"What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable"

This pithy statement by JFK could be seen as an epithet for how social sector organisations approach mergers and collaboration. This despite an interesting result of a quick Google search: “social enterprise competition” yields 39,800 results versus 358,000 results for “social enterprise collaboration”. There are nearly 10 times as many web-pages extolling the virtues of collaboration for social enterprise rather than competition. Yet despite the rhetoric meaningful collaboration - especially mergers - remain the exception not the rule across civil society.

This is backed up by research by the Charity Commission which shows that as few as 9% of charities have considered ‘collaborating, forming a consortium or merging with other charities in response to the economic downturn.’ It is worrying to read that 77% of charities which turnover more than £1m have not even considered these issues. Our research shows a different pattern, certainly amongst large charities in the UK, with nearly a third considering merger. ‘Considering’ and ‘doing’ are two different things however and the call to action to collaborate effectively requires a ‘will-do’ rather than ‘would-like-to-talk-about-it’ attitude.

Different reasons are cited for why alliances so often go awry: ego, cultural differences, trustee disinclination. One factor that is important and often taken for granted is actually finding the right partner. Frequently we find partnerships have been formed based on a loose arrangement of geographical or personal convenience rather than a qualified strategic alignment.

In response to this we have launched a service called Partner-Up – www.partner-up.org. Simply put it is a matching service for civil society. Organisations are able to discuss their needs and select other organisations they would like to speak to about specific partnership opportunities. We do offer toolkits and resources to support collaboration and mergers, but the real value is in brining together partners that want to work together rather than talk about it. We believe that this will forge effective partnerships: ‘What’s mine and yours is negotiable’.