What Makes Education Partnerships Effective?
This manual helps practitioners evaluate education partnerships.
The Commonwealth Education Fund Experience with Corporate Sector Engagement
Programme and Partnership Objective
Goals of the Commonwealth Education Fund
The overall goals of the CEF are fourfold:
- To strengthen broad-based and democratically-run national education coalitions;
- To channel grassroots voices and experiences into influencing national policy and practice;
- To ensure financing for education is sufficient to make public schools work for all girls and boys; and
- To support evidence-based influencing of policy rooted in innovated work.
Partners
- ActionAid
- OxfamGB
- Save the Children
- Department for International Development
Partnership Background and Justification
CEF Engagement with the Corporate Sector
To achieve these goals, the CEF has taken a practice and diverse approach to engaging the corporate sector. In its first two years, individual companies and the CEOs were targeted as a potential source of donations in the UK. This approach was bolstered by a matched funding agreement from HM Treasury that formed part of the CEF initial concept. This fundraising was spearheaded by Lord Eddie George, then Governor of the Bank of England and an Oversight Committee’ comprising high profile figures from the corporate sector. At the end of the matched fund period in 2004, the focus of CEF’s corporate engagement efforts shifted away from fundraising to encouraging businesses at the national level, particularly UK companies with a presence in one or more of the 16 CEF countries, to work with the CEF by:
- Joining their vice with the national education civil society coalitions to advocate for the importance of primary education in the 16 Commonwealth countries;
- Collaborating with the CEF in-country to support initiatives to improve the delivery and quality of primary education.
By mid-2005, based on an evaluation of experience to date, it was decided to focus CEF energies on three countries where there appeared to be greatest opportunities for collaborative work: Bangladesh, Nigeria and Tanzania (for reports mentioned, see the following web site – http://www.commonwealtheducationfund.org)
Programme Outcomes
CEF Bangladesh
Two partners, MRC Mode (market research) and APIT (a policy forum), worked jointly with the CEF to develop a scoping study on private sector involvement in education and ran a workshop on local level business-community partnership entitled Business-NGO Sharing Meeting on Improving Basic Education. This meeting was attended by representatives from multinationals and national companies, politicians, civil society, academics and journalists and led to a roundtable with representatives of Chambers of Commerce and business associations.
Despite some challenges in obtaining quality data due to initial reluctance of companies to respond to survey questionnaires, a report was produced: Missing Links: Corporate Social Responsibility and Basic Education in Bangladesh which was, according to the CEF Coordinator, ‘one of a kind in the arena of linking CSR with education’. As a result of this collaboration, companies such as GrameenPhone, the biggest telecom company in Bangladesh, are using the study to design their CSR initiatives. Additionally, the public meetings and roundtable garnered media attention and inspired new business forums some of which have gone on to provide education materials and stipends.
CEF Nigeria
After discussions, MTN, a leading African mobile phone company asked the CEF to submit a proposal for collaborative work. A CEF consultant-led proposal recommended the development of a private sector coalition on education. Initial steps were taken to identify potential member organizations, to establish a Coordinating Committee to meet and take forward recommendations and to make presentations to invited members.
MTN offered to cover the cost of its staff participation and up to 5M Naira (£22K) for private sector coalition start up activities such as meetings with CEOs, but it expected the CEF to contribute financially to the initiative – which according to its mandate it could not do. CEF, however, offered to advise on activities for the private sector coalition to support until members of the coalition were able to drive the process forward themselves. This offer has not been taken-up.
CEF Tanzania
Two consultants conducted a small study to explore the scope for corporate engagement in improving the education system. They interviewed 35 people (20 from the private sector) and held a workshop to obtain corporate, government and civil society feedback. The final study, Scoping Study on Corporate-sector Involvement in Basic Education in Tanzania, published in June 2006, provided guidance for future education discussions and cooperation between government, civil society and the business community. It recommended a two-pronged approach:
- Targeting business funding to good quality education initiatives;
- Business-government-civic dialogue on education and the economy.
