A new beginning: TPI launches as an independent organisation

After a decade as part of the International Business Leaders Forum, The Partnering Initiative has re-launched as an independent not-for-profit organisation with ambitious plans for the future.

Building on more than twenty years of IBLF’s cutting-edge work on collaboration, TPI was launched in January 2004, originally as a partnership between IBLF and the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry. The two organisations had previously teamed together to offer the world’s first Postgraduate Certificate in Cross-sector Partnership. From the very beginning TPI worked with all sectors – business, the UN, NGOs and governments – to build capacity and disseminate partnering knowledge, and quickly established an international reputation as a pioneer in the theory and practice of cross-sector partnering.

Now, as an independent organisation, TPI plans to scale up its support to organisations and partnerships, its training and capacity building, and its action research. By working with a range of partners around the world,  it is already helping to drive the mainstreaming and scaling up of effective partnerships – to support both business sustainability and the delivery of development goals.

TPI’s Executive Director, Darian Stibbe, said, “TPI was founded on a passionate belief in the essential need for collaboration to tackle the greatest challenges of business and societal sustainability. That need has never been greater and collaboration has never been higher on both business and development agendas. We owe a huge a debt to IBLF as a serial incubator of successful programmes and TPI thrived in that entrepreneurial atmosphere. Now, as an independent organisation with a single agenda, we are able to increase our efforts to drive innovation in partnering practice and support the scaling of partnerships as a vital tool for sustainable development.”

The new TPI is registered as a charity in the UK, with its headquarters in Oxford. It has a second office in London within the office of SustainAbility, the renowned business sustainability think tank and consultancy.