Partnerships
Partnership is not a funding strategy for us. It is the delivery model — and it means accepting that we are not the ones in charge.
Who we partner with
Congregations who lead the work in their own community. They identify who is most vulnerable, deliver the programmes and hold us accountable as partners rather than as contractors.
How church partnership worksChurches elsewhere who pray for, give to and build genuine two-way relationships with a partner community. The learning consistently runs in both directions.
Partner as a churchSmall local organisations we help strengthen — governance, financial systems, safeguarding and reporting — so that they can eventually hold and manage funding directly.
Our development approachFunders and companies who support whole programmes, provide skills and expertise, or match what their employees give.
Explore partnershipPublic and mission services already present in a community. We strengthen them rather than building parallel structures that compete with them.
Read our principlesWhere others are working nearby we coordinate rather than duplicate — and we are glad to step back where another organisation is better placed.
Get in touch“Partnership” is one of the most abused words in our sector. It routinely describes arrangements in which one organisation holds the money, sets the objectives, defines the reporting and can end the relationship at will — and the other one implements. That is a contract, and calling it a partnership is dishonest.
We are not perfectly free of that dynamic. Money creates asymmetry, and pretending otherwise would be naive. But there are specific things we do to limit it.
What we fund in a community is what that community, through its own leaders, has decided it needs. We do not arrive with a programme looking for a location.
Partnership agreements set out obligations in both directions, including ours. They describe what partners can expect from us — response times, funding predictability, honesty about our own constraints — not only what we expect from them.
Partners assess us annually, and the questions are pointed: did we listen, were we slow, did we impose, did we keep our commitments? That feedback goes to our board, not only to the relevant staff member.
Our current direction is to strengthen partner governance and financial systems so they can hold funding in their own name, from us and from others. Success looks like partners becoming less dependent on us, not more embedded with us.
Mutuality does not mean an absence of standards. There are things we hold partners to without exception.
We have ended partnerships over the first and third of those. We would do it again.
Where other organisations are working in the same community we coordinate rather than duplicate, and we are glad to step back where another agency is better placed. A community does not benefit from three organisations delivering overlapping water programmes and none doing sanitation.
Organisations and networks we work alongside
Partner names and logos to be confirmed by the organisation.
From our partners
“We were already serving our neighbours with almost nothing. What changed was the training, and being trusted to make the decisions ourselves.”
[Name] (placeholder, awaiting content)
Partner church pastor · [Community, Region] (placeholder, awaiting content)
“I expected to be useful. I did not expect to be changed. The relationship runs in both directions, which is the whole point.”
[Name] (placeholder, awaiting content)
Volunteer · [Location] (placeholder, awaiting content)
Names and locations are placeholders. We publish stories only with informed consent.
“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Whether you are a congregation, a business, a trust or another agency working in the same places, we would like to talk.