How Foundations Can Learn to Collaborate

By STEPHEN ISAACS and JOHN RODGERS

While many of the nation´s largest and most prominent foundations frequently insist that charities collaborate, grant makers themselves are often unable to do so.

Foundations often understand in theory why a partnership with another grant maker is a good idea. When foundations work together on a project, they demonstrate the importance of an issue, highlight its visibility nationally, increase the financial and intellectual resources directed at solving a problem, and spread the risk of financing innovative and potentially controversial projects.

But when it comes to reality, the barriers to forming effective partnerships are so formidable that they threaten to sabotage the concept at every stage.

The dearth of real collaborations — those where decisions are jointly made, as contrasted to mere joint financing of a program — may well reflect a decision, reached unconsciously or consciously by foundation staff members and boards, that they simply are not worth the effort. Among the obstacles we uncovered in an extensive study of partnerships, including interviews with 30 foundation executives:

Differing missions. Every foundation sees itself as fulfilling its own distinctive mission — one that will enable it to make a difference and to support creative solutions to social problems. Working to fulfill somebody else´s mission is often viewed as a diversion of energies and resources.

Sharing credit. Board and staff members want their foundation´s name attached to groundbreaking projects. They generally want to take credit for having developed programs, not simply for being a member of a team or, even worse, a bit player.

Cultural clashes. Meshing the cultures of two or more institutions poses a major challenge. Foundations are on different timetables. Boards require different kinds and amounts of information. The authority of program officers varies. Some foundations take a hands-off approach with grantees while others are directive. Financial and narrative reporting requirements differ.

Hassle. Partnerships are time consuming, heavy on process, and require an inordinate amount of time in meetings. For staffs and boards impatient to see results, the transaction costs are high.

Career enhancement. Program officers receive few, if any, rewards for furthering collaborations. Foundations often judge their staff members on the basis of the number and quality of the grants with which they are associated. Because partnerships take so long to develop and are labor-intensive to maintain, they impede the work upon which career advancement is based.

All in all, those are powerful incentives to avoid even talking about partnerships. But it is possible to avoid trouble and generate benefits substantially greater than the potential drawbacks. Here are some ways to head off any difficulties — and to sustain foundations through the bumpy moments that are inevitable in collaborations:

• Before entering into a collaboration, each of the potential partners should conduct a hard-headed analysis to be sure that the partnership will further its own priorities and that it can work with the culture of the potential partners. Not only should each foundation view the partnership as advancing its own mission — which is usually pretty general — but the potential partnership should also be perceived as furthering more-narrow goals or objectives. It is equally important that each foundation understand, to the extent possible, the culture and operating style of its potential partners. That means examining the potential partners´ values, style, approach to grant making, and manner of doing business.
• The partners should develop clear and limited objectives. Although formulating clear objectives is desirable in any case, it becomes more important when many parties — each of which can interpret things differently and is likely to undergo staff changes — are involved. Clear and limited goals prevent ambiguity and, more importantly, give the partnership a sense of purpose.
• Keep in mind that partnerships are as much arrangements between people as between institutions. Human relations, which are critical to successful alliances, can be enhanced by involving senior executives at all stages, getting more than one or two people at each foundation involved in the collaboration, holding regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings, and showing sensitivity to the partners´ needs.
• Expect cultural differences to emerge and plan in advance how to deal with them. The single most pervasive obstacle to successful partnerships is differences in institutional cultures. While an organization´s culture is integral to its identity and cannot be expected to change, steps can be taken to reduce and deal with the tension arising from the mingling of different cultures. Agreeing on mechanisms for group governance and resolving disagreements is one. Another is developing limited forms of collaboration, such as joint financing arrangements, rather than partnerships that require a greater degree of shared decision making. And while equality among the partners is not necessarily possible nor always desirable, fair and respectful treatment of the people representing other collaborating institutions should be.
• Ensure transparency in decision making and open channels to share information. Transparency involves sharing all relevant information before any decisions that may affect the partnership are made, regardless of who has jurisdiction for the decision. While transparency may not ameliorate differences of opinion or interpretation, it preserves core values of fairness and mutual responsibility — the pillars upon which trust is built.
• If partnerships are important, change the reward system to encourage them. Right now grant makers trying to develop partnerships with other foundations get little credit that will advance their careers. No wonder that many ask the question, “Why bother?” If foundations are serious about engaging in partnerships, they must find a way to reward those who work to develop them.

Perhaps a better understanding of what it takes to develop successful partnerships will close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality in the foundation world.

Stephen Isaacs is president of Health Policy Associates, in San Francisco, and editor of To Improve Health and Health Care: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Anthology series. John Rodgers is research and editorial associate at Health Policy Associates. This article is based on a study whose full results will be reported in the next edition of the anthology, to be published by Jossey-Bass in October.