By Sarah Cairns, Head of Optima, and Tracey Henry, CEO of the Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation
Commitment alone is not enough
Across philanthropy there is a widely accepted view that collaboration is essential if we are serious about shifting learner outcomes at scale. The limits of working in isolation are well understood. And yet, while collaboration is widely endorsed, how it translates into practice is often hard, messy work.
The Stanford Social Innovation Review is a global platform shaping thinking on social innovation. In an article of the review, Kania and Kramer observed as many as ten years ago that “large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations”. More than a decade on, the tension still holds. Organisations are committed to collaboration in principle but are shaped by structures and incentives that make it difficult to sustain in practice.
Learning through practice
Our experience working together through the Float initiative[1] has brought this into sharp relief. Float is the first multi-donor partnership of its size working directly with provinces to scale improvements in literacy and numeracy outcomes in Grade R to Grade 3. Three provinces (Eastern Cape, Free State, and Gauteng) are collaborating with consortia of NGOs to implement their foundational reading and numeracy strategies. The work is explicitly oriented towards system-level change, which makes collaboration not just useful, but necessary.
What has become clear is that collaboration is not simply a matter of aligning around a shared goal. It requires sustained effort to build a shared understanding of the problem, to negotiate different approaches, and to establish ways of working that can hold over time. Much of this work is not immediately visible. It sits beneath delivery but ultimately determines whether a collaboration gains traction or not.
In Float, a significant portion of the early work involved precisely this: investing time in alignment, clarifying roles, and working through different institutional perspectives. As the work matured, more structure has been introduced to ensure accountability and to define the different governance roles and structures to support the long-term implementation. This can feel slow, particularly in a context where there is pressure to demonstrate progress. But without it, the collaboration risks collapsing entirely. From a leadership perspective, this also requires a recognition and commitment to the time needed to initiate and sustain collaborative efforts, not only from management but the Board as well.
Different capabilities are required
Kania and Kramer agree that “collective impact initiatives have faced many challenges… including competition and mistrust among stakeholders”. These dynamics come part and parcel with collaboration. Bringing organisations together does not automatically resolve differences; in many ways, it surfaces them more clearly.
The implications for leadership are important.
Much of what is traditionally valued in leadership – trust, clarity, decisiveness, and accountability – does not disappear in collaborative settings, but it does need to be complemented by a different set of capabilities. Leading in a networked context requires the ability to hold multiple perspectives, to work through ambiguity, and to enable progress without relying on formal authority.
Alignment takes time and effort
In practice, this often means slowing decision-making in order to build stronger, more durable alignment. It means being willing to adapt one’s own organisational approach in response to the group. It also requires a readiness to work through tension, rather than rush to resolution. Not all people or organisations are willing to do this. In Float, one challenge has been balancing personalities that are more outcomes-driven with those that are more process-oriented. When these tendencies come into conflict, the board has had to weigh the risks carefully and find a satisfactory compromise.
In Float, leadership has often been less about directing and more about convening. This is particularly true when working in partnership with government. Leaders create the conditions for shared thinking and supporting movement towards a common approach. This can be demanding. It requires time, attention, and a degree of patience that sits uneasily with the pace at which organisations are often expected to operate.
Another example is the Early Childhood Care and Education Outcomes Fund (ECCE Outcomes Fund), a collaboration between the Department of Basic Education, the EOF and local and international funders[2]. Whilst everyone has and continues to remain aligned on the vision of providing all children with access to quality early childhood care and education, a challenge that needed navigation was how to manage the complexities of the individual contracting process with international parties and aligning this to the local SA context. The solution was for local funders to convene, to talk through everyone’s challenges, and to come up with unified solutions that could strengthen the implementing and ongoing reporting. This has highlighted the power of convening and collective problem solving, rather than working in isolation.
Managing leadership tensions
One of the more complex aspects of this is the tension between organisational accountability and collective endeavour. Each organisation remains accountable to its own governance structures, with its own reporting requirements and expectations of impact. At the same time, the work itself is shared, and outcomes are the result of collective effort. Ensuring organisational governance structures/board alignment is vital from the start and is enabled if collaboration is embraced as a core investment principle and an appreciation that this takes time and a degree of managed risk.
This can create ambiguity around ownership and attribution. It can also create pressure to demonstrate individual contribution within what is, by design, a joint effort. Navigating this tension is part of the work of leadership in collaboration.
Despite these challenges, the case for collaboration remains strong.
The value lies not only in pooling financial resources and expertise, but in creating greater coherence in how support is provided to the system. In the case of Float, working together has enabled more consistent engagement with government, clearer alignment around priorities, and a more coordinated approach to implementation. These are by no means insignificant shifts – in a system as complex as education, coherence matters.
Showing up differently
Collaboration offers funders “the opportunity to achieve more together than they could alone” In our experience, this is not simply about scale but rather the quality and alignment of the work itself and ultimately impact that matters.
What does it take to lead effectively in this context?
Part of the answer lies in paying attention to how one shows up in collaborative spaces. This includes a willingness to listen carefully, to engage constructively with difference, appreciating the diversity of experience and leadership styles and how to harness this for collective impact and to remain open to changing course. These are not abstract qualities—they shape the day-to-day dynamics of collaboration.
It also involves recognising that the relational and alignment work underpinning collaboration is not secondary to delivery; it is foundational. Without it, even well-designed initiatives can struggle to sustain momentum. We experienced this in Float when we realised we had not devoted enough time to building trust. As inevitable tensions emerged, it became increasingly clear that strong relationships are critical to long-term success. The board therefore had to revisit its processes and intentionally create space for trust-building.
There is also a shift required in how success is understood. Collaborative work rarely allows for neat attribution. Progress is shared, and often incremental. Being able to value this kind of progress, and to remain committed to it over time, is part of the leadership challenge.
It also implies that when progress is slow or outputs and outcomes are not met, that this too is shared – this requires trust, accountability and a willingness to sit around the table and to discuss learnings and to unpack what should be done differently and not who is to blame.
A continuous focus on a shared vision, a desire for better outcomes, embracing a learning culture – all built on trust and accountability – will inform how future collaborations are shaped and supported by our Boards, and other key stakeholders.
The ECCE Outcomes Fund partners are working on a standardised reporting structure across all outcomes funders as opposed to having traditional individualised reporting templates. This has required all local funders to share their existing practices and processes and to come up with one unified approach that still addresses individual governance requirements, monitoring, evaluation and reporting processes. Whilst this takes time and some compromises during the process, it will ultimately ensure more in-depth and streamlined reporting, and that all the local funders have a common understanding of the collective outcomes.
Continued commitment through difficult times
Finally, collaboration is a marathon, not a sprint. Collaboration can be slow, particularly in its early stages. It requires a willingness to stay engaged through periods of uncertainty and to resist the pull back towards more familiar, individual ways of working.
There is increasing recognition that systems change demands this kind of approach. But collaboration does not happen by default. It depends on leaders who are willing to work differently, who are able to balance organisational priorities with collective goals, and who are prepared to invest in the long-term work of alignment and relationship-building.
As our experience in these partnerships continues to evolve, one lesson remains clear: collaboration is hard, messy, long work. It is, however, the only way to work if we are serious about achieving meaningful and lasting change in education.
[1] Optima and Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation are funders of the Float Initiative.
[2] The Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation is one of the local funders of the ECCE Outcomes Fund.