Innovative Solutions for the Social Sector with Offices in New York and Canada

Offering innovative solutions to socially-driven organizations

Strategic Planning and Partnerships for Social Enterprise

Partnerships

Aperio specializes in offering services tailored to social sector organizations interested in the various forms of partnership. Each partnership reflects differing levels of commitment and engagement. Whether clients are interested in engaging in a network group, short-term collaboration, long-term collaboration, or permanent collaboration, our consultants come to the table with a strong background in each of these areas.

Some of the key reasons for organizations to engage in partnerships include:

  • Greater consistency in service delivery
  • Superior value proposition
  • Higher credibility
  • Improved customer focus
  • Wider access to information
  • More effective resource utilization
  • Benefits of economies of scale

The major stages in Aperio's partnership planning process include:

  • Context setting: Build the context to understand the partnering organizations current roles and intent.
  • Defining the Framework: To understand the role of each of the partners and further clearly define the intent of the partnership, specifically the vision, mission, core values and strategic priorities of the partnership.
  • Defining Goals: To define the goals that will need to be achieved in order to deliver on the planned partnership.
  • Ratification of the Strategic Framework and Governance Review: For the partners to ratify the partnership's vision, mission, core values, strategic priorities, and to identify the governance structure, principles and competencies that will be key in supporting the successful implementation of the new partnership.
  • Writing the Implementation Plan: To create a detailed action plan for achieving the partnership goals.
  • Implementation: To successfully achieve the partnership goals and objectives

How We Are Unique:

Given the realities associated with forming a partnership within the social sector, the importance of hiring the right firm to facilitate with your partnership cannot be understated. Aperio is experienced in helping organizations successfully overcome the various issues that commonly arise in partnerships, including conflict over asymmetrical investment, building trust between partners, dealing with a temporary arrangement with no long-term plan, performance ambiguity, lack of parent organization support, and organizational cultural clashes.

We recognize the following as important characteristics of good partnerships:

  • A solid partnership has three characteristics: Shared strategic goal, shared risk and return, and negotiated objectives
  • A good partnership should be built on three basic elements: Trust, the creation of multiple interfaces for learning, and ensuring a dedicated and customized investment

If you would like to learn more, please contact us