What Role(s) Do You Need to Play with Government?

Social enterprises can play many important roles as they work to achieve the government partnership goals described above. Although there are no simple formulas to determine which roles to play, the most common roles appear below under three broad categories: Implementer, Consultant/Trainer, and Systems Advisor.

This framework is not meant to be exhaustive but can help leadership teams think through the roles their organizations can play now and over time. Common social enterprise roles (and examples) within government partnerships include:

Implementer Roles

1. Fee-for-Service/Product. Engages in a contractual fee-for-service/product relationship with government. E.g., Code for America entered into a multi- million dollar contract with the California Department of Social Services to deliver and scale the GetCalFresh program.
2. Supplemental Staff: Provides additional staffing for government to increase its capacity to execute work. E.g., When Partners In Health was invited to Liberia during the Ebola crisis, it seconded staff to the national Ministry of Health to provide additional capacity.
3. Complementary Implementation: Implements programs outside of, but complementing, formal government structure. E.g., With the consent of local government officials and in compliance with local regulations, myAgro creates and implements programs to support smallholder farmers in financing their needed crop inputs.
4. Shared Implementation: Continues some direct implementation (for iteration and refinement) while government manages bulk of implementation. E.g., While Pratham trains and empowers government partners across India to incorporate its methodology into India’s schools, Pratham also maintains direct implementation sites to continue to demonstrate, innovate, and venture into new offerings.

Consultant/Trainer Roles

1. Material/Tool Creation: Creates materials and tools for government delivery of programming. E.g., Educate Girls supports effective teaching practices by providing Creative Learning and Teaching toolkits to teachers, helping them shift away from rote learning to more activity-based learning.
2. Training Programs: Provides training programs to support government programs. E.g., In Brazil, Imazon shares its forest management system with local governments and spends time training them on its use.
3. Programmatic Technical Assistance: Consults and advises on program development and execution. E.g., Across Latin America, Fundación Capital collaborates with the government partners responsible for social and financial inclusion to advise and enhance the design, measurement, and scale-up of their conditional cash transfer programs. [To learn more about Fundación Capital’s approach to scaling, read the scaling snapshot here.]
4. Monitoring: Conducts program monitoring to track implementation and quality, and support improvement. E.g., In collaboration with the Liberian Ministry of Health, Last Mile Health developed and supports the execution of the Implementation Fidelity Initiative, ensuring timely data on Community Health Assistant program quality.

Systems Advisor Roles

Note that while roles in each category can have systems-change orientations, those under Systems Advisor focus on high-level systems in-country as a default.

1. Policy & Regulations: Advises government on policy or regulatory changes that will improve enabling environment within target sector and population. E.g., Build Change worked with Nepal’s National Reconstruction Authority to approve Build Change’s retrofitting type design, resulting in retrofitting becoming an option (at scale) for homeowners.
2. Resource Allocation: Advises government in prioritization of issue area and associated budget allocation. E.g., Through Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP)’s work improving water and sanitation services for low-income urban communities, it de-risks investments from the public sector into these programs and helps to advise on strategic allocation of resources. [To learn more about WSUP’s approach to scaling, read the scaling snapshot here.]
3. Fundraising: Advocates to secure external funds for government programs. E.g., VillageReach recognized that it was critical that the Health Center by Phone number be toll- free to the government in order to scale, and secured a commitment from the national corporate telecommunications provider to underwrite the cost.

Of course, these roles will evolve over time. For example, Last Mile Health has always maintained its focus on provision of quality health care to people with limited access, but its roles have evolved to include supplemental staffing, direct implementation, training programs for Community Health Workers, and, finally, advocating for national workforce policies.

“We were so stuck on the VillageReach ‘model’ at one time, but when working with governments it’s more about getting into the system and moving the right levers to get the change you want to see.” — VillageReach President, Emily Bancroft

The most effective social enterprises will look at the whole system and see which roles they and other partners need to take on to fill in the missing puzzle pieces that will lead to systems change. Jennifer Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director of Code for America, articulated this point when she said, “If we’re building bikes, but we are only making the frames and wheels — well, then we don’t have bikes.”

Photo by asoggetti on Unsplash

Read next: Beware! Understand government context and stakeholders to avoid missteps, Define your government partnership role, 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.