July 2012
Featured in this insight: Charity & not-for-profit
Research in to charity collaboration recognises strength in numbers: GfK NOP were commissioned by The Charity Commission to look in to collaboration between small charities. A charity with an annual income of less than £250,000 is considered to be small. 91% of charities fall into this category.
To collect the information a questionnaire was sent out to 10,000 charities and a 25% response rate was achieved.
The findings showed that half of respondents had collaborated with another charity in the previous two years – with 82% feeling that the collaboration had been successful. 55% of respondents felt the success was due to the quality of a pre-existing relationship and 52% mentioned the compatibility of the aims, values and mission of the collaborating organisations.
There were various ways in which charities collaborated. A third (35%) shared information and resources, 15% carried out joint fundraising events and 11% shared equipment.
When asked for the reasons behind their collaborations three quarters said issues with growth, 73% mentioned an increased service demand and 71% stated that operational issues had led to collaboration.
84% of the charities felt they had benefitted from collaboration. The main benefits were; improving services (43%), enhancing reputation (39%) and cost reduction (28%).
In the cases where collaboration was unsuccessful, almost a third (29%) said this was due to poor planning, communications and leadership.
The charities who responded saying they hadn’t been involved in any collaboration said the main reasons for this were that they felt no need (46%), they had no partners (34%) and they hadn’t been approached by any other charity (30%).
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