Strengthening partnership support worldwide

On the weekend of 14 and 15 July, 28 international experts met in New York City to further develop the state of the art for support platforms for multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Whether in Latin America, Africa, Europe or anywhere else in the world, experts agree that supporting multi-stakeholder partnerships is not an easy task. But it is a task that involves similar challenges globally. For this reason, 28 international experts met in New York City for a peer learning workshop. The aim of the workshop was to address precisely these challenges and to further develop the state of the art for support platforms for multi-actor partnerships.

What are support platforms?
Support platforms for multi-stakeholder partnerships are a relatively new phenomenon. The growing importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships in achieving sustainable development has also been accompanied by the recognition that these partnerships have not always been successful. They often need external support to achieve their goals. As their name suggests, these support platforms serve to foster multi-stakeholder partnerships. Their services include, for example:

› Networking of potential partners for multi-stakeholder partnerships
› Financial support for multi-stakeholder partnerships
› Strategy consulting for the processes of a partnership
› Capacity development for partners in multi-stakeholder partnerships
› Innovation workshops for the development of new ideas for multi-stakeholder partnerships
› Research on the most pressing challenges for multi-stakeholder partnerships
› Policy advice on all aspects of multi-stakeholder partnerships

Partnerships2030 is one example of such a platform. But ALIARSE and the Zambia Business in Development Facility are also examples of multi-stakeholder partnership support platforms. Ander there are research institutions that work on platforms for partnerships, such as the Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) .

Insight into selected topics from the workshop:

Stakeholder engagement: The key to the work of support platforms is their capacity to successfully engage stakeholders. However, this is not an easy task, as each stakeholder group has its own interests and circumstances. The experts drew up recommendations on how support platforms could bring these diverse and often divergent interests together to form a common vision.

The characteristics of the individual stakeholder groups were also further identified. Discussions were held, for example, on how civil society can be more actively involved – especially in view of the current difficulties facing this group (e.g. shrinking spaces). Research, politics and private foundations were also identified as relevant stakeholder groups.

Sustainable business models for support platforms: Multi-stakeholder partnerships are often lengthy and resource intensive processes. Support platforms must be able to assist them for years and need a sustainable business model to do so. However, since these support platforms work in diverse contexts around the world, it is a challenge to determine which model fits best. The experts discussed factors that were relevant for this and will develop a tool in the coming months to advise existing and new support platforms on these challenges.

Would you like to learn more about the recommendations and the peer learning workshop? Click here for the full documentation of the workshop.