CEO blog | Are foundation staff and boards on the same page when it comes to collaboration?
25 September 2024
Carol Mack, ACF chief executive, reflects on the vital role of the chair in enabling foundations to navigate the potential benefits of, and barriers to collaboration.
Last week, more than 100 foundation leaders came together face-to-face at the ACF leaders forum to explore how, collectively, we can rise to the challenge of the climate and nature emergency.
There’s a lot to reflect on from a day packed with discussions, and I’ll share more thoughts in next month’s blog on some of the implications for funders of a changed and changing climate.
One consistent theme running through the day was collaboration – the necessity of joining up efforts to tackle systemic issues like climate change, but also some of the practical barriers that foundations can face to working together.
Solving problems collectively
One of our aims at ACF is to catalyse collaborations, between foundations and with others, to achieve greater impact.
For example, we developed the Funders Collaborative Hub to make collaboration opportunities more visible, helping funders to avoid inadvertently duplicating each other or leaving gaps. Transparency also makes collaboration more accessible and inclusive. Before the Hub, whether or not you could get involved in a collaboration often depended on who you knew. Now more than 180 opportunities are openly shared.
ACF events and networks also provide spaces for foundations to explore issues together and solve problems collectively. At the Leaders Forum, ten ‘collaboration centres’ offered the chance to get stuck into topics as varied as empowering future generations, convening and holding space for others, and talking to your board about climate and nature.
The vital role of the chair
One challenge I often hear about is the need for foundation staff and their boards to reach a shared understanding of the case for collaboration, and what is needed to make it effective. This might include considering how the costs of collaboration (often in the form of internal capacity) are resourced, which decisions can be delegated and to whom, or how impact is attributed.
The role of the chair, as a key link between a foundation’s staff and its trustees, can be vital in this. As recent research by Bayes Business School put it: “Future chairs will need to be skilled in collaboration and willing to see themselves as part of a wider ecosystem of leadership.” This has echoes of one of the principles of being a Stronger Foundation that ACF highlights in 10 Pillars of Stronger Foundations for Chairs of Charitable Foundations: Being “aware of the external context and its role in the wider ecosystem”.
Our upcoming evening for chairs of trusts and foundations will consider this theme. A brilliant panel of chairs of ACF members will discuss the value their boards see in collaboration, and their practical tips for making it work.
Get involved
As I heard from one ACF member at the leaders forum, collaboration “takes time, effort, resources and very careful management… but it’s worth it. Good collaboration can lead to an impact far greater than the sum of its parts".
Chairs of ACF members, you can book your place for a stimulating discussion on this topic. If you have a different role in a trust or foundation, please encourage your chair to join us on 24 October.
You can also check out our busy schedule of events throughout October, which offer lots of opportunities for all foundation staff and trustees to connect, collaborate and learn with your peers. Get involved – and discover how much more we can accomplish together.