The Partnership Brokers Association

History of the training programme

It is hard to pinpoint the birth of ‘partnership brokering’ as a new idea… but it feels important to try – especially to be able to acknowledge with gratitude the many that have helped to make the idea a reality over many years.

Staging posts in the history of the programme include

• The Learning from Experience Programme (1996-7) saw 100 sector leaders from 6 countries in Central and Eastern Europe complete an intensive skills training as ‘partnership intermediaries’ followed by a secondment in a UK organisation where they could experience partnerships in practice.
• In 1998, IBLF published MANAGING PARTNERSHIPS, as far as we know the first ‘primer’ or tool book on the topic to be produced. Written by Ros Tennyson, it included a chapter on the critical role of ‘partnership intermediaries’ in helping to shape and build successful cross-sector collaboration
• In 2000, as part of a collaborative capacity-building programme run by the IBLF and the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) a further book was published. Entitled THE GUIDING HAND – BROKERING PARTNERSHIPS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. This publication – co-authored by Ros Tennyson and Luke Wilde – was the first to coin the term ‘partnership broker’ which has subsequently been widely adopted by a number of international agencies.
• IBLF’s central involvement in the World Bank BPD project – Business Partners for Development – lead to the auspicious meeting between Ros Tennyson and Michael Warner (who was then acting as Coordinator of the Natural Resources Cluster of the project and undertaking pioneering training and partnership development work with the extractives sector)
• Some years later, in 2003, Ros and Michael persuaded their respective organisations (IBLF and the ODI) to join together to create the Partnership Brokers Accreditation Scheme dedicated to promoting ‘professionalism and integrity in brokering multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development’.
• To provide core materials for the course THE BROKERING GUIDEBOOK – TOOLS FOR NAVIGATING CROSS SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS was published by IBLF. It is now in its 4th edition and has been used by many hundred’s of people as they work out their role as brokers.
• In 2008 when Michael left ODI to go into the private sector, The Partnering Initiative (the specialist partnership programme of IBLF) took over sole management of PBAS and, with Michael’s full support has worked hard both to maintain its high standards and diversify its range of activities.
• In 2010, PBAS was incorporated into the new Partnership Brokers Project.
• In 2012, the project scaled up and became the independent Partnership Brokers Association

Support

From 2003 to 2011 the International Business Leaders Forum has been a supportive host for the partnership brokering work. Without the organisations unstinting support it would not have been possible to grow and adapt the work to ensure quality and relevance to partnership brokers worldwide. We thank them for this, and look forward to supporting IBLF in the years to come.