Hello everyone,

The conversations so far have been really interesting for me. It seems as though there is a thread of questions regarding how larger international organizations partner with local or smaller organizations and the issues that arise from those partnerships.

There’s no easy answer of-cause but I’m happy can share my experience from the perspective of working as the Victorian Community Organiser Amnesty International in Australia and maybe some of these examples / info will be helpful.

In my experience smaller organisations tend to be the ones with specialised skills and experience in one area which larger organisations don’t always have.

When I reach out to a smaller org it is usually for a very specific purpose. That is to further the impact of the campaign I am working on at the time, a campaign that has a timeframe and a specific goal.

The org’s that I tent to reach out to are those with specialised knowledge or relationships within a particular community that I do not have. Usually, there is some common ground to the ultimate aim and smaller org’s are interested in working together because the larger org can sometimes add weight or provide resourses to their work but as they also have their own priorities and less resources it’s not easy.

The key is to find a strong enough mutual interest area where we can all get something out of the time we give to the partnership. Sometimes this means that we run an event together where the smaller org raises funds for their priorities while Amnesty reaches a new community to build the movement around the campaign, all under one overarching theme (e.g. LGBTQI rights).

At other times finding common ground means finding a way to combine the priorities of each orgs campaigns / issue focus into one activity e.g. a public forum on a variety of issues or mutual promotion of each other’s activities.

However the most successful partnerships I’ve had are on very broad issues e.g. ‘women’s rights’- any area of women’s rights where there is no specific area focused on (e.g. not specifically violence against women, or reproductive rights or …etc…) This gives each org the opportunity to focus on their area of priority within whatever activity you’re doing. The problem is that this type of relations ship isn’t ideal if your aim is campaign specific, but if you have another aim, e.g. perhaps the aim itself is to start forming relationships within a community of orgs working on a particular thematic area  (LGBTQI or women’s rights for example) then you’ll have a winner in my experience. With a partnership like this I have had interest from more ‘non-traditional groups’ such as museums and police as well. This kind of partnership also keeps each orgs part in the partnership separate enough to reduce (but not illuminate) the risk of impeaching each other’s independence and impartiality because each group is focusing on their own specific areas within the overarching theme.

The flip side of working for a larger org partnering with smaller orgs is keeping up multiple relationships with smaller orgs who have very specific focuses that only rarely cross paths with the priorities I work on. When the priorities are the same it is a critical relationship but when they are not the same (which is more often than not) it is hard for me to priorities the time to keep up multipul varied relationships. Most of the orgs working in the human rights space have inspiring and important work to do so it’s hard not to want to work together. The best I can do is to be is to be as transparent as possible about what I am looking for from the relationship, be open to negotiations and be prepared for the other org to choose not to take part if they can’t get what they need.

Cheers,

Anouska

This is a booklet that was published quite a while ago, in 2004, under auspices of the European Platform of Policing and Human Rights, an intiative of the Council of Europe. The booklet discusses the rationale for cooperation, and also provides a template for cooperation. As I mentioned earlier this week, though this is focused on working together with police, I believe the dynamics with other partners can be similar to those of working with the police, and as a consequence the booklet is useful for other forms of engagement as well. 

Anneke

After reading these insightful posts I just wanted to add the opportunity that exists out there to partner with faith based institutions and labor unions. As Anouska wrote prior, campaigns that focus on human rights, with a broad message, are easier to secure commitments for from varying organizations. In my experience churches can bring resources to a coalition such as excellent turn out to events and a media opportunity to show legitimate wide spread public support. Labor unions can bring administrative support and of course turn out, and from reading Amanda Tattersall's book on coalitions, partnering with them seems to work best when the smaller organizations take the lead on decision making.
It's exciting when different organizations get together to work on campaigns, but only when it's more than letterhead support. Steadfast commitments need to be made, and for that the tool of the "one-on-one" is very important. If there are membership based organizations involved, it's a good idea for those members to mix with people from the other organizations and get to know eachother, this helps the organizational leaders remain committed to the cause. Thanks and I look forward to reading more posts.