According to several foundation and trust leaders, many charities are still reluctant to spend money on technology that will increase collaboration within their organisations.

At a recent panel discussion during the Association of Charitable Foundations’ Leaders forum in central London, Josh Cockcroft, the data lead at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation said good collaboration amongst funders could sometimes be difficult.

“It takes time, effort, resources and very careful management of stakeholders and the programme. But it’s worth it. Good collaboration can lead to an impact far greater than the sum of its parts. Foundations often feel uncomfortable about putting resources into the type of work collaboration needs or the overhead requirements for the grantees who are otherwise taking this on.”

Josh Cockcroft – Data lead, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

During the panel, the wide-ranging impact of climate change and how it affects multiple aspects of society, such as inequalities and economic issues was also raised.

“This requires a collaboration and partnership with everyone working together to actually make a systemic change that can be lasting and sustainable. In that sense, it’s really worth it – worth the pain, time and investment. A lot of collaboration is happening already, we can see through our networks and forums, we are members in our boroughs and nationwide. It’s just we need to approach those collaborations more structurally and systematically.”

Nezehat Cihan – Vice-Chair, Cripplegate Foundation

Another issue raised was done so by Carol Mack, Chief exec of the ACF, who mentioned that many NonProfits were wary of duplicating each other’s methods around collaboration.

“Our members also said they didn’t want to leave gaps by oversight so they wanted collaboration to be really visible. I think transparency is one of the key conditions of collaboration, because before that hub it depended on who you knew whether or not you were able to collaborate.”