When organisations with a common aim work together, they can cut costs, improve outcomes and reduce duplication.
Collaboration is of particular importance to smaller charities who are looking for ways to create a sustainable long term future.
It is important to stay on track, collaborations must help the organisations involved to deliver their vision and mission, which is why it is important to seek out others with shared values and missions.
This article explores in more detail some of the key benefits associated with such collaboration. Here are 5 ways charities can benefit from collaborating with each other:
1 – Improve awareness of your cause and increase fundraising
By working together you can double your reach and both organisations gain greater exposure.
Reaching more people is especially relevant to small charities when over a third of people cannot name a local charity in their area, and one in 10 have never donated to any charity, local or otherwise.
Pooling marketing budgets to focus on one campaign can help you to be able to reach your target audience.
2 – Learn and Share New Skills
Networking or clubbing together with other charities to be able to access training charities can really benefit. Learning from peers at events or online can help you to improve your skillset. You can even help to create more skills sharing within your organisation by running lunch and learn sessions with your colleagues.
3 – Innovate and Grow
Perhaps you could offer a new service if you began working with another charity?
By combining your skills, resources and knowledge you can help solve problems and increase your impact. You may want to work together on a joint funding bid which together you could deliver, and alone you could not fulfill.
4 – Gain Sponsorship and Support
The opportunity to partner with businesses should not be overlooked, whether it is getting volunteer support or trustees who can help your organisation grow, one off donations or becoming a charity of the year there are a wide variety of ways to work with a business.
The key to this is to find organisations that have shared values and that align with yours and finding win-win opportunities to work together. Consider starting small and building up to more formal activities and fundraising asks.
5 – Save Money and Build Resilience
By working with another charity there may be ways that you can save money.
For example you might decide to share an office space to reduce overheads, you might pool funding to buy equipment such as cameras and share on a rota basis.
The Charities Buying Group helps charities save money when making purchases.
Running charity events as a group can also be especially good as all elements are then shared, reducing costs but also time and resources required. By reducing and sharing costs it can help your organisation to become more sustainable in the long term.
Next steps:
If you want to encourage your organisations to collaborate here are some things you can do.
- Put collaboration as a recurring meeting agenda item at work
- Talk to people you work with about inspiring examples of collaboration
- Go to events where you can meet others you might be able to collaborate with
Source: charityconnect Website
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