Partnerships

Institutions must form a great many partnerships in order to successfully engage with external communities. There will be multi-level partnerships where people at different levels of each organisation's hierarchy within the partnership need to meet, communicate, exchange information and form mutual plans.

Such multiple partnerships between organisations require careful handling if they are not to lead to occasional duplication and risk of confusion or alternatively links not being made or tasks not being undertaken because everyone concerned assumed it was the responsibility of someone else.

We identify for this resource a number of different types of partnership, although it is recognised that between an institution and any other organisation there may be several relationships between the two organisations that could fall into several types.

Funding Partnerships

Institutions in seeking to maximise growth need to form partnerships that bring opportunities for new sources of funding. This may be because the potential partner organisation has direct sources of guaranteed funding, or because the two (or more) organisations working in partnership (bringing together varied skills and knowledge) can become eligible to apply for funding that, singly, none of them could secure.

Strategic Partnerships

Whilst many strategic partners may also be a source of funding, other potentially positive outcomes that may result from this type of relationship include:

• political advantage
• added prestige that may open doors and bring opportunities
• opportunity to contribute to, and shape, policy
• the identification of large scale national and international drivers governing the direction and emphasis of educational institutions.

National and local government organisations, Regional Development Agencies and other Quasi-Autonomous Non-Government Organisations (QUANGOs) may fall into this category. However, major corporations and influential businesses both national and international as well as major regional companies could be included under this heading. Businesses can often act like individuals - sometimes they are only willing to be involved in a partnership if a company they want to do business with, or aspire to emulate, are already part of a partnership.