Partnerships
How do you keep momentum ?
Building coalitions of relevant partners who can support and inspire participating cities, being mindful of different cities moving at different paces, and being clear on expectations and where we’re at in the overall learning journey, all three are important to keep things moving and close things down.
Partnerships bring an external perspective to the programme and give the network access to new audiences e.g. via joint sessions, participation in external events. They offer further potential sustainability for the programme (once initial funding ends), and can amplify network messages through joint communications. Find like-minded organisations to work with the network or smaller clusters of participating cities, to amplify the cities’ impact, fund their work, or exchange and learn with them.
Our approach and methods
• A partnership strategy: Capture clearly what partnerships will be created, how, when, and why.
• Typologies: Build a picture of different types of partners, from one-off speakers at events, to deeper partnerships that last through the lifetime of the network (and beyond).
• Roles: Define the roles you want partners to play. What will be most valuable to participant cities?
Lessons learnt from ASToN (2019-2022):
• Build external partnerships based on shared values and priorities and the desire to work together; test small joint actions before going big to build the working relationship. As a flagship programme we needed to make sure our ideas travelled furthest and we could only do that by joining forces with other organisations. While we found joint interests and common grounds with many of them, we ended up building joint actions with only a handful. By starting small and testing before committing to larger actions, it was for us the best way to ensure that our working methods matched.
