The document summarizes a two-day workshop on building partnerships and collaborations hosted by Engineering Projects (India) Limited. Day 1 focused on understanding the challenges in the Indian development sector and how different stakeholders address those challenges through partnerships. It covered principles of effective partnerships like shared goals, communication, and accountability. Day 2 was to involve participants sharing challenges and solutions through workshops to problem-solve partnership issues in India. The workshop aimed to help participants better understand partnerships and identify support to advance development goals through collaboration.

1. Partnership Clinic:
Building Partnerships and Collaborations
29th and 30th April 2014, New Delhi
Hosted by:
Engineering Projects (India) Limited
(A Government of India Enterprise)

2. Partnership Clinic 2014
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Table of Contents
I. Introduction
a. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
b. Post 2015 Development Agenda
c. The CEO Water Mandate
d. India Collaboration Lab
e. UNGC-The Partnering Initiative Partnership
f. Partnership Clinic
II. Partnership Clinic: Day 1: A Common Language
a. Effective Co-working and Collaborative Problem-Solving
b. Principles of Partnership
c. Harnessing Diversity
d. Partnering Cycle and Barriers to Success
III. Partnership Clinic - Day 2: Sharing Challenges and Solutions
a. Participant workshop objectives and partnering needs
b. Challenges and Enablers
c. Partnership Experiences and Best-Practices
IV. Recommendations and Way Forward

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I. Introduction
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Prior to the 2015 deadline on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set at the
Millennium Summit in 2000, progress is noticeable, globally, on several targets, namely:
poverty1
, gender equality, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing access to safe
drinking water.2
However, reducing hunger, child and maternal mortality rates, and providing
access to sanitation, among other sub-goals are crucial to progress on human development.
In India, while sustained efforts are needed to meet hunger, water, hygiene and sanitation
targets, progress is noticeable in the areas of poverty3
reduction, child and maternal health,
HIV/AIDS and polio, and gender equality. India has also taken a lead, among developing
countries, by incorporating principles of sustainable development in country policies and
programs. And private sector engagement has been critical in ensuring that the benefits of
information, communications and technologies reach across communities in India.
In this context, MDG 8: Develop Global Partnership for Development enables
stakeholders to collaborate and accelerate efforts on human development goals by bringing
large-scale solutions across communities in India. To that end, a High-level Panel of
Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda set up by UN Secretary General,
Ban Ki-moon, recommended that multi-stakeholder partnerships be focused around women,
youth, aged, disabled and indigenous peoples who are affected by poverty and exclusion.
Post-2015 Development Agenda
To frame the Post-2015 Development Agenda, an open consultation process had been setup
by the United Nations to seek views and feedback from all stakeholders, businesses and
corporations, governments and civil society through online surveys, workshops, and one-on-
one meetings. Findings of these consultations have been presented in the report, titled, “A
Million Voices: The World We Want – a sustainable future with dignity for all.”
The CEO Water Mandate
The CEO Water Mandate was launched by the UN Secretary-General in July 2007 as a
unique public-private initiative to achieve the following objectives:
 Assist companies in the development, implementation and disclosure of water
sustainability policies and practices
 Engage the private sector to work with CSOs and government on providing resources
and technical expertise
At the India level, the 11th
working Conference on Corporate Water Stewardship and Post-
2015 Development Agenda was convened, in partnership with the UN Global Compact
1
According to the End Poverty 2015 Millennium Campaign, poverty rates have dropped from 47% to 22%, as
of 2010, despite population growth. However, 850 million people still continue to live in poverty across the
globe. http://www.endpoverty2015.org/mdg-success-stories/mdg-1-end-hunger/
2
Source: End Poverty 2015 Millennium Campaign. . http://www.endpoverty2015.org/mdg-success-
stories/mdg-1-end-hunger/
3
Source: Business Standard, October 30th
, 2013 “India may not fully achieve MDGs by 2015: Report”

