Charity Partnerships: Barely Civil Society
I once heard charity and civil society ‘partnerships’ described as “temporary suspension of hostilities for mutual benefit”. It’s one of those weird things in the sector: Coke has to pretend to work closely with Pepsi. My feeling has always been that when a charity was a competitor, they would stab you in the front. With a partner, they would have the courtesy to do it in your back. I’m not sure which I preferred, to be honest.
I’ve run consortia, gone into major partnerships between VCS organisations, and indeed, forged coalitions of the willing (and unwilling) within and across the public sector too. In the latter, the competition was simply over whose budget it came out of. A different kind of competition, and one which, honestly, they rarely even bothered to sublimate. This is the world of bureaucratic empires and budget sizes my intellectual hero David Graeber talked about.
In all these things, it shouldn’t be about competing, but in civil society, we have a totally marketised approach. This is most of all the case in the voluntary sector: competitive ‘bids’, commissioning, jockeying for public donation. How can we do otherwise? The myth pushed by many holders of funds is that they expect we ‘partner’ - but behind the scenes I have heard funder trustees, commissioners, and all holders of cash talking about the benefits of competition. Talk of partnership is an ideological fig leaf for a total marketisation of care in the charity sector as much as anywhere else.
So we have to tell ourselves comforting lies. The cognitive dissonance is strong - the more services for the people we care about, the better. But CEOs, fundraisers and everyone else know that if you don’t compete it’s curtains. And yes, sharing services and signposting is vital for good functioning - but for funders, this is not enough. They want collective funding too. Of course they do. And it would make much more sense - but we’ve also been in those consortium meetings where we pretend not to hold a weapon. We also know that any collaboration means splitting the pot when we’re desperate to survive.
And this is a constant part of the VCS’s management of cognitive dissonance - we claim any competition, or, frankly, crappy behaviour which would shock even the private sector, is in the service of a noble cause. And it isn’t always. And there is also a fundamental differencde with the private sector here. There are not constant meetings of soft drinks companies sitting around a table having to pretend they are NOT competing. Having to quietly, passive-aggressively undercut every phrase another utters, and constantly aggrandise their own work to the detriment of others. If you don’t believe this, and just think I’m just being cynical, all I can say is you haven’t nearly been burned at the stake by a baying mob of pitchfork-wielding voluntary sector competitors in a room with a single commissioner and an ever-shrinking pot. ‘Come along and talk about your own work as an exemplar of best practice,’ said the organiser. It’ll be great.’ I still wake up screaming.
I don’t know the answer, except to say that getting everybody to fight like dogs in a sack is a structural consequence of capitalism and a market being put in places where a market is fundamentally inappropriate to the task. Even if, come on, be honest, a bit of empire building is always going to be on the agenda of the most ambitious CEOs and trustees.
So what do you do? Not compete? Merge or close? Or keep on fighting. Suspend hostilities - or just pretend to?
All we can do is hope hope hope that our values can come first - but environment is everything. And the pitchforks are always at the ready.
Okay, here are some top tips.
Competition is a reality of the marketised approach. It’s not your fault. You have to compete, but…
Keep your dignity - you will feel so much worse if you compete in a way contrary to your values.
People who are unpleasant and badmouth each other look bad. Don’t be that person.
If you have trustees from the private sector, they can be especially hawkish here. Try to explain to them that while this is a reality, the other reality is that you’te here to help people. In reality, it doesn’t matter who helps them as long as thety get the help.
Rather than compete, think about how to complement - what can you do differently, and what gaps can you fill?
If you need to compete to this extent, are you providing something that doesn;t really need to be there? At an extreme it could be considering mergers - at another level it might be time to focus what you do on an area where there is less provision.
Be open with the people you work with about your needs. The basic is that we both want to be here to try and make sure we can help people in our own way. Then everybody wins. How can we make sure we get what we need - and don’t tread on each other’s toes? How can we work together to ensure we don’t NEED to compete? You will find the tension rapidly reduces. Keep having this conversation, and often. Consortia especially live or die according to this honesty.
Take your own pitchfork. C’est la guerre.
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