Establishing a credible mechanism for this was seen as a key challenge as existing organizations and networks do not currently have the capacity to take this forward. As the CEF has only one more year to run there is a need for others to engage and provide ‘purposeful external facilitation’.
Partnership Outcomes
Learning from the CEF Experience
There are important lessons to be learned from the experience of the limited but innovative CEF engagement with the corporate sector and its move from a fundraising relationship to a more collaborative relationship. When the CEF was initiated Ethical Guidelines for fundraising practice and corporate engagement were drawn up, thereby restricting CEF from accepting donations from certain companies or industries. In addition to this, CEF considered individual cases as they arose to avoid inappropriate donations. For example, one company offered a £10,000 donation but wanted CEF to be involved in product distribution. There is a lot still to be learned about different ways of working and principles of the different sectors but the following three key areas emerge as being particularly important:
Staff Skills and Time Constraints
A significant investment of staff time is needed to build cross-sectoral relationships, carefully identifying areas of mutual interest and benefit. CEF resources – both financial and human have been limited and it has been unable to offer a sustained facilitation role that studies above have identified as being necessary for an effective tripartite dialogue on education between the representatives of corporate sector, government and civil society (as represented through national education civil society coalitions today). Such work also requires the ability to think creatively and strategically, and to act with clarity and diplomacy.
For their part, CEF staff was not initially recruited for work with the corporate sector and did not necessarily have an understanding of how business operate. The CEF Malawi Coordinator noted that companies ‘expressed interest to support CSO work in education, [but] they were more interested in what the partnership would offer back to tem in terms of business growth’. The CEF Gambia held a one-day briefing session ‘to sensitize the private sector’ on its work, but were surprised to be told by the Chamber of Commerce that ‘business agencies cannot attend such functions during work hours i.e. 08:00 to 16:00 hours, as that is the peak of business activity’. A lack of mutual understanding of ways of working between NGO and corporate culture and practices weakened the impact of outreach efforts. The CEF investigated the possibility of training staff in partnership negotiation skills, but the monetary and time coast were too high and would have taken key personnel away from other aspects of fund management and programme coordination. Dedicated staff time by someone with relevant knowledge and skills across the sectors is the important for future engagement.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The Tanzanian research indicated that businesses would not engage in CSR without a reasonable prospect of benefit or reduced risk. Only one business respondent explicitly mentioned a general responsibility to give something back to society. The broader view taken in richer countries that gives more value to how social engagement builds the company’s reputation, motivates its staff, or helps to condition the environment in which it operates, seems to be absent from the Tanzanian context at present. CSR as a commitment to society is still in its infancy in many countries and needs to be nurtured and courage by NGOs.
Lessons Learnt and Recommendations
Advocacy versus Service Delivery
The CEF experience has highlighted how corporate and individual donors (both in the UK and the 16 countries where CEF worked) are most familiar with service delivery projects that provide tangible inputs and quantifiable results such as textbooks provision, teacher training and school building. As the Tanzania scoping study found, corporations are cautious about engaging in policy debate and generally engage with government through business associations on issues that directly affect their business. The challenge for the CEF is about ‘packaging’ advocacy but also raising awareness of NGO work and values, particularly around advocacy work which is often seen as ‘political’.
Nevertheless, the research suggests that companies operating in Tanzania would not readily jump into Tanzania-specific campaigning alongside NGOs. Initially, business involvement in dialogue would probably need to be weighted towards technical and professional education. If they are to engage with policy debate, it must take place incrementally, starting with ways of drawing corporations into a more focused involvement in education in order to develop the necessary common understanding and room for strategic discussion with Government. If that can be made to happen, some corporations are quite likely to see a ‘business case’ for engaging not only in Tanzania but across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where the CEF is active.
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Comments
Nice job! alot of usefull information, thank a lot!