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(UNGC) and Global Compact Network India (GCNI), in March 2013 to seek formal inputs
and explore the role of businesses and corporations in advancing policy objectives around:
 Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services
 Improved water resources management and governance and efficient water use; and
 Reducing pollution
In addition to sharing ideas to advance the Post-2015 Development agenda, these
consultations gave rise to the India Collaboration Lab—a platform where stakeholders can
commit and act on WASH issues4
.
India Collaboration Lab (ICL)
The inaugural India Collaboration Lab aimed to convene social entrepreneurs, NGOs,
corporations, investors and policy-makers in an action-oriented two day session from 22-23
October 2013 to identify and design initiatives to scale innovations that increase the access to
quality water and sanitation services in India. This platform enables public and private
institutions to commit to Post-2015 Development Agenda, specifically on WASH issues; and
turn these commitments into actions.
Following the ICL, a special monthly meeting was organised on 19th
December 2013 to gain
perspectives on strategic engagement and collaborations from stakeholders. This meeting
enabled GCNI and TPI to design workshop on partnerships and collaborations, based on
discussions, feedback and recommendations provided by members.
UNGC-The Partnering Initiative (TPI) Partnership
In light of MDG 8, and in recognition of the challenges of 'walking the partnering talk', the
UN Global Compact Head office in New York has been working for one and half years with
The Partnering Initiative to improve and scale up partnerships as vehicles for delivering
effective change.
Within this context, Global Compact Network India is collaborating with TPI Associate
Joanna Pyres (based in India) to better understand the Indian national partnering landscape
and identify enablers and barriers to mobilising effective and transformational development
partnerships
Partnership Clinic
Partnership Clinic Design: GCNI conducted a number of discussions with members and
TPI between October and December 2013 to determine best approaches to reach out to GCNI
members with the partnering tools, information and support provided by TPI. A specialised
two--part workshop titled “Partnership Clinic” was designed to bring people together to
exchange and learn more about how to build partnerships and collaborations.
4 India struggles hard to overcome its water, hygiene and sanitation issues. Although it has shown positive
results, the progress is painfully slow. 41% of world’s poor still live below USD 2 a day, only 25% of Indian
households have access to quality drinking water at home (through pipelines) with 128 million lack access to
safe water, 21% of communicable diseases are due to unsafe water. Diarrhea alone causes 1600 deaths daily.
839 million have no sanitation services.

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The objectives of the workshop were to: (1) bring together multiple stakeholders to share and
deepen their understanding of and challenges around cross-sector partnerships; (2) to identify
supportive interventions and next steps for effective implementation of partnerships to
advance development outcomes in the Indian context and (3) to initiate a process of co-
operative support between partnership practitioners from all sectors.
The first part was 3 hours post-lunch interactive lecture for a wide audience on what has been
learned about partnering from international experiences. The following day participants met
for a more intimate 4.5 hour interactive workshop where they problem-solved each others’
actual partnering challenges in India, specifically focussed on partnership set-up.
Dr. Uddesh Kohli, Senior Adviser at United Nations Global Compact, Mr. Rajib Debnath,
Executive Director at Grant Thorton LLP, and Mr. Anand Singh Bawa, Senior Advisor—
External Affairs, Mercedes Benz India, were among the 65 members who attended the
interactive workshop. Some of the major organisations represented include ACC Limited,
Accenture, Tata Teleservices, Vedanta, Aid-et-Action, Plan India, FICCI, TARA, Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS), Transparency International, United Nations Volunteers and
World Food Program.
This report builds on both the content and materials provided by The Partnering Initiative for
the workshop as well as contributions from participants, to build an emerging understanding
of the multi-stakeholder partnering landscape in India. Those interested in participating in
this ongoing enquiry may contact GCNI to register interest.
II. DAY 1: Awareness Seminar: 29th
April 2014, 2.30pm-5.30pm
On the first day, the discussions were geared towards understanding challenges in the Indian
development sector and the approaches adopted by stakeholders to address those
challenges—and whether those approaches deliver sustainable impact. Members companies
debated about the impact Companies Act 2013 will have on the development sector and how
partnerships create measureable impacts, both in terms of quantitative and qualitative factors.
From a substantive perspective, the workshop covered the following areas:
The need for effective co-working and collaborative problem-solving
As we collectively share a pool of resources, talents, assets, technologies and networks, our
collective efforts can help solve some of the basic human development challenges. This
session focused on partnership as a tool to arrive at viable sustainable development solutions.
Realizing that the way we currently do business is destroying the planet, using resources
inefficiently, and embedding inequalities within societies. As individuals and institutions in
partnerships, therefore, the need is to develop solutions that create a fair and sustainable
world, based on shared interests.5
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Some of those shared interests include: (1) Building a sound economy (2) Healthy and educated workforce (3)
Healthy environment (4) political stability (5) accountability in government (6) active civil society

