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Consortia Building

Sarah Crawley CEO

Initiative for Social Entrepreneurs

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Building your Consortia

• Context for growth in consortia working

• Consortia models • Learning from existing consortia

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Context Changes in procurement – larger contracts

Need to cut costs

3rd sector review [Dec 2007]: The future role of the 3rd sector in economic and social regeneration: HMT and OTS priorities for 2008/11

‘ working on looking in detail at sub-contracting arrangements and models for consortia...’

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Who works in consortia? There are collaborative programmes

across all sectors – private, public and voluntary sectors.

Increasingly we see cross-sector partnerships – some large partnerships for example health services with PFI’s, Work Prog, Construction Industry,

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Why consortia? ● Reduction in grants and move to contracts● Contract model of prime contractor/large

contracts ● Building seamless service● Offer higher quality● Offer broader more inclusive services● Risk transfered● Access to new markets

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Consortia Models: 1 to 1

Organisation 2

Organisation 1Organisation 3

Organisation 4

Organisation 5 Organisation 6

Organisation 7

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Organisation 1

Organisation 2

Organisation 3

Organisation 4

Organisation 5

Lead agency

Organisation 6

Organisation 7

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Legally Constituted Consortia

Organisation 1

Organisation 2

Organisation 3

Organisation 4

Organisation 5

Organisation 6Organisation 6

Organisation 7

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Creating your consortia • Organisational questionnaire • Forming, storming, etc • 3 to 4 meetings [start up]• Focus on the tender opportunity asap• Formal agreements • Legal structure?• Finance, policies and procedures, quality etc

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Consortia success• Analysis of 14 consortia [Feb 2012]• Large and small • Different structures • Rural and urban• Topic based and sector based and both! • Partnership driven and tender driven• WNF B’ham – 6 led by 3rd sector = 12 of 34

contracts, £6 million of contracts

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What has been learnt?• They need to:

– Understand the motivation to be a consortia– Understand each other’s organisations– Address issues of track record– Sort out the ground rules for working together – Ensure working agreements – (written)– Finance and Monitoring frameworks Governance

[consortia and own org [board]– Be prepared to pull out

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Remember …• Don’t:

– Underestimate the time and resource involved– Assume you can work without written

agreements– Assume you won’t need legal or professional

advice– Allow mission drift– Chase the money– Be too polite!

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Successful consortia have…• Shared vision• Clear leadership• Formal written agreements• An agreed approach to finance and quality • Common understanding & conflict resolution • Awareness of cultural differences• Accountability• Ongoing review

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Finally …….. • From our learning we have produced

a toolkit available from www.i-se.co.uk iSE, Avoca Court, 23 Moseley Road, Digbeth, Birmingham B12 OHJ, 0121 771 1411