Hi everyone, This is such an urgent and important discussion right now, it is great to join you. I’m Rachael Clay, Founder Director of https://www.ethicore.com/.
Looking forward to learning and sharing from our experiences of partnership at this time. Please do connect… linkedin.com/in/rachael-clay-2993668
Looking forward to this discussion today! I find there are always amazing new people I meet through these sessions, and I have had so many incredible follow-up conversations. Looking forward to some following today’s discussion. You can find me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulellingstad/ and email at paul.ellingstad@ptiadvisors.com
As I’ve thought about the session today and that in an era of unprecedented volatility, traditional command and control leadership dictates that we shrink our ambition to match our dwindling resources.
We’ve surely got to start by rejecting this premise?
True ambition in a climate of constraint isn’t about working people harder or chasing short-term survival. It is about shifting from an extractive mindset to a regenerative one. Our ambition must be to rewrite the operating system of how we deliver social impact. When resources are tight, our ultimate resource is the collaborative ecosystem.
Realy looking forward to the discussion!
Very pleased to join this forum as a Named Contributor and member of the Business Fights Poverty Global Expert Network. I greatly appreciate the community of solvers and doers that BFP brings together to address the biggest challenges facing our world. I have worked across public and private sectors and international NGOs. I currently lead a relatively new collaboration called the Debt for Nature Coalition. Founded by 7 leading environmental organizations and philanthropies, our focus is to address the growing sovereign debt crisis in EMDE while unlocking long-term innovative finance for nature, climate and people. If this sounds like the type of parternship-based work your organization is interested in, please do connect. www.linkedin.com/in/adamtomasek
Question 1: What is one practical example of a business/NGO/Government partnership that you have been a part of or are aware of that has helped achieve more than each partner could have done alone?
Hi all, looking forward to this discussion. I’m working on some of Save the Children’s private sector partnerships, particularly focussed on finance and professional services partners. I’m joining having returned from holiday this morning, so feeling happy and optimistic in the face of challenges 
Thank you for inviting me as a contributor
One practical example I love to share is Dairy Nourishes Africa, an alliance I helped lead from the Land O’Lakes Venture37 side. It began as a collaboration among Land O’Lakes Venture37, Global Dairy Platform, and Bain & Company to test a different model for transforming African dairy systems. Rather than treating dairy as a traditional farmer training project, we built the model around farmer allied dairy enterprises that could connect smallholder producers to processors, services, finance, consumers, and public institutions.
The reason the partnership mattered is that no single actor could solve the problem alone. Processors needed reliable, higher quality milk, but could not independently build the farmer services, consumer demand, financing channels, and public sector alignment required for sustained growth. Farmers needed dependable buyers, better inputs, animal health services, and technical support. Government needed a practical model that could strengthen nutrition, rural incomes, food security, and climate resilience. Donors and investors needed a scalable platform rather than another isolated project.
My role as Program Director was to help translate that shared ambition into an operating model that partners could align around. We focused on the whole dairy system: increasing productivity, strengthening farmer allied enterprises, improving processor capacity, stimulating demand through channels such as school milk, and building the case for larger scale public and private investment. Venture37 brought dairy sector implementation experience. Bain helped sharpen the enterprise growth and investment logic. Global Dairy Platform mobilized industry credibility and technical expertise. Local processors and farmer organizations grounded the model in market realities. Tanzanian public institutions helped connect the work to national priorities.
What made the example especially powerful is how the alliance scaled. DNA moved from an initial Venture37, GDP, and Bain platform into a broader investment architecture that included the Gates Foundation, the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank, Sida, Heifer International, IFAD, FAO, and eventually the Green Climate Fund pathway. TI3P, funded by the Gates Foundation and led by TADB, built directly on the DNA model to strengthen processor producer partnerships. DNA BILD, funded by Sida, extended the model to smaller enterprises and more resource constrained actors, especially women and youth. The model also helped inform Tanzania’s climate finance positioning and contributed to the wider East Africa dairy investment pathway later advanced with IFAD, FAO, GDP, national governments, and the Green Climate Fund.
The results showed why the partnership achieved more than each partner could have done alone. Early DNA pilots with two processors and more than 800 farmers increased average milk production by 25 percent per cow per day, raised farmer incomes by 29 percent, and reduced on farm greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 18 percent. DNA BILD subsequently reached 9,760 farmers through supported enterprises. Most importantly, the model created momentum for larger regional scaling, including the Green Climate Fund backed DaIMA program across Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
A1: Partnerships can achieve more than the sum of their parts when built on strong government ownership; investment in relationship and trust-building; genuine co-creation; diverse participation to enable innovation; and a sustained focus on long-term outcomes — including preparing for the ‘exit’ of partners upon success. Two examples we know in detail offer great learning:
· The Novo Nordisk Foundation Partnership with WFP, Grundfos Foundation, and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is transforming food systems alongside national governments in East Africa.
· The World Bank Global Financing Facility (GFF), through its partnerships with national governments, donors, and country platforms, is effectively scaling lifesaving care.