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Shared Benefits
An emerging thought out of this session is that needs-based partnerships may be formed
where all parties win. However, it is a step-by-step approach where all parties have to build
on effective communication, mutual understanding and dependencies and being accountable
to each other. It is important to note, however, that a systematic and measured approach can
yield long-term benefits.
Members noted that partnership with the government is more transactional whereas at the
community level, it is more of relationship building proposition. It was also noted that
partnerships in the last 20 years have worked on vendor-vendee based where the relationship
is purely transactional. However, in the context of the current Companies Act 2013, some
members feel, that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is going to perpetuate the
transactional approach because it is compliance oriented where institutions are mandated to
spend 2% of the Profit After Tax (PAT) to address development issues mentioned in
Schedule VII of the law.
Besides sharing risks and costs, partners are able to improve operational efficiency, resources
and expertise. Other benefits of the partnership include:
 Human capital development and learning
 Ability to influence policymakers from an evidence-based point-of-view
 Collective action with efficient use of resources to address a development goal
 Help build legitimacy, reputation and credibility
For successful partnerships to achieve impact and scale, partners may build on shared goals
and diverse interests to leverage skills and resources effectively, based on their knowledge,
perspectives, experiences and understanding. In the process, adopting a research and
development based approach will allow partners to test drive solutions and receive critical
feedback through open communication mechanism and dialogue process for efficiency.
To that end, all parties involved in the process of partnering may clearly and openly agree
and communicate their value-based systems, propositions, and principles for effective
working.
Principles of partnerships
Partnership for sustainable development is about developing innovative ways of working
together where relationships are not entirely transactional, but rather, are based on values,
principles, shared interests and objectives—which yield long-lasting benefits. The term
“partnerships” is used loosely across sectors to describe a variety of collaboration types such
as, networks, joint ventures, and coalitions amongst others. Partnerships are a specific form
of collaboration based on co-delivering a shared project over time.
While the partnering process is a "science" where parties need objectivity, a focus on critical
analysis, measurement, technical knowledge, and understanding the history is crucial. It is
also an “art” where parties need to be visionary in their approach, good at maintaining
relationships and sensing situations. It requires a people’s based approach to incorporate
emotions and feelings and people’s skills because partnering between organisations happens
through people.

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From a value-based point-of-view, equity-based partnerships, for example, helps build
respect and mitigate the destructive influence that power imbalances can have in partnerships.
Transparency and open communication helps each stakeholder understand organisational
priorities, strategic agendas, and silent issues while building trust.
Within that context, it is important for partners to understand the nuanced implications of
partnerships which is an evolving process. Other factors are:
 Identifying partners: Stakeholders may identify needs before entering any kind of
collaboration and align appropriate partners
 Communication and engagement: Nurture the relationship. All parties should be
engaged in the consultative and decision-making process while adding value to
internal and external processes. After forming the partnership, all partners may aim
for excellence in building the relationship by actively spending time, engaging and
communicating opportunities and challenges
 Accountability: All stakeholders are equally accountable to each other’s
motivations, communications and actions
 Enabling a learning environment: Partners may create an enabling environment to
learn from each other while co-creating. This also includes building a mechanism to
monitor and evaluate progress and outcomes
Harnessing Diversity
This session focused on harnessing diversity and explored perspectives and approaches each
stakeholder employs in the partnering process, based on different drivers, resource constraints
and experiences. Towards this, it is important to leverage value from each and all
stakeholders. Furthermore, the session looked in to the benefits and challenges of various
sectors like the donor community, public sector and the private sector, in addition to, what
will work in favour of the partnership and what will work against the partnership.

