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About Collaboration

Improved quality of service

In this harsh economic environment voluntary and community organisations are facing the challenges of increased demand on their services and more competition for a diminishing pool of funding.

However by pooling their efforts and talents and working together, community organisations can face down these challenges by improving the quality and effectiveness of the services they provide, leaving them better placed to win contracts.

 
Stronger together

Increasingly they are realising that there are many ways in which working together to share resources and expertise can help them to cut costs and improve services. Additionally they know that commissioning bodies are looking to put their trust and money with larger alliances and partnerships which can offer a range of expertise and value for money.

However we know that collaboration can be very time-consuming and labour intensive and is only truly effective when partners have a clear understanding of the aims and objectives of the collaboration from the outset.

 
A national policy drive

The idea of working with other organisations is nothing new but national government policy over the last few years has been actively encouraging collaboration in all its forms. These initiatives have come in the form of direct funding through schemes such as the Modernisation Fund, announced in 2009 and wider government strategies to increase cross-sector collaborations such as Local Strategic Partnerships.

The Collaboration benefits workstream, which is part of this drive to increase the collaborative skills of the voluntary and community sector, provides free training and support to organisations wanting to develop strong and successful partnerships.

Find out more about funded activity to improve collaboration-related support services.