Lessons in Funder Collaboration: What the Packard Foundation Has Learned about Working with Other Funders

As the Foundation approached its 50th anniversary this year, it asked The Bridgespan Group to assist in taking stock of what Packard can learn from its many collaborations. When it comes to the structure of collaborations, Bridgespan has identified five main models: knowledge exchange, coordination of funding, coinvesting in an existing entity, creating a new entity, and funding the funder. As with all taxonomies, these five categories are meant to serve as signposts along a continuum. Each collaboration differs in a variety of ways, whether it is the flow of funds, decision making, expectations and roles of funding partners, or legal structure. Bridgespan focused on Packard's collaborations that require alignment and more intensive coordination by program staff. Six case studies provide an in-depth look inside examples of all four types of collaboration that venture beyond exchanging knowledge

Needle-Moving Community Collaboratives: A Promising Approach to Addressing America's Biggest Challenges

Communities face powerful challenges -- a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy -- that require powerful solutions. In a climate of increasingly constrained resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative -- an approach that aspires to significant community-wide progress by enlisting all sectors to work together toward a common goal -- offers enormous promise to bring about broader, more lasting change across the nation

Moving from Intention to Impact: Funding Racial Equity to Win

This joint PolicyLink-Bridgespan analysis says funders are a key part of the racial equity ecosystem: to benefit the entire nation they should both be transparent in reporting where grants go and fund what movement leaders say is needed to achieve enduring change

Lessons in Funder Collaboration

Funder collaboration has been a hot topic in philanthropy for years. But interest has grown of late as more funders realize that individual efforts simply are not enough to address complex social problems. And even when funders engage in cross-sector collaborations, they often have to collaborate with each other in new ways.The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has championed this view for decades as it has worked with dozens of other funders towards a common purpose. As the Foundation approached its 50th anniversary, it asked The Bridgespan Group to assist in taking stock of what Packard can learn from its many collaborations