Welcome to the third edition of Partnership Insights - a short series of publications aimed at following up on the Cross sector partnership guideline that was published in March 2016.
In this edition we will be focusing on funding; featuring an interview with Jacob Ravn from acces2innovation and with two very different case studies; how Grundfos has been financing the Water2Life-project in Kenya along with its own employees and the partnership between Arla, CARE, CEARD and Bilital Maroobe in the Western African dairy sector.
You can click directly to PDF-versions of each article or download the entire publication.
Partnership financing can be tricky, but there are numerous ways of getting financial lift-off. Jacob Ravn from access2innovation explains the main challenges and best current solutions.
Companies that contemplate entering cross-sector partnerships with CSOs should be aware of a couple of important things in regards to funding before they set out, says Jacob Ravn, CEO of the access2innovation association.
He has a Ph.D. in partnership driven innovation and since 2007 he has
spearheaded access2innovation’s efforts to facilitate partnership driven innovations aimed at developing sustainable solutions for the BOP markets.
“First of all, the CSOs often don’t have any extra funding that they can invest in partnership projects. This means companies need to look elsewhere to gain financial support,” he says.
“To qualify for external funding, companies need to be very sharp on the partnership concept. I therefore strongly recommend that companies spend time with CSOs and other potential partners and invest the time necessary to describe and develop the concrete partnership. That is really the essential first step for any partnership.”
LifeLink® is a payment system where the users use their mobile phones to pay a small fee for access to water. The fee ensures money for maintenance of the pumping station. The water in itself is free Photo @ by Jakob Dahl
GRUNDFOS: EMPLOYEES ARE CHIPPING IN
Worldwide pump manufacturer Grundfos funded its Water2Life-project in Kenya with donations from its own employees. e project has brought water to ten villages in Northern Kenya, but equally important to the project; it bene ts the company’s employees.
“Originally, the idea that kicked o our employe programme Water2Life was fostered by a production worker doing the night shift,” says Vibeke Tuxen, Sustainability Project Consultant at Grundfos.
“He wrote an email to the suggestion box, proposing the idea that since we are producing high quality pumping systems that could bene t the poor people of the World, it was only natural that we should donate some of them as well.”
quarters in Bjerringbro, and the departments around the World have contributed with a variety of di erent activities.
“In Mexico, some of our local employees have set up a small cake stand where the pro ts are donated entirely to the project. In Austria, the employees collected funds per kilometre biked to and from work. e money was then donated to Water2Life. In that way
e management liked the idea – and that was the start of the rather unusual Water2Life programme.
Mother-to-Traditional milking technique in Western Africa. Photo @ by Irene Quist Mortensenbe Diana Torrecilla in Barranquilla, Colombia. Diana had GDM during her pregnancy. Photo @ by Novo Nordisk
ARLA: A FINANCIAL TWO-STEP ROCKET
The partnership ”Milky Way to Development” between CARE, ARLA, CERAD and Bilital Maroobe and a number of small scale sub-saharan pastoralists is gaining increased funding from the Danish dairy cooperativegiant. The results from the first leg of the project helped convince the company that investing in the partnership would be good business.
The partnership project ”The Milky Way to Development” was initiated in 2014 as a
DANIDA-supported initiative aimed at heightening the know-how of the West African dairy sector and developing and implementing socially responsible business models. . The main NGO partner was CARE along with the international dairy company Arla and a number of local dairy producers and small-scale local pastoralists.
Arla did not receive any direct funding from the project and contributed mainly with
man-hours and expenses connected to participation in the first Roundtable meeting in Copenhagen as well as hosting visits to Arla farmers and dairy processing facilities. during the initiative’s first two years.
However, the outcome in terms of network connections was an important factor when the company decided to approach the second part of the project with significant involvement and the funding to match.
“Our participation in The Milky Way to Development has been value adding,” says Head of Corporate Responsibility at Arla International, Irene Quist Mortensen.
“Particularly in relation to the network contacts that we established in the project, which has provided us with a very good platform to build on both in Nigeria and Senegal.”
partnership insights is a series of digital publications that build on the Cross-sector Partnership Guideline published by Danish Red Cross with research and analysis by Deloitte.
Produced by Brodersen Kommunikation for access2innovation.
