Effective consortia: A guide to emerging thinking and practice
This guide explores effective practice and emerging thinking in consortium set-up and management, presenting key challenges and recommendations.
Consortia are a type of multi-stakeholder partnership, developed to tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges by leveraging diverse perspectives, knowledge, resources and networks.
The guide builds on the experiences of 13 UK Aid Connect consortia and existing insights on effective collaboration from The Partnering Initiative, specialist advisers and others. The content covers the key stages of a consortium’s “lifecycle”, from set-up to implementation and moving on. There are four parts of the guide, each containing sections on key topics:
- Part I: The core drivers of consortium working
- Part II: Building collaborative programmes
- Part III: Cross-cutting issues
- Part IV: Optimising consortium working
Each section has a short introduction, a list of key challenges, recommended actions based on practitioner experience, guiding questions, and links to further resources and tools. Case studies from UK Aid Connect consortia are also shared to provide real-world examples.
The guide has been produced as part of the Learning from Consortia programme, which has brought together 13 UK Aid Connect consortia to facilitate collective learning and support consortia to deliver their outcomes. The programme has learnt from their experiences and drawn out insights of good practice in consortium working, as well as helping donors understand how they can best support consortia.
Find out more about the Learning from Consortia programme and access additional resources designed to support those working in or funding consortia.
For a range of resources on all forms of multi-stakeholder collaboration visit The Partnering Initiative.
