What first comes to mind when you think of funder collaboration?

I sometimes get asked whether the Funders Collaborative Hub is mainly focused on grant-makers pooling their resources together.

Pooled funds can offer lots of benefits, whether it’s tackling an issue at scale, distributing grants more efficiently or working with partners who bring a particular area of expertise.

But formal mechanisms like this are just the tip of the iceberg of funder collaboration.

Our latest analysis of the Hub’s data explores seven different ways that funders are working to achieve more together.

Our ‘Activities’ filter provides a new dataset that we hope will offer some useful insights into the overall landscape of funder collaboration.

These are the seven ways that funders are collaborating.

  1. Aligning processes
    A small number of existing collaborations include work to align processes between funders.
  2. Co-ordinating funding
    When several funders share an interest in tackling a particular issue, it isn’t always necessary to formally pool their funding.
  3. Joint research
    If you’re thinking about commissioning some research to inform your work as a funder, there are likely to be others who have similar questions they want to explore.
  4. Pooled funding
    As we’ve seen, there’s a lot more to funder collaboration than pooled funding, but it can certainly be one useful tool in the toolbox.
  5. Influencing policy and practice
    Lots of funders have ambitions for systemic change, but few can hope to achieve this on their own.
  6. Peer learning
    Peer learning is a common focus for funder collaborations. With more than 50 examples on the Hub, it can take many different forms and often takes place alongside other types of collaborative activity.
  7. Information-sharing
    More than half of the existing collaborations on the Hub involve information-sharing. For some, such as East Midlands Funders Forum, this is the main role they set out to play.

Read the full article about funder collaboration by Jim Cooke at Funders Collaborative Hub.