1. Presented by Fiona Phur Voluntary Youth Sector Development Worker
SUPPORTING COLLABORATIVE WORKING

2. What is Collaboration?
‘Any situation in which people are working across organisational boundaries towards some positive end’
INSTITUTE FOR VOLUNTARY ACTION RESEARCH 2010
‘Joint working by two or more charities in order to fulfil their purposes, whilst remaining as separate organisations’
THE CHARITY COMMISSION 2012
Ask whole group what they consider to be collaboration . Short discussion.
Then show them the 2 definitions.
Community Brokerage – local community organisations develop collective engagement with the public sector
C0-design – local community organisations working directly with public service commissioners
National:local – explores ways local communities can work with national organisations and engage with commissioners.
Collaboration can be informal or formal and may sit anywhere on a spectrum which includes networks; forums; influencers and campaigners; integrated service delivery; sharing staff, resources, joint purchasing; sharing accommodation, joint tendering/ consortium working; merging.

3. Collaboration Drivers
Government policy
Efficiency agenda
Commissioning issues
Collective strength
Financial pressures
Governance problems
Desire for greater influence
Meet needs more effectively
Government Policy – Localism provides a key policy driver which an increasing number of commissioners value; the Social Value Act – enabling smaller organisations to compete on a more equal basis.
Efficiency Agenda – statutory funders are seeking efficiencies looking to larger/aggregated contracts; joint funding arrangements; fewer contracts/ grants; Payment by results; personalisation; revised procurement arrangements.
Commissioning Issues – Move to bigger contracts with economies of scale for commissioners; high levels of uncertainty and churn- difficult to anticipate demand and funding streams; Quote” Get commission ready, build links with each other, work out common standards and approaches, get to grips with local priorities”. Quote” Small and local organisations have strong selling points for commissioning; but don’t tell me, show me”. Quote” Strong selling points for smaller local organisations are that they know and have links with communities, they know the patch in detail, should know the local priorities, they won’t up and leave and they can be more flexible and responsible to need”.
Collective Strength is important in hard and uncertain times.
Financial pressures – not knowing where the funding or your fit to it is coming from
Governance problems – double edged sword; formal collaboration should have very robust mechanisms to test governance
Greater influence – eg Mental Health Foundation – collaboration of national and local MH orgs overturned chanf=ges to Mental Health Act
Meets service needs thru shared good practice, shared back office functions, efficiency savings etc

4. Benefits of Collaboration
Better use of resources/co-ordination
Competitive advantage
Increased skills and knowledge
Higher profile
Sharing risk
Improved services
Increased influence
New routes
Better use of resources – efficiency savings; economies of scale; pool resources and expertise and really plays to the strengths of civil society organisations.; money saving sometimes.
Competitive advantages – although when we look at the legal considerations later we need to bear in mind the Competition Act.
Increased skills and knowledge – by sharing opportunities for personal development
Higher profile – through working with more/different organisations; more external facing; in some formal structures your partners will know almost everything about you. Through success!!
Sharing risk – remember commissioning is becoming more about driving down prices and passing on risks from public to private/civil society orgs so its useful for smaller orgs to share the risk.
- which could reduce risk for an individual organisation.
Improved services – extended reach, innovative approaches, meets needs more effectively;
Increased influence – successful collaborations will be talked about; one thing about this event is that we do not have a shortage of case studies.
New routes – to develop organisational capacity and workforce skills, extend representation, voice and influence, strengthens networks, cost effective communication.

5. Barriers & Obstacles Power struggles Inertia Independence Fear Pain
Time
Cost
Variations
Power struggles – could be external (hierarchical thinking) or internal eg CEO often bold but trustees risk averse; trustees may wish to look at a merger or some form of rationalisation that would threaten CEOs; CEO’s loyalty to the organisation v. trustees loyalty to users needs.
Inertia – ‘something will turn up’; ‘we don’t know how to collaborate’; the process gets in the way’; often external facilitation is needed to ensure issues addressed’; ‘weak leaderships means that collaboration grinds to a halt’.
Independence – wanting to retain a unique identity, a special way of working, only we can safeguard the interests of our users, saving the organisation at all costs rather than saving the service.
Fear – its risky, its unknown, other’s motivations might not be the same; we’ll lose out; they want our knowledge and skills; hidden agendas; don’t like change.
Pain – sector is about people not profit and decisions that might affect people can seem too painful; a little pain for a collaboration now can avoid a greater pain in a merger later on; some groups fear pain so much that they fail to collaborate or merge and all services are lost;
Time – building trust takes time; time to form relationships; bidding windows are too short; slow decision making processes; it can take 9months to a year or longer to form a strong consortium; then there is the time needed to manage work when you win it!
Cost – may need to pay a co-ordinator; if it’s a formal relationship you may end up needing paid consultants or legal advice from an early stage
Variations – need a mechanism; ( commissioner or funder doesn’t want to manage your differences, tensions and data collection issues); quality/skills/expectations; commissioning – procurement systems; capacity - shrinking teams and resources for development.

6. Case Studies Can you identify the following:
What type of collaboration?
What were the drivers?
Name some benefits?
What were the challenges/barriers?
What worked well?
What could have worked better?
Power struggles – could be external (hierarchical thinking) or internal eg CEO often bold but trustees risk averse; trustees may wish to look at a merger or some form of rationalisation that would threaten CEOs; CEO’s loyalty to the organisation v. trustees loyalty to users needs.
Inertia – ‘something will turn up’; ‘we don’t know how to collaborate’; the process gets in the way’; often external facilitation is needed to ensure issues addressed’; ‘weak leaderships means that collaboration grinds to a halt’.
Independence – wanting to retain a unique identity, a special way of working, only we can safeguard the interests of our users, saving the organisation at all costs rather than saving the service.
Fear – its risky, its unknown, other’s motivations might not be the same; we’ll lose out; they want our knowledge and skills; hidden agendas; don’t like change.
Pain – sector is about people not profit and decisions that might affect people can seem too painful; a little pain for a collaboration now can avoid a greater pain in a merger later on; some groups fear pain so much that they fail to collaborate or merge and all services are lost;
Time – building trust takes time; time to form relationships; bidding windows are too short; slow decision making processes; it can take 9months to a year or longer to form a strong consortium; then there is the time needed to manage work when you win it!
Cost – may need to pay a co-ordinator; if it’s a formal relationship you may end up needing paid consultants or legal advice from an early stage
Variations – need a mechanism; ( commissioner or funder doesn’t want to manage your differences, tensions and data collection issues); quality/skills/expectations; commissioning – procurement systems; capacity - shrinking teams and resources for development.

7. Structures & Processes
Informal Formal
Specialist advice
Regulatory frameworks
- EU regs
- Competition law
Consortium Models
- Steering group
- Lead contractor
- Prime contractor
Formal arrangements - Contracts / SLA / Memoranda of Understanding
I would like to finish looking at barriers and obstacles by telling you the key findings from the Locality – National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning – Collaborating for Commissioning Report Key findings were that poor communication and relationships continue to create barriers to intelligent commissioning ; along with a lack of resources; poor articulation of outcomes; poor communications between commissioners and the civil society organisations; lack of proportionality in procurement processes; a better approach to sharing risk and finally, a gap in policy and practice from what the government says should happen and what actually does happen in commissioning processes.

8. Next Steps…….. What’s in it for me/us?
Will it meet my/our values and vision?
Will it meet my/our mission and aims?
What can we achieve from it?
What do I/we need to do to be involved?
One day workshop
Expression of interest
Run through things to think about.
Offer a 1 day Collaborative workshop
Circulate an Expression of Interest form.

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