An Innovative Approach to Effective, Impact‐Driven Partnering: An Educational Aid Case Study

Cross-sector collaborations are prevalent mechanisms for delivering international development aid. Effective collaboration efforts among partner organizations can drive aid and programme impacts. Nonetheless, many development aid scholars and practitioners highlight weak interpartner and contextual dynamics as predominant reasons for unsuccessful or unsustainable aid partnerships. There are currently few frameworks or tools specifically designed to foster effective partnerships in the development context. We use a novel partnership framework to identify key elements that enabled or impeded success of an educational aid case study. Assessing the partnership context, partner motivations and the quality of interpartner relations, this case study illustrates the usefulness of the framework as both a partnership management and an evaluation and learning tool. We demonstrate how this framework can help develop, manage and evaluate partnerships towards transferable learnings for more cross-beneficial, multistakeholder engagements and outcomes. Practitioners can use this framework to better understand the relationship between partnership processes and societal dynamics and develop intentional practices to build and maintain strong partnerships in international development.