Collaboration that lasts

Collaboration is often presented as an obvious good.

When organisations face complex social challenges, increasing demand and constrained resources, working together can extend their reach, strengthen their influence and improve outcomes. But, let’s be real, collaboration also brings difficult questions about trust, power, accountability, governance and resources.

These tensions were at the heart of our recent Collaboration for trustees event, sponsored by The Clothworkers’ Company. The session brought together Chris Hickford, founder and CEO of The Eikon Charity and co-founder of the Surrey Wellbeing Partnership, and my colleague Olivia Sweeney, who leads NPC’s Everyone’s Environment alliance. Together, they explored what collaboration looks like in practice, how it can contribute to systems change, and how trustees can create the conditions for it to succeed.

The honesty of the discussion stood out to me. Neither speaker treated collaboration as an easy answer: it takes time, creates friction and requires organisations to make decisions without always having complete certainty.

Chris reflected on the development of the Surrey Wellbeing Partnership, a formal collaboration of charities working alongside NHS partners to improve support for children and young people. The partnership has brought charities into shared decision-making and enabled preventative and early-help services to operate across Surrey. He demonstrated the importance of a shared purpose, investment in relationships, proportionate governance and the willingness to address conflict early rather than allowing it to grow.

Olivia approached collaboration through the experience of Everyone’s Environment, which brings social purpose organisations, environmental groups and communities together to influence decisions about climate, nature and the future. Her reflections showed that collaboration is not only about coordinating organisations. It is also about sharing power, recognising communities as partners, and creating space for different forms of knowledge and lived experience.

Three lessons particularly stayed with me:

1. ‘Good enough for now, safe enough to try’

Olivia described how Everyone’s Environment works with the principle of being “good enough for now, safe enough to try”. When many partners are involved, complete agreement may be impossible. Waiting for perfect consensus can prevent a collaboration from moving at all.

This principle does not mean lowering standards or overlooking risk. It means establishing shared principles and sufficient safeguards, then taking a considered step forward, learning from it and adapting.

Collaboration needs rigour, but it also needs movement.

For trustees, this means being clear about the organisation’s risk appetite and asking whether governance is enabling thoughtful experimentation or unintentionally creating paralysis. Boards can help teams distinguish between decisions that genuinely require full agreement and those that are safe enough to test.

2. Trust needs time, honesty and well-designed governance

Trust among organisations cannot be assumed simply because they share a broad mission. Partners may bring different cultures, priorities, resources and systems of accountability. Questions about money, decision-making and whose voice carries the most weight will emerge.

Chris spoke candidly about the need to invest in relationships early, hold mature conversations about resources and services, and address conflict with honesty and courage. Olivia similarly argued that tension can be valuable because it challenges partners to learn and improve.

Trustees can play an important role by making collaboration an explicit strategic priority, creating space for difficult conversations and ensuring that teams have the time and resources to build relationships. They can also test whether governance remains proportionate as a partnership evolves, rather than assuming the structures established at the beginning will always remain appropriate.

3. Collaboration lasts when ways of working become embedded

A final point that stayed with me was the question of what happens when programme funding ends. Olivia explained that the longer-term value of Everyone’s Environment will depend partly on whether its principles and ways of working become embedded across partner organisations. If that happens, the influence of the programme can continue even if the original funding is no longer available.

This shifts how we think about sustainability. Long-term collaboration is not only about securing another grant or maintaining a formal partnership indefinitely. It is about changing how organisations make decisions, share power, involve communities, use evidence and work with others.

For trustees, the question is therefore not just, “Is this collaboration delivering its funded activities?” It is also,

What capabilities, relationships and practices will remain after the funding ends?

That is where collaboration can create a lasting ripple effect.

The session reinforced for me that collaboration is not a shortcut. It requires patience, challenge and a willingness to share control. But when organisations embed collaborative ways of working, invest in trust and create the confidence to try what is good enough for now and safe enough to test, collaboration becomes more than a temporary arrangement. It becomes part of how lasting change happens.