8. Table 1: Stakeholder Contribution
Resources Public sector Private sector and
businesses
Bilateral and donor
agencies
Civil society and NGOs Academic institutions
Human and
financial
resources
Access to human
resources and
mobilizing
communities at the
local level,
contributing financial
resources
Access to financial and
human resources (e.g. IT,
innovation, knowledge,
customer base)
Access to political
networks and
connections,
technical experts
Access to local communities
and specialized knowledge
around culture, language,
history, traditions, inter-
community relations, and
mobilizing communities at
the local level
Access to trained experts
and infrastructure
facilities like research labs
Strategic and
technical
resources
Providing strategic
guidance, policy and
regulatory
framework, technical
advice and
certifications
Provide framework,
guidelines, and specialized
networks. Brand value.
Provide brand value,
mandates, and
experience
Expertise to advise private
sector organizations to
effectively implement
Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) goals
Provide access to research
and technical knowledge
Policy support
and enabling
environment
Creating an enabling
environment and
playing the role of a
facilitator to forge
partnerships
Provide in-kind
contributions (E.g. business
management, project
management) policy
recommendations, and
economic viability
Knowledge and
experience to shape
policy
recommendations
Ability to feed-in inputs from
the grassroots level and
advocate for better policies
on development issues
Creating knowledge to
formulate policies,
regulations and
recommendations to
create an enabling
environment
Enabling
strong
governance
frameworks
Providing democratic
legitimacy and in-
kind support in the
form of lands,
buildings, office
space
Enhance marketing, brand
value, and accountability
Bring legitimacy,
credibility, trust and
ground level presence
Provide accountability,
legitimacy, and credibility
Monitor and review goals
from a third party to bring
in accountability,
legitimacy, and credibility

9. Partnering cycle and barriers to success
The session on partnering cycle and barriers to success studied partnership cycle, frameworks
and models for stakeholders to form partnerships. The process includes: scoping, identifying,
building, planning, structuring, mobilizing, delivering, measuring, reviewing, and revising.
 Scoping and building: Phase I entails exploring and mapping issues and
stakeholders. In the identification phase, partners may work towards building a
common vision and establishing ground rules, mutual understanding and trust; and
brainstorming activities to facilitate a process whereby an Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) can be agreed to.
 Managing and maintaining (Implementation): Phase II involves partners
structuring the partnership, mobilizing resources to manage and maintain the
partnership and deliver impact. As a direct outcome of this hands-on approach,
partners are helping build knowledge, skills, and abilities of their staff.
 Reviewing and revising: In the implementation phase, partners may work together
to measure and review impact and revise strategies and plans for effective
implementation. In this phase, partners may develop both qualitative and quantitative
impact parameters and criteria, to measure and assess their performance. It may also
include conversations around value-additions, converting challenges into
opportunities, re-defining and understanding values, structure, interests and benefits.
 Sustaining outcomes: To sustain long-term outcomes, all partners may build on their
communications and engagement by sharing knowledge and information for further
scale.
Members further explored barriers and challenges to implementation and the decision-making
process. Group discussions revealed that the right partnerships work and deliver results if
there is adequate engagement and buy-in from all stakeholders, particularly the local
community, and that the partnership is strategically important.
Specifically, in an interactive fashion, members shared views on the various approaches on
corporate-NGO partnerships, access to funding, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms,
budgeting and managing large-scale partnerships on a country level.
Group members identified factors behind failing partnerships like incompatible cultures,
working styles and personalities, undelivered promises and commitments, communication
breakdown, weak governance, and undelivered promises among others.
III. Day 2 (half-day) Interactive Workshop Troubleshooting Phase 1 (early stage)
partnership challenges: 30th
April 2014, 9.30am-2.00pm
The second day was conceived to draw on participant's experience to direct learning. After a
refresher on the Partnering cycle framework, participants identified objectives for attending
the Clinic as:
 Engagement and Communication:
o Examine how partnerships between businesses and corporations, academic
institutions, governments, NGOs and the local communities can be formed for
sustainable human development in a holistic manner where all parties benefit,
from a long-term perspective

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o Linking networks and stakeholders around Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR)
o Understanding the role of social media in building partnerships
 Knowledge Management:
o Learn and share knowledge, best practices and tri-sector partnerships around
CSR and sustainable human development
o Study successful partnership frameworks and models that are currently
operating outside of and can be replicated in India
o Learn and apply knowledge gained for resource mobilization purposes
Challenges to partnering
A significant focus was placed on group discussions among participants to identify
challenges on the four aspects of the partnership cycles. Members identified the following
challenges related to the four aspects of the partnership cycle:
Scoping and Researching issues and
partners
 Difficulties in obtaining access to
partnerships
 Geographical restrictions
 Needs-based issues and baseline tools
 Over presentation of NGOs
 Understanding the realities and
stakeholders perspectives
Identifying and selecting partners
 Common approach to identify and
achieve objectives
 Getting loaded with expectations
 Lack of preparation leads to
inappropriate/irrelevant questioning
 Funding is dependent on NGOs
networking capacities
Building
 Fulfilling time deadlines and strict or
rigid rules
 Issue in building trust among
stakeholders due to financial, budgetary
or other issues which impacts quality
human capital
 Financial and budget constraints,
utilisation, administrative expenses
 Corruption
 Placing emphasis on quantity vs. Quality
 Lack of appreciation for ideas
 Wastage of time and resources
 No support for building core
competencies
Planning
 Evaluation capacity
 Sustainability of the partnership and the
project
 Lack of innovative planning
 High expectations from funding partners
 Importance of family—take a family
centric approach
Partnership experiences and best practices from the group

