How we build pro bono partnerships
“Is it just the two of you?”
“Well, technically yes. But also no. Our team is so much bigger.”
This exchange is quite common for us. It usually follows the question, “How have you managed so much in so short a time?” by which they mean, “You two did all this?” Now don’t get us wrong — we don’t take offence. We often pause to look back with gratitude at the number of phenomenal people who have joined in our mission.
When we launched Gather in 2016, we grabbed a big piece of paper and listed our core values. Partnership and collaboration quickly became a favourite.
We had several motives:
- The more people we have, the more creative, tested and endorsed our ideas can be, which increases our chances of success;
- We had grown tired of the culture of competition over collaboration within the third sector;
- We wanted to create a culture of celebration and champion everyone’s contribution;
- The old proverb is true: you can do more together than you can do apart.
Truth be told, it was also about survival. We started Gather with ten years’ combined experience of starting organisations and working in international development. But we were still relatively new to sanitation. And complete newbies to data. To achieve our mission, we knew that we needed to collaborate with others so that we could leverage their talent, resources and experience.
We were very honest about this with several UK organisations when we approached them to ask if they would help us. We wanted to stretch our starting pot of funds as far as possible. We think our honesty worked in our favour. The worst someone can say is no, and very often they say yes. Asking got us office space, graphic design accounting advice and tech support all in our critical first year. We have found that organisations appreciate being sought out and honoured for their areas of expertise. We shared our mission and created an opportunity for them offer their services on a pro bono basis.
We have nurtured and developed these partnerships over the past three years, and we’ve welcomed new partners on board. Some partnerships incubate us: Geovation has provided us with a brilliant home where we get to be surrounded by innovative start-ups using location data to change the world, and the Geovation team’s technical know-how is unparalleled.
Some of partnerships make it easier to breath: Begbies have been brilliant at helping us complete our accounts, make sure we are compliant with the Charity Commission and maintain a high level of accountability and transparency.
Some partnerships enable us to do things we simply could not do: Crowdspring, Ryland Consulting and Red Badger have all helped us improve our visual and online storytelling by producing beautiful logos, graphics, posters and websites.
We could easily go on. In the last three years we have had 13 partners and over 40 volunteers. It has been remarkable. To honour each partnership, we have a dedicated part of our website where you can read more about their contributions.
If you are starting a nonprofit — or are stuck on how to deliver an idea — we would always wholeheartedly recommend you find a partner! Find the best person to answer your question, keep the question simple, and maintain a high level of honesty throughout. We really can do more together than we can do apart.
