Cross-sector partnerships bring together organisations, communities, and institutions to address complex challenges that no single actor can solve alone. Many societal challenges, such as environmental degradation, health inequities, and poverty, are complex and operate across local, national, and global scales. Yet these issues are often addressed through siloed or linear approaches that fail to match their complexity.
Successful responses increasingly depend on the coordinated efforts of communities, organisations, researchers, businesses, and policymakers. Cross-sector partnerships enable actors to share knowledge, resources, and capabilities, supporting more innovative and scalable solutions. Despite growing interest and investment, much of the potential of cross-sector collaboration remains unrealised.
The Learning for Sustainability site brings together curated resources and practical tools to support people working in collaborative initiatives. Many of the site’s reflective posts also explore the relational and institutional dimensions of partnership work.
Resources for building and managing cross-sector partnerships
The need for cross-sector collaboration
This Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Jeanine Becker and David Smith (2018) highlights the importance of developing collaborative leadership and working effectively across sectors to address pressing global challenges.
Building a sustainable and resilient collaboration
This guide from Tamarack supports collaboration leaders who are seeking to strengthen the long-term sustainability and resilience of their work. It introduces key concepts, explores practical factors that help collaborations endure, and shares community stories and resources that prompt reflection and action. The guide also offers deeper questions for funders and collaboration tables to consider as they plan for the future.
The collaboration playbook: A leader’s guide to cross-sector collaboration
Developed by Ian Taylor and Nigel Ball for the Whitehall & Industry Group and Government Outcomes Lab, this playbook draws on academic and practitioner knowledge to focus on five essential themes: leadership, trust, culture, power, and learning. It provides 18 actionable “plays” and explores intangible success factors, making it especially valuable for public sector and NGO leaders breaking new ground in collaborative initiatives.
Collective Impact Toolkit (Tamarack Institute)
This practical toolkit (2022) from Liz Weaver and the Tamarack Institute brings together tools and guidance to support long-term Collective Impact initiatives. The approach centres on five conditions, a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support. The resource includes worksheets, examples, and reflective prompts drawn from more than twenty years of community change practice.
The SDG Partnership Guidebook
The SDG Partnership Guidebook is the flagship publication of the SDG Partnership Accelerator and serves as a practical resource to help build high impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals. It sets out the key building blocks of successful partnerships and the underlying processes – from initial stakeholder engagement to partnership review – necessary to develop and keep those Building Blocks in place and to maximise partnership impact.
The MSP Guide: Designing and facilitating effective multi-stakeholder partnerships
The MSP Guide website provides free resources for designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). It includes key publications such as the MSP Guide by Herman Brouwer, Jim Woodhill and colleages, and the accompanying MSP Tool Guide, along with principles and methods for enhancing collaboration across sectors.
Facilitating building shared agendas
This 2024 guide by Tatiana Fernandez and colleagues (Catalan Government, RIS3CAT 2030) offers a systems-based approach to building shared agendas for transformation. It outlines five facilitation phases—from shared visioning to collaborative governance—grounded in radical collaboration, systems thinking, and place-based innovation.
The Intersector Project Resource Library
The Intersector Project Resource Library comprises hundreds of quality resources relevant to the field of cross-sector collaboration from research organizations, advisory groups, training organizations, academic centers and journals, and other sources. Another useful page on this site – Questions to understand a cross-sector collaboration – provides a set of guiding questions to help stakeholders navigate the complexities of cross-sector collaborations, including motivations, decision-making processes, and institutional practices.
Building engagement and social licence: Unpacking Social Licence to Operate (SLO) and partnerships
This 2019 report by Will Allen and colleagues introduces rubrics as tools for planning and assessing cross-sector partnerships. It focuses on engagement and shared responsibility in systems change, providing an indicative rubric to guide organisations in evaluating and improving partnerships.
Cross-Sector Partnerships for Systemic Change
This Journal of Business Ethics paper by Amelia Clarke and Andrew Crane (2018) reviews cross-sector partnership literature, develops a definition of systemic change, and proposes a framework to understand the interactions between partnerships, systemic change, and broader societal issues.
The MSP Institute – MSP guidance
The MSP Institute focuses on high-quality multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) for sustainable development. It offers a collection of handbooks, tools, and resources to support meaningful participation and effective collaboration.
Maximising the Impact of Partnerships for the SDGs.
This 2018 guidebook by Darian Stibbe and colleagues outlines actions for maximising the value of partnerships targeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It includes tools to help organisations identify and assess both individual and collective benefits.
Enhancing the Impact of Cross-Sector Partnerships
This 2016 paper by Rob van Tulder and colleagues develops a framework linking cross-sector partnerships and impact assessment. It identifies four impact pathways or “orders” that contribute to partnership effectiveness.
Cross-Sector collaborations and partnerships for health and wellbeing
Vivian Towe and colleagues (2016) explore the drivers of effective cross-sector partnerships, including breadth, quality, and investment. The paper highlights models better suited to supporting successful collaborations in health and well-being.
Perspectives on partnership: A literature review
Doug Horton, Gordon Prain, and Graham Thiele review the literature on partnerships, identifying key success factors and gaps in knowledge. A wide range of research-based publications is reviewed, including studies in such fields as management and organizational development, public administration, economics and international development. This 2009 report highlighted the lack of empirical studies at the time, and offers recommendations for future research to enhance partnership outcomes.
The related page – Building networks for learning – provides a set of links to resources around how to build and map networks. You may also wish to explore the Managing collaborations hub page, which brings together guidance on actor mapping, facilitation, partnerships, and managing participation across complex initiatives.
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