successful partnerships a guide - Organisation for Economic Co ...

successful partnerships a guide
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will be appropriate especially when there are certain new activities that have not been on the main political
agenda before, at least not in this form. New funds thus have to be found and new mechanisms created to reach
the targets. This situation is not so unusual as there are more and more topics that are not covered by traditional
sectoral approaches and where satisfying results cannot be reached by one institution alone. 4 The main
difference from level 3 lies in the decision mechanism: partners limit their direct influence on individual decisions
and agree only on certain criteria, based on a regulation and a procedure. One might ask why an institution
should give up its decision-making powers with regard to budgets. There are good reasons: to generate more
effectiveness and more efficiency in the use of their budgets. As effectiveness is more transparent, objective
ruling should have an influence on the achieved results. And efficiency is important, as this approach can also be
applied to situations where the number of decisions is simply too high to be decided by two or even more
institutions on a case-by-case basis. 5
How important is it who is contributing what to fund a partnership’s activities It is probably more
important that an organisation is contributing at all, as this shows a high level of commitment: the institution
considers the activities of the partnership to be so important that it is willing to devote some of its own resources
to them. So if the funding structure of a partnership can be based on a large number of regionally based
organisations – e.g. labour and social institutions, the regional government, cities and communities, the social
partners, enterprises and education institutions – there is clearly real general commitment within the region.
Of course this requires a lot more co-ordination of the partners, but it should pay off as this will definitely help
with the execution of the programme of work and contribute to better results.
The real amount or share of contributions must be considered fair by all partners, the payer (as they
will see it in relation to other investments or strategies) and the other partners (as they will place it in relation to
their cost-benefit ratio). Of course there can and probably will also be non-paying strategic partners, but
they cannot expect to have the same influence on decisions as those who contribute financially.
Some partnerships compete successfully for external funds and can thereby widen their budgets. This
is an interesting strategy but requires that partnerships develop from pure networks to organisations capable of
attracting outside donors or winning calls for tender. The donor-driven investment is de facto based
on demonstrating local weakness and has in the long run the disadvantage that donor attention might change to
other areas or topics more in need so that the funding base ceases to exist. But this does not detract
from the importance of donors in certain situations, e.g. the rebuilding of Balkan countries in the last years would
not have been possible without large investments offered by the international community. And competing
for funds requires strength, which might simply not be there in the starting phase of a partnership. But generally,
a partnership that can successfully compete in funding decisions will have a much better opportunity to find
additional financial support for its activities. Good examples of this are Irish partnerships, which have attracted
money from the European Union to co-fund their work. 6
Of course the business world should not be forgotten as a possible source of funding for partnership
activities. This of course depends on the strategy in place at the outset of the partnership and whether it is
of interest to enterprises. But a number of partnerships are dealing with labour market issues and supporting
4 For example, in many countries the intersection of labour market and social problems lies in the hands of different public and
sometimes semi-public institutions at different administrative levels
5 In some respects the Structural Funds of the European Union are administered in this way. The European Commission
and the member states agree on funding certain activities on a very general programme level – the agreement is termed a decision
in partnership – and the other member states give their opinion on this agreement. Those funding institutions responsible for a certain
topic in the respective member state then make all individual decisions, including that regarding the European Union’s co-funding.
In this concept the deciding body is only partly identical with the funding partner – or, to be more precise, one partner is interpreting
and executing the will of both.
6 In the case of the Area-based and Community Partnerships in Ireland, one programme (Local Development Social Inclusion
Programme – LDSIP) provides core funding for the partnerships, which are able to compete (along with other types of organisation,
e.g. community groups) for other government and EU programme funds.