The Power of Partnerships

Whether you're following the slashing of local school budgets, burgeoning national debt, or global climate change, its easy to feel overwhelmed by the daunting, complex social challenges we're facing these days. How is it possible for one person to make a difference in the face of daunting obstacles? I'm increasingly seeing the potential of partnerships.

Even the rich and powerful are limited in what they can do independently. Warren Buffet made history in 2006 as the most generous philanthropist of all time when he decided to give most of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He wisely determined that he was better at making money than giving it away. Simply having money is not enough. Bill Gates, in turn, has billions of dollars of his own and expertise in business and philanthropy. However, even he has turned to partnerships to accomplish social impact goals. In the area of global health, the Gates foundation formed the GAVI Alliance, a public/private partnership of donor governments, private foundations, vaccine manufacturers, and multilateral institutions including the UN, UNICEF and the World Bank. The scale of the need for vaccines in developing countries is so vast, and the scope of change required in health and economic systems so great, that even a wealthy foundation can't be very effective alone.

I recently had a chat with Jeff Wishne, the Director of Social Impact for Thoughtworks software consultancy, about how he leverages partnerships. He has put put together innovative and cost effective programs that allow employees to use their "beach" time between client engagements to contribute to open source software for mobile health projects in Africa. Thoughtworks collaborates with non-profit partners to project manage the overall effort, provide ongoing consistency and quality control, and cue up work so that employees can make a significant contribution in short, unpredictable bursts of 'downtime'. Thoughtworks also benefits in employee recruitment and retention, as well as access to new ideas and technologies.

I was inspired to find ways that the AppDev group can use creative partnerships to make a greater impact with a limited amount of volunteer time.