The strategic advice and support we provide to leading international organisations and companies helps them rethink and adjust their approaches and harness the power of partnership to achieve their missions more effectively and efficiently.
TPI as your support partner
Over 20 years, TPI has worked with hundreds of international NGOs, UN entities, multi-national companies, foundations, and governments, providing support and advice to help them take their partnering to the next level.
In recent years, we have adopted a ‘supporting’ or ‘accompanying partner’ approach, in which we work with organisations or partnerships over a period of time, to impact the entity far more deeply and sustainably. The aim is to build organisational partnering effectiveness through the application of a range of strategic, capacity building and support services over a period of time in a highly-flexible, needs-based approach.
Please do get in touch with us to discuss your partnering needs. Even if you would like a small, one-off support service we can usually refer you to an independent consultant who would be perfect for the job.
Tailored training
We offer a range of training courses to suit the needs of a particular organisation or partnership, and work closely with organisations to develop a programme which will be highly effective and applicable to the context in which the participants are working in.
Johnson & Johnson (J&J): TPI provided an extended programme of strategic support to J&J’s Global Community Investment team. As part of the programme, we delivered a partnership training course over six weeks for 40 experienced colleagues around the world to help to optimize and systematize their partnering practice. In order to reach a far larger group of J&J staff, TPI also developed a partnering resource bank and a series of videos of J&J staff talking about their partnering and illustrating key partnering concepts.
Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF): With CIFF, TPI developed a new, fully tailored training course to develop the human relationship skills essential in grant making and in partnering. The seven module course includes such topics as: understanding organisational cultural difference, negotiation, holding difficult conversations, understanding power, influencing without control, and collaborative leadership.
UNSSC: TPI has continued to design and deliver tailored trainings as part of its longstanding collaboration with the UN Systems Staff College (UNSSC), supporting their partnership building initiatives. In 2022, this included designing and delivering a partnership building virtual workshop, for the UN Secretariat Executive Management Programme; a partnership building module for the FAO-UNSSC Online Executive Leadership Certificate Programme; and a partnership module for the UNFPA Managerial Certification Programme.
Fit for Partnering
How do you make your organisation institutionally capable of partnering with excellence? Fit for Partnering is a holistic approach to build organisations’ leadership, strategy, systems and processes, staff competencies, culture and internal support and guidance to make you the most effective partner of choice.
United Nations Rome-based agencies: TPI has worked for many years with the food and agriculture-focussed Rome-based UN agencies, supporting them as they undertake the organisational change required for them to partner with excellence. Support has included developing corporate partnership strategies, undertaking Fit for Partnering analyses, system and process development, creation of tools and guidelines and capacity building programmes.
World Vision International: TPI has worked extensively with World Vision to help them build their institutional capacity to partner within their national offices. As a pioneer in this area, World Vision and TPI published their experiences to date in the report: Partner of Choice: World Vision’s journey to becoming institutionally Fit for Partnering
Evaluation and review
Working with a partnership to design and deliver a health check review or evaluation of the impact and partnering value created.
SUN Business Network (SBN): TPI partnered with Mokoro Ltd to undertake an independent evaluation of SBN. The evaluation aimed to assess the relevance and feasibility of SBN’s theory of change; and to assess progress. The evaluation included interviews with more than 100 key role-players, seven desk study reviews in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and in-country case studies in Zambia, Indonesia, and Mozambique. Each of these identified challenges, strengths, and successes, and made a set of recommendations.
Guidebook and tool development
TPI develops tools to support organisations’ partnering, from individual tools to complete manuals encapsulating the whole of an organisation’s collaboration.
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): In 2022 TPI worked with FAO’s Partnership Support Unit to develop an extensive guidance note containing definitions and examples of transformative partnerships; an assessment methodology designed to help programme staff assess the potential contribution that partnerships can make to the transformation of agri-food systems; and a partnership-level key performance indicator designed to measure the extent to which a partnership is delivering transformation. This year TPI will be working with FAO at regional and country level to operationalise these tools and guidance documents.
International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM): In 2020 TPI and ICMM produced a new guide to development partnerships for the mining industry, Partnering for our Common Future: Optimising mining’s partnering capability to contribute to community resilience and thriving societies. The guide brings together TPI’s partnering expertise and ICMM’s sustainable development leadership, and provides practical tools and insights to help strengthen the partnering capacity of the mining industry, including a self-assessment tool to help mining companies to understand the degree to which they are currently set up to be institutionally fit for partnering.
VSO: TPI worked with VSO to help build its capacity to partner effectively and strategically. The programme included an initial scoping to briefly assess the current partnering culture and capabilities, and identify key areas for capacity building, as well as advice on producing a partnering strategic intent document. The capacity building programme centred around the development of a VSO partnering guidebook and accompanying set of tools, designed to help staff navigate VSO’s partnership and programme lifecycles.
Case studies
Case studies are intended to demonstrate how different organisations have tackled the challenges of cross-sector partnership, drawing learning from each approach. Lessons from these inform all our publications and training programmes. Some of these case studies have been made available online.
SUN Business Network: Working closely with colleagues at GAIN and SBN country teams, TPI developed a set of four case studies to draw out learnings and showcase innovative approaches to engaging business for improved nutrition, at National level, through the SBN country networks. The four case studies explored different approaches and types of programmes to illustrate the range of possibilities, and challenges encountered, focusing on initiatives in Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Developing partnering strategies
Working with an organisation to develop an organisational approach to partnering effectively – using a multi-layered approach of research, interviews and capacity building.
SUN Business Network: TPI supported the in developing its new strategy for the period 2021-2025. TPI worked with SBN to develop a strategic framework and practical guidance, enabling the national SBN platforms to increase their effectiveness and ultimately their impact. The strategy aligns with and builds on relevant existing information and ongoing processes, such as SUN and SBN policy documents and recent reviews and evaluations.
Scoping and facilitating a partnership
Working with a group of potential collaborators to take them through a process of partnering which builds a strong, value-creating collaboration based on the building blocks of effective partnerships.
Partnership portfolio review
Every organisation has a multitude of partnering / collaborative arrangements which may or may not be delivering strategic value. A review across the portfolio can help identify which are adding most value for the organisation, which may need to adapt, and which are not delivering and need to close. The review also makes recommendations for new partnerships to create a balanced, effective portfolio.