Beware! Understand Government Context and Stakeholders to Avoid Missteps
While it may seem obvious, entrepreneurs tell us that not everyone fully appreciates the importance of understanding context — and that a misunderstanding can result in costly missteps.
Social enterprises should map the ecosystem to truly understand the context, existing status quo, government priorities, and stakeholders before diving into government partnerships. Social enterprise leaders advise the following:
1. Understand — and align with — existing government priorities.
Many governments have detailed strategy documents outlining their priority investments of time and resources. Donors to those governments also create their own aligned strategy documents (e.g., USAID Missions have a Country Development Cooperation Strategy, which aligns the Mission’s investments and approach within the government strategy). Social enterprises should understand these priorities and articulate how their work aligns and contributes. In the words of WSUP Advisory’s India Country Program Manager, Akhilesh Gautam, “You are there to help [the government partner] and to succeed in their program.”
2. Balance needs of multiple levels of government.
When engaging in government partnerships, should social enterprises work with government at the national level, local level, or somewhere in between? The response from our interviewees was emphatic but ambiguous:
“pick one, but do all.” Bancroft, President of VillageReach, noted that “there is not a wrong place to start. It’s all about what you can do, timing, and resources. Obviously [social enterprises] want Ministry of Health or Presidential sign-off — which might make scale go a little faster — but that’s not the usual way.” Given that high-level sign-off is not often the case, VillageReach typically invests its time building relationships with government at the local level, while also developing steering committees or advisory groups to keep regional or national bodies engaged and informed. WSUP Advisory was in the enviable position to begin its water, sanitation, and hygiene work in India under the Government of India’s national mandate to make India “open defecation free” by 2019. Although entering at the national level, WSUP recognized that it needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of its approach and build credibility at the local level — so it began direct implementation work in the city of Visakhapatnam (Vizag) in Andhra Pradesh state. In Build Change’s case, it discovered that key decisions affecting its prevention and reconstruction work with homeowners existed at multiple levels: national level for building code changes, city level for budgets, and municipal level for permits.
3. Identify other important influencers of government.
It is critical for social enterprises to identify other organizations — either based in-country or with a global role — that have a vested interest or have the government partner’s ear. For example, a USAID-funded global health venture was pursuing its maternal health program with the cooperation of the local government authority, when it ran into unexpected pushback from the country’s Anesthesia Societies. It realized that the anesthesia community played a key advocacy role in garnering political will with the government and hospitals and that leaving them out of the conversation had been a mistake. In another example, Build Change made a strategic decision to influence the World Bank on the importance of pre-disaster prevention with resilient housing; the World Bank provides many countries with significant loan capital to support homeowner subsidies. After a significant advocacy effort, Build Change reported that the World Bank is now in discussions about housing improvement programs with at least eight country governments.
Read next: What Role Do You Need to Play with Government?, Find and cultivate the right government champions, or return to see all articles in Government Partners.
Access the full PDF of Leveraging Government Partnerships for Scaled Impact here or the key takeaways checklist here.
This article was written by Erin Worsham, Kimberly Langsam, and Ellen Martin, and released in September 2018.
