Giving Compass' Take:

• The author explains the importance of philanthropic organizations enacting collaboration rather than mergers. Smaller organizations can provide better localized and personal support without a merger. 

• What are the benefits of mergers over collaboration?  What are the key differences that impact how effective an organization is?  

• Here's a roadmap for effective collaboration for organizations. 

‘There are too many charities’; ‘We need to see more mergers”’: two statements, that seem to rear their head all too frequently, either from ministers, regulators, the media and key people in the sector themselves.

Trustees should of course ask themselves regularly, can we achieve more, who else needs support, are there others doing it better or even could we do better by combining with others?

Greater collaboration should always be actively pursued but mergers shouldn’t be the starting point.

Much of the clamour for merger comes from an idea that surely bigger is better, with economies of scale just waiting to be seized. There are examples where this makes sense. Take cancer: past mergers to form Cancer Research UK and the Brain Tumour Charity or more recent mergers to create single leading charities for breast or bowel cancer that can fund research, lobby for change and provide national helplines are unalloyed good things.

But just as its right for cancer charities, it isn’t right for others.  Fundamentally this needs to be about understanding the issue you are trying to address.  If you want to help victims of domestic abuse from the South Asian community in a former mill town in Lancashire then the best response is an established small, local specialist charity, that has a connection to the community and a local presence, so someone will seek help in the first place and then receive the appropriate personalised response they need.

Small charities already bring services together without mergers—the evidence shows they’re typically the glue that holds communities and a range of too-often disjointed other services, organisations and activities together. They are arch-collaborators day-in-day-out, building connections, bridging divides and packaging support around individuals and communities.

Read the full article about collaboration over merger by Duncan Shrubsole at NPC