Effective cross-sector partnerships involving business, civil society and the public sector are not just about skilled, self-aware and committed individuals who make partnerships happen. They are also about the organisations in which partnership practitioners operate.

Organisations can be enabling and supportive when it comes to partnership action. But they can also be stifling and inhibiting. What makes an organisation partnership-ready? How can an organisation become a more effective partner? What kind of investments are needed to build organisational capacity for partnering?

The Partnering Initiative is focused on answering these questions by understanding partnering experience from the point of view of organisational change and making this more widely available to partnership practitioners and organisational change leaders around the world.

Working with and through our Associate Partners, we are currently engaged in:

• Building partnership effectiveness of IBLF and its programmes aimed at putting business at the heart of sustainable development
• Strengthening the capability for partnering of IBLF networks, especially those that share the IBLF mission and are business-led
• Creating new organisational arrangements serving to promote business engagement and / or cross-sector partnerships as agents of positive social change
• Changing or reforming existing organisations to make them fit for dealing with the development challenges of the 21st century, especially to those related to achieving the  Millennium Development Goals and adapting to climate change

Coming soon: Fit for purpose: Building Institutional Capacity for Partnership – a toolbook providing guidance on how to make your organisation partnership-ready and more fit for purpose in a turbulent and unpredictable world.