weight of action (in the case of health partnerships, this can be advocacy, or around eradication of disease).
• They can support innovative approaches through combining expertise from multiple different areas; they can achieve greater efficiency through sharing resources and economies of scale. Finally
• They are ideally placed to contribute to capacity building, exchange of learning, and setting norms and standards.

These partnerships can happen whenever there is enough of an alignment of interest between partners, as long as the partnerships are designed to ensure net value for each. This will be about each partner not only leveraging resources but also achieving their own specific strategic mission through the partnership, in addition to the overall goals of the partnership itself.

What TPI would like is to see a society that is intrinsically looking to collaborate to achieve more. We have limited resources on the planet and need to use them in ways where we align interests together and work effectively together to improve the societies we live in, and let business prosper at the same time as societies prosper, rather than at their expense. These partnerships can happen at all levels, from the systems level down to the community level, and even within organisations.

So, is partnership a buzzword or a breakthrough? For now, it may still be a bit of both, but it certainly has the potential to be the latter. There is a lot of rhetoric around partnership, but people have not yet necessarily quite realised what it takes to make it happen. This means that we need to see a lot more work from organisations, individuals, and multi-lateral organisations in order to create this sort of collaborative society and achieve the kind of breakthrough we would like to see.

Watch the lecture online