The United Nations' 'Unite to Ignite' report sounds a crucial alarm: the vast potential of multi-sector partnerships to tackle global, national, and local challenges and opportunities is not being maximized! Why do we overlook these powerful alliances despite their proven potential?
Multi-sectoral partnerships (MSP) that integrate public, private, and non-profit and community efforts, hold the key to innovative solutions and transformative change. What are the barriers to greater collaboration and the steps necessary to foster widespread, effective partnership? The research, underpinned by a global survey, interviews, and academic literature, identifies seven critical areas needing attention to scale up MSPs effectively.
#1. Need for Professional Training: A staggering 91% of respondents believe that training in partnership skills would significantly enhance collaborative success. Yet only 13% of organizations invest in such training. This calls for a concerted effort to expand training offerings, making them more accessible.
#2: Organizations that 'fit for partnering’: Despite 93% of respondents agreeing that optimizing their organization for partnerships would yield better results, most lack the necessary strategy, systems, competencies, and culture. Leadership commitment often exists, but it is undermined by unsupportive processes and a lack of strategic clarity on leveraging partnerships effectively.
#3: Support from Skilled and Trained Partnership Coaches and Guides: Effective partnerships require good practice standards and support from neutral partnership guide. Partnerships with these elements in place are 2.5 times more likely to succeed. Thus, there is a critical need for investments in partnership processes and neutral facilitation and support to ensure inclusivity, innovation, and effectiveness.
#4: Creation of Partnership-Catalyzing Platforms: These systems are essential for convening stakeholders and facilitating collaboration. Such platforms, however, need support from an enabling policy environment and resources to be effective. Governments and the UN are urged to establish these platforms with multi-sectoral governance.
#5: Supportive Governmental Policies: Support are crucial for encouraging and enabling multi-sector collaboration. The variability in government engagement and numerous barriers such as legal constraints and lack of political will highlight the need for policies that support public sector involvement in MSPs and decentralized frameworks for collaborative action.
#6: Evolved Funding Modalities: Funding must evolve to meet the unique needs of partnerships and system transformation approaches. Current funding practices often hinder partnership success due to their lack of flexibility and unrealistic requirements. A shift towards more partnership-friendly funding, including support for early-stage development and local initiatives, is necessary.
#7: Building Cross-societal Trust and Shared Responsibility: This is vital. Trust issues among business, government, and civil society significantly impede collaboration. Governments play a crucial role in facilitating trust through inclusive, transparent, and accountable policy and regulatory frameworks.
Multi-Sectoral Partnerships (MSP)offer a promising avenue for addressing societal challenges and opportunities. But significant barriers prevent their implementation. Addressing these barriers requires comprehensive action across training, organizational optimization, partnership support, platform creation, policy reform, funding modalities, and trust-building. Only through concerted, systemic efforts can the full transformative potential of MSPs be realized for the SDGs and beyond.