The Partnership Brokers Association

80+ participants took part in a discussion with Adam Kahane, author of ‘Collaborating with the Enemy – How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust’. In his book Adam introduced the notion of ‘stretch collaboration’, which takes us beyond conventional collaboration where we can control what happens (the goal, plans, roles, even outcomes). In the webinar he talks about collaboration, power, control, people’s needs and the choices they face when they collaborate…

If you were not able to participate in the webinar, you can watch the recorded discussion here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zswZLJuXa88&feature=youtu.be

The pilot of our new online Remote Partnering Certificate (Level 1) was completed mid March 2018. Read more.

– pilot starts in February 2018 with around 80 partnership practitioners enrolled. More information www.remotepartnering.org

A Day of Professional Development and Networking in Calgary has been postponed to the Fall, 2018. This will provide an opportunity for more graduates to participate. We will also be able to share all the learning from the upcoming global Trainers Community of Practice being held in Wales, this May, 2018. The workshop will be designed to refresh your skills and to connect you with other partnership brokers.

We have just launched a new toolbox for those partnering remotely, developed by PBA and Action Against Hunger. To access it, please visit www.defyingdistance.org.

We are pleased to announce that following the great interest in Partnership Brokers Training held in London in March 2017 we have just started recruiting for another course in London, scheduled for 9 – 12 October 2017. More information on the training can be found in the course brochure, which can be downloaded together with the application form from Partnership Brokers Training Programme page.

How do you respond when a community asks you to help them to access health services, education and jobs when your programme doesn’t have funding for these things?  Managers of the Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Project (UPPR), a large programme managed by UNDP in Bangladesh, did so by becoming expert partnership brokers.  They helped to create win-win collaborations between the communities themselves and local NGOs, Government departments and companies.

Tom Harrison was so impressed with this approach that he has written a paper explaining what he found when he was commissioned by UNDP to evaluate this programme.  He explains how the brokering works in practice and why he thinks this is a valuable lesson for any organisations seeking to ‘do development differently’ in the new SDG world.

Read the paper here: Partnership Brokering in UPPR

And it is quite an issue. Here’s a taster of the 6 articles, followed by some useful links:

Diversity as an essential partnership ingredient: Marcia Dwonczyk

Addressing complex issues will need partners with different purpose, experiences, & approaches – such  diversity is key to innovation. There is a role for the Partnership Broker in supporting & challenging partners to stretch beyond the obvious partners, and work beyond their comfort zones.

Brokering shorter food supply chains: Rafal Serafin

“Partnership brokering is needed because collaboration… must encompass not just farmers and consumers, but also other stakeholders in the local food system, including public agencies, community groups, media, schools, researchers…. An investment in partnership brokering in this way is an investment in building local food systems as transformative partnerships, which over time build the skills, knowledge, know-how and markets that enable them to self-organise and sustain themselves, generating benefits for all participating partners.” 

Brokering in fast moving partnerships: A Digital Promise case study: Chelsea Waite

Fitting pace & style: How many partnerships start in a rush? Process & frameworks are appreciated & needed, however it doesn’t always play out that way. Here, the author took a resource from the Partnership Brokers Training Level 1 and adapted it to her working context.

Building competencies for co-creative partnering for local, adaptive development: Marisa Vojta

Organisations across the sectors must adapt their systems and processes, as well as their staff skills and competencies to become better partners if they want to remain relevant in the development space. Developing partnership brokering competencies in staff can change development practitioners’ mind-set from service- or solution-delivery to meaningful co-creation through facilitation of participatory processes.

Working with development giants – a brokers dilemma: Kenze Ndamukenze

Starting a complex partnership coordinator role with a key question: “What to do now?” – the importance of taking the time to understand the role of the coordinator – both with a partnership broker lens, and also through the eyes of the partners.