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In this session, the group identified best practices around engagement, communication, and
knowledge management to mitigate risks and address short and long term challenges.
 Establish trust, honesty and understanding: A level of trust is established – and
other partnering principles (e.g., equity, transparency and mutual benefit) are evident
 Communicate Clearly:
o Engage and communicate: Engage in a dialogue or communicate regularly
and openly about your needs, interests, goals and challenges in the partnership
o Conduct informal meetings: Conduct informal meetings and lunches or
coffees with your partners to build on trust
o Feedback: Provide valuable and constructive feedback about the partnership,
its objectives and goals, opportunities and challenges, and performance and
results. Learn from mistakes
 Coordinate locally:
o Coordinate locally: Coordination always has to happen at the local level. To
that end, information may be communicated throughout the chain at the local
level so that coordination at the local levels can take place. One of the
feedback received is that corporates need to build relations at the local level to
ensure sustainability, rather than, remain focused on marketing
 Adopt a collaborative approach to partnership: Understand partnership goals and
help each partner meet those goals in a collaborative fashion. Focus on solutions:
Think of problems and challenges as opportunities in the partnership. And find
innovative solutions or alternatives to those opportunities
 Consistently demonstrate results: Further to this, members and Joanna Pyres,
facilitator of the workshop, highlighted the need to build communication and
coordination mechanisms across various levels in the organisation. For example,
strategic partnerships and development projects are agreed to at the strategic level, but
those projects often face implementation challenges and fail due to trust deficit and
information asymmetry
IV. Recommendations and Moving Forward
While the workshop was designed to assist members to think about partnership related issues,
member feedback and recommendations were centered on understanding, building and
strengthening partnerships. Some of the specifics include:
 Understand stakeholders: Better understanding needs, expectations and interests of
stakeholders will help bring long-term solutions to challenges. To that end, it would
be important to understand how each stakeholder understands CSR
 Intra-organisation partnerships: This session helped members to think about
building intra-organisation partnerships and influence, explore and incorporate
partnership and collaboration aspects within the organisational culture and practice
 Build partnerships: Aim to build partnerships on a non-monetary basis for
sustaining a project on a long-term basis

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 Partnerships Forum: Leverage GCNI members from CSOs, corporates, NGOs,
academia and provide a platform for each of the stakeholders to interact and continue
to work on partnerships
 Knowledge Sharing and Management: Share case studies, insights and best
practices of the workshop within the organisation. To that end, field level experiences
and stories would be helpful from the facilitator to link theory to practice.
 Representation from the corporate and government representation: Corporate
representation would be helpful to understand stakeholder interests and concerns in
the developmental sector. Corporate-NGO relationship is more focused on generating
business, rather than sharing costs. Since, discussions were focused on corporate-
NGO partnerships; an additional focus on coordinating policies with the government
would have been helpful.
 Public Policies and CSR: Better understand CSR policies, government schemes and
policies, and civil societies and other common platforms.
Moving Forward
Mr. Pooran Chandra Pandey, Executive Director of Global Compact Network India noted on
the need to build effective networks among stakeholders, based on trust, openness, and
transparency. As an outcome of the workshop, he further shared GCNI objectives and vision
and a plan around forming partnerships to collectively address Post-2015 development
agenda. The action items include:
1. Knowledge Sharing and Management:
a. Disseminate brief on Partnership Clinic
b. E-group for immediate co-support and dialogue
c. Knowledge sessions with member companies and stakeholders to share best
practices on partnerships and collaborations
2. Members Consultation: Consultation process with member companies and
institutions on partnerships related opportunities and challenges
3. Advance India Collaboration Lab 2014
a. Outreach: Conduct outreach to multiple stakeholders in the health and
WASH areas for partnership developments
b. Research: Disseminate compendium of good practices on development
partnerships to shape behaviours and actions at the national and global levels
c. Reporting: Publish year one report on India Collaboration Lab 2013
d. Advocacy: CEO Roundtable to deliberate on upcoming India Collaboration
Lab 2014
*End*