Strategic Partnerships
Identifying, designing and stewarding partnerships across sectors — from joint delivery to consortium bids.
Partnerships are increasingly how serious work gets done — across consortia bids, place-based delivery, public-sector contracts and cross-sector collaboration. But partnerships also fail more often than they succeed, usually because the early scaffolding wasn't built.
KA Consultancy helps organisations identify the right partners, design the right structures and steward partnerships so they hold together under pressure.
Who this is for
- Charities and CICs assembling consortia for tenders or large grants.
- Organisations entering formal collaboration with public-sector partners.
- Networks needing a backbone function or shared infrastructure.
- Leaders inheriting partnerships that aren't quite working.
Common challenges we see
- —Unclear decision rights between partners.
- —Imbalance of contribution, capacity or visibility.
- —Weak governance and dispute-resolution mechanisms.
- —Loss of momentum after the funding decision.
How KA Consultancy helps
We map the partner landscape, facilitate the early conversations, draft the MoUs and governance frameworks, and where helpful sit on the partnership board through the first year of delivery.
The aim is a partnership that is honest about its purpose, clear about its rules and resilient when conditions change.
Our process
- 01
Landscape mapping
Identify aligned partners by mission, geography and capacity.
- 02
Design & MoU
Roles, decision rights, IP, branding, exit clauses.
- 03
Governance & launch
Partnership board, delivery cadence and reporting structure.
- 04
Stewardship
Ongoing facilitation through year one and beyond.
Benefits
- Higher-quality partnerships from the outset
- Reduced risk of partnership breakdown mid-project
- Stronger consortium bids
- Clearer governance for everyone involved
What you can expect from us
- Direct facilitation of difficult conversations.
- Written governance artefacts — MoUs, RACI, decision logs.
- Honest brokerage where partners disagree.
- A partnership that can outlast its founding personalities.
Frequently asked questions
- Can you act as the lead partner for us?
- No — we facilitate and advise, but partnerships should be led by the organisations involved. We make sure the structure supports that.
- Do you support consortium bids?
- Yes — partnership design and consortium bid development often run together.
- What if partners can't agree?
- Our job is partly to surface those disagreements early, before they're embedded in a funded project.