Partnerships also need to be adaptive to a volatile world and must embrace innovative finance and technology, including AI:
· Partnerships with the insurance sector, for example InsuResilience, have effectively responded to crisis and constraint, developing products that help communities and governments respond.
· AI is an increasingly critical tool being leveraged in the design and delivery of partnerships — with applications too numerous to mention!
Q1
The Eco-Literacy and Knowledge Dialogue Centre, University of Veracruz (Centro de ecoalphabetización y diálogo de saberes), which with I partnered in my research, strives to maintain intergenerational farming knowledge. Knowledge, which with only one generational break is lost forever.
The centre shares essential and cutting-edge farming research – knowledge built from the ground up, and supports local farmers in their interactions with large multinational confectionary corporations. It is an age-old and well-documented story that in the quest to increase yields, farms risk failure, which ultimately leads to rural to urban migrati on.
There remains a tendency in sustainable supply chain interventions to be almost exclusively interested in the increase in yield and the numbers of farmers involved. While these measures are necessary to demonstrate impact, they also need to be translated into action with a sensitivity to local communities and value chains. This can only be achieved in collaboration with (i.e. actively listening to) local partners. Impact measures are not devoid of market impact themselves.
Divya, firstly hope you had a great holiday and I hope that you will also talk about the Madagascar vanilla projects in answer to Question 1. Business Fights Poverty has heard a lot from me about the projects in the past, so would be interesting to hear the Save the Children’s perspective.
On a larger scale, it is worth highlighting the pioneering Tropical Forest Forever Facility https://tfff.earth/, launched at the last COP under the Brazil presidency. The funding facility brings communities in earlier into the process of funding design and impact assessment. The design specifically includes people and areas that an initiative intends to benefit in what and how funds create that benefit.
Q1: An example I’ve seen work particularly well is our HerVenture programme, a free mobile learning app for women entrepreneurs, that we deployed as part of a project in Vietnam funded by USAID.
The partnership was effective because each actor contributed something genuinely different, so there were very clear roles and responsibilities, and little duplication of effort or tasks falling between two stools (common pitfalls in partnerships!).
We brought platform, programme model and research insights around women entrepreneurs’ needs. Our local delivery partner, WISE, brought trusted relationships and deep ecosystem reach. They worked through women’s business associations and universities with entrepreneurship programmes across the country to promote the app in ways we could not have achieved directly ourselves.
USAID (RIP…) created the conditions for scale and experimentation that neither organisation could likely have supported independently.
The result was much wider national reach and stronger uptake than any one partner could probably have delivered alone.
We’re continuing to use a similar model in Egypt now, where our partner Nahdet El Mahrousa is using its own networks and ecosystem relationships to support dissemination and trust-building around the app.
A1: In 2004, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) started a local governance initiative in eight cities across the Philippines. ISA adapted the Balanced Scorecard – a management tool from Harvard Business School – for use in the public sector. ISA convened civil society groups and public officials in consultative sessions to develop governance roadmaps. A Multi-Sector Governance council advised and monitored implementation of the roadmaps, sustaining the agenda as leaders came and went. Besides bringing strengths from the private sector and civil society, the program combined administrative professionalism and political incentives. Impacts included growth in local revenue, new business registration, increased spending on elementary education, and new housing for people in flood zones.
The program demonstrated long-term thinking even under conditions of weak governance or crisis. It was adaptable where political leadership was favourable. The program was extended to 40 local jurisdictions as well as national agencies and associations. Governance programs, when successful, can provide a high return on investment at a lower cost than service delivery programs
https://www.iace.tn/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Performance-Governance-System_EN-Bettcher. pdf
https://wdi-publishing.com/product/reforming-mandaue-city-struggle-implement-performance-governance-sys tem/
Thanks @AliceAllan - Agree on incentives, catalytic functions and having courageous conversations!
working with local delivery partners in this way is crucial
I’ve been part of several PPP projects in partnership with GIZ, where I led the Symrise efforts for many years in a programme called “Bridging The Gap”. It was a multi-country, multi-partner, multi-crop initiative covering vanilla in Madagascar, mint in India, coconuts in the Philippines and cosmetic ingredients in the Brazilian Amazon.
It embraced local and international NGOs, several private sector partners including Unilever, MARS, Natura, Pernod Ricard, HALEON, Franklin Baker Corporation.
The complementarity of the skills and experiences was essential to success, but the programme was not without its challenges with respect to multi-stakeholder alignment. Some of those challenges included the inability of a partner to publicly call out the child labour issues they had discovered without it potentially harming their brand reputation and this would be a long-running bone of contention that I think mature organisations have to find a way to deal with.
Thanks @katie.hyson - A major barrier to using recyclable funding is awareness and confidence of the financial options. Many people don’t speak the language of finance, but it is more accessible than people realise. I recommend the book: Adventure Finance by Aunnie Patton Power
Looking forward to the conversation today and discussing how the management of non-financial risks enables impact investing.
ever more important in the future regulatory climate where this disclosure will be required for many larger companies.
Love the highlighting of the intricate interdependencies you call out. Managing those is absolutely key to success and whilst occasionally difficult, normally quite doable as long as everyone keeps a practical sense of “feet on the ground, heads above the clouds”.