Exploring partnership culture – the partnership brokers role: Surinder Hundal

A greater understanding, awareness and sensitivity to organisational culture among organisations seeking to partner can increase their chances of partnering effectively. It also helps partnership brokers. They observe behaviours and group dynamics at work in the day-to-day life of the emerging partnership. Understanding a partnership in terms of its emerging organisational culture and in relation to the organisational culture of the partners creates an opportunity for partnership brokers to make practical and tactful interventions where required. Ethnographic approaches can be useful in understanding cultural dimensions of the partnering process.

Quick links

To view this issue, alongside the Editorial, and also past issues: https://partnershipbrokers.org/w/journal/

To find out how to contribute an article: https://partnershipbrokers.org/w/contribute-to-the-journal/

To subscribe to receive future issues: http://partnershipbrokers.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2db7a18f80d8c273e1dd07b49&id=748efdc7f6

Have a question? let us know: info@partnershipbrokers.org

PBA’s Ros Tennyson  delivered a keynote speech this week at the ICVA annual conference, and here are the highlights.

To learn more about ICVA please visit their website: https://icvanetwork.org/

Following on from ‘Dealing with Paradox’, ‘Power & Politics: The Consortium-building Story continues’ is now published. This is the second piece in the story of the consortium:

” Over a year has passed since the publication of the first case study and it is time for a re-visit. That it has been turbulent is clear – a great deal has happened and the picture is now, in some ways, very different…………

There is no doubt that there are exciting, possibly turbulent, definitely ambitious and potentially innovative times ahead. With so many internal and external factors in play, not even the most far-sighted can know whether the inherent paradoxes will prove insurmountable or will… continue to give the Consortium the challenge it needs to re-frame the game and make a serious difference to those that need it most”

Read the full piece here: https://partnershipbrokers.org/w/learning/

The first case study is also posted on the link above.

Based on the conversations of the 2014 Usual Suspects festival, the organisers* have created a hit list of themes for collaboration:

• Power & dynamics
• Collaborative skills & competencies
• Mobilising ‘hidden’ collaborators
• Creating accessible platforms
• Leadership & resilience
• Scaling great collaborations

Read more here: http://www.collaboratei.com/news/the-unusual-suspects-festival-building-a-coalition-of-collaborators-in-2015.aspx

*Collaborate, SIX, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

The next issue of Betwixt & Between – the  journal of partnership brokering – comes out in May and we welcome your abstracts.

For details on how – please visit the contribute page.

We are looking for articles from practitioners – be it frontline experience or conceptual frameworks. You don’t have to be an alumni of the Partnership Brokers Association to contribute – we welcome abstracts from all those working in this field.

If you are interested in contributing to the journal we invite your abstract by 28 February 2015. If you would like to contact us to discuss your piece, please email us. To view past issues of the journal: https://partnershipbrokers.org/w/journal/.

Issue 4 of Betwixt & Between – the journal of partnership brokering – is out now. It is a special issue focusing on the humanitarian sector, and has articles covering the following:

• Hard-earned lessons for putting the partnership principles into practice
• The servant leadership approach and humanitarian collaboration
• Passing on the mantle of humanitarian collaboration across generations
• Develloping a soft humanitarian field – improving doing and being through creative partnership brokering
• Supporting civilian protection as humanitarian action – a brokering experience from the DRC
• Value for money in partnerships – a challenge to partnership brokers

Read the full articles here

To contribute to the journal click here. The next issue is an open issue.

A new blog by Catherine Russ on the Humanitarian Practice Network talks through the barriers to effective partnerships and their management, and what a new approach may look like. The skilling-up of partnership brokers could assist the evolution in building partnerships that are fit for purpose in complex environments. This requires a new way of looking at funding and supporting partnerships.

“What is needed is an approach that fosters and embeds a partnering mindset and creates conditions of trust, creativity and innovation – all increasingly essential conditions for finding integrated solutions to complex problems and building legitimacy and buy-in from all partners for sustained systemic change.”

Read the blog here

We are pleased to share the latest publication – Brokering Local Collaboration – looking at the impact of training World Vision staff at the local level in partnership brokering skills. Focused on World Vision’s local programme for child well-being, this inquiry was developed jointly between World Vision and PBA.

To read the publication click here

To read more publications by the Association, please click here