Funder Collaboration: Is it worth it?

The Child Sexual Exploitation Funders’ Alliance (CSEFA) is a group of 12 charitable funders who came together in 2012 to bring about a step change in the way child sexual exploitation is dealt with in the UK. Specifically, they wanted to see responses to child sexual exploitation positioned as an integral part of mainstream safeguarding. CSEFA members believe that by bringing together funders’ knowledge, reach, resources and time, more has been achieved than would have been the case had the funders worked individually. As such, in this context, funder collaboration is definitely worth it. In the spirit of learning, and for the benefit of others interested in funder collaboration, this short paper sets out CSEFA’s key features, benefits and challenges.

Our early work with CSEFA benefitted greatly from revisiting an earlier IVAR publication where we drew together our collective experience to produce Thinking about Collaboration.