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Improving Consortium Working Relationships: A First Step

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Documents

Co-facilitators: Karen LeBan, Director, CORE Group; Lisa Kuennen-Asfaw, Director, Public Donor Group, CRS.

Content: Many Title II and other food aid development programs now operate with a prime PVO leading a consortium of international and local PVO/NGO sub-recipients. The consortium arrangement allows for greater geographic coverage, inclusion of technical and sectoral strengths from multiple organizations, and the potential of much greater impact through the synergy of the collaboration. Working in a consortium, however, is also managerially more complex than handling a project alone.

Discussion: Using the CRS CAFE Manual as the basis, this session explored different components of the consortium structure, asking each participant to rate their current consortium in seven areas: goal setting, strategy development, structure, roles, processes, interpersonal, and learning. Participants selected one of these dimensions for a small-group discussion of best practices and recommendations for improvement.

 

The Way Forward:  The group identified nine recommendations:

Training and Workshops

  • Capacity building should be provided to consortium managers and leaders in how to deal with the management challenges found in consortiums.
  • Do a CAFE manual session (1/2 day to full day) as part of kick off in new awards and redo annually

Information Sharing

  • Summarize and share best practices in consortium-related management issues
  • Facilitate cross-learning among different consortiums to spread good practices

Processes

  • Develop simple recommendations for how to apply stakeholder analysis, SWOT analysis, appreciative inquiry and other approaches to goal and strategy setting in consortium environments
  • Identify and share best practices in information flow / information management between consortiums
  • Hold team-building workshops. Create tools to support high-quality team building workshops.  Share external consultants who can help with team building / visioning.

Donor Policy and Practice

  • Require independent assessments after year one to look at the quality of the consortium structure/management
  • RFAs should require program learning/ sharing activities (and line item in budget) as well as visioning/team building