Business Partnerships for Global Goals COVID-19 Vulnerable Supply Chain Facility Business Partnerships as a Force for Good Learning Series
Business Partnerships as a Force for Good Partnering in a pandemic: Embracing uncertainty Initial lessons from the FCDO Business Partnerships for Global Goals Vulnerable Supply Chain Facility, 2020-21 Learning Brief By Georgina Duffin, Private Sector Analyst, BP4GG Business Partnerships for Global Goals is a UKAid funded programme implemented by Mott MacDonald, with support from Accenture Development Partnerships and IIED. We partner with UK and international retail brands, not-for-profit organisations, farms, and factories to provide economic, social, and health benefits to around 1 million vulnerable women and men impacted by COVID-19 in Africa and Asia.
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The global-nature of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause unprecedented shocks to the world’s complex network of supply chains. In 2020, global food prices surged by 14%,¹ most markedly in the global south. Global airfreight saw a 12% decline in cargo capacity,² causing a nearly 20% rise in the cost of transport³ and seriously affecting emerging market exports of perishable products. 86% of garments manufacturers saw a drop in orders, with 350,000 textile workers losing their jobs in Bangladesh alone. Food has rotted in the fields. Goods have been stranded in container shipments. The International Labour Organisation has warned that almost half the global workforce – 1.6 billion people – are in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.⁴ The World Bank Group forecasts that over 1.4% of the world’s population, an extra 150 million people, will fall into extreme poverty.⁵
The Vulnerable Supply Chain Facility (VSCF) was established by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Business Partnerships for Global Goals programme. It brings together the resources of businesses, government and not-for-profit organisations to help mitigate the health, economic and social impacts of COVID-19. VSCF works in African agricultural and Asian garments supply chains, bringing together partners to contribute their ideas, match funding, people, time, influence, and reach of their networks. The joint aims are to: 1. mitigate the immediate effects of COVID-19 on vulnerable workers in the garments and agricultural supply chains; 2. build workers’ and suppliers’ resilience against future such events, and; 3. promote future prosperity by championing responsible business practices. The facility was set up in April 2020 at a time when there were many unknowns, including what the unfolding impact of COVID-19 would be. With renewed COVID-19 spikes across the globe since the start of the pandemic, this ongoing uncertainty has been at the heart of managing the facility. With £2.3m funding 8 projects, over 20 business partners and 130 suppliers, operating in 7 countries, improving the lives of around 1 million people, the facility has represented a relatively small programme, but has been rapid and wide-reaching in its outreach and impact. In a pandemic a fast response has to be provided while also being highly targeted to the needs of the most vulnerable. From the many adaptations the VSCF has undergone, these are some lessons for how donors can mobilise multi-party partnerships in rapid-response environments: 1. Trust – build trusting relationships that can survive challenging conditions. 2. Clarity – be explicit in the purpose, expectations, and methods of delivery. 3. Flexibility – build adaptability into plans and monitor the environment closely.
1. Trust The bedrock of all successful partnerships, trusting relationships are built through timely communication and on-going collaboration.
Invest in building relationships •
Nurture rapport with partners at a personal level from the outset. This is particularly important in a time of virtual working and under the extra stresses involved in crisis situations. The VSCF has been working with Flamingo Horticulture in Kenya to pilot the sea-freight transportation of flowers from Kenya to Europe. During the project, Flamingo’s business model shifted to much greater online retail volumes, which required continuing focus on the just-in-time benefits of air freight. Despite their attention moving temporarily away from sea freight, Flamingo remained a committed lead-partner for VSCF, thanks to the strong relationship already built with the facility managers and other business partners on the project.
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Build on pre-existing relationships between partners that already have a trusting foundation. When responding in a crisis, using existing relationships is likely to make it easier to move fast and to smooth over challenges presented along the way. Under the HALOW+ project in Bangladesh, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), CARE International, and Marks & Spencer have built on previous funding from FCDO and PwC over the previous five years to deliver health initiatives within the garments supply chain. This joint track-record allowed their VSCF partnership to quickly pivot to focus on COVID-specific response activities.
Focus on effective communications •
Lay out ways of working with partners early on and agree how decision-making can be as lean as possible. Ensure a balance between regular communications without onerous reporting, and that cultural differences in styles of communication have been accommodated. Establish this feedback cycle as soon as possible. Further, make sure that all external communications are consistent, and speak with the same voice.
¹ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/29/covid-crisis-is-fuelling-food-price-rises-for-worlds-poorest; https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/commodity-markets-outlook-eight-charts ² https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/travel/coronavirus-air-cargo-capacity ³ https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/commodity-prices-rise-amid-intensifying-supply-pressures-in-january.html ⁴ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/half-of-worlds-workers-at-immediate-risk-of-losing-livelihood-due-to-coronavirus ⁵ https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021
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Focus on outcomes over activities. Stay sufficiently engaged to be able to advise and be sure the project is on track, but not so much that reporting gets in the way of delivery and erodes trust. Have honest pulse checks on the level of engagement to foster an openness between partners, and flag early any difficulties foreseen in delivering on a commitment. For example, under VSCF in Bangladesh, a quarantine centre set up by CARE and M&S which was subsequently unused, was handed back to a school for use by pupils and staff. Savings from the programme overall were redistributed to expand the programme’s reach and bring on board additional suppliers.
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Involve partners in all decisions that affect them and devolve decision-making as much as possible. Keeping all partners close to the detail helps rapid decisions to be made.
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Open up as many channels of communication as necessary to keep information flowing – including MS Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, etc.
2. Clarity Have clarity of purpose, expectations, and methods of delivery from the first call for partnership projects through to the delivery and evaluation of initiatives.
Have a clear purpose •
The donor needs to be clear on the purpose and scope of the partnership they are seeking. For example, specific problems to be addressed, beneficiaries to be reached, geography to be covered, scale of impact sought, costs covered, and timeframe for delivery.
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If an open call for partners is being conducted, use as much specificity and precision as possible. This is of special importance if a minimum benchmark for match funding, or size of partnership organisation and impact, is sought. For the procurement of VSCF, FCDO laid this out in an initial Request for Proposals that was widely circulated, and through subsequent early engagements with potential partners. Despite these steps, and a robust selection criterion, many more proposals were received than were anticipated. This included many that were ineligible against scoring criteria, leading the team to conclude that even more specificity could have been used to shorten this competitive process.
Have clear expectations •
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Agree reasonable expectations for impact-level results. Sense-check that the targeted impact is feasible and represents clear value for money. Be cautious with targets given the likelihood that activities will be disrupted along the line, and focus on overall value/outcome and impact levels rather than fixating on output targets.
A ready-made garment factory worker in Bangladesh holds up a COVID-19 safety measure poster during a session supported by GoodWeave International/Awaj Foundation Photo Credit: GoodWeave International/ Magnifier Creatives
Set expectations for change, and an understanding of what happens if one/all partners’ objectives fail to be met. Outline any delivery risks and red lines clearly so that as things shift, these do not compromise the partnership relationship. This occurred under VSCF when the military coup in Myanmar demanded that all partners working in the country had to be very clear on their red lines with regard to what level of disruption would mean activities had to cease, and to be able to act on these criteria swiftly. 3
Agree clear roles, responsibilities, and levels of contribution •
Clear roles must be defined for who delivers which aspects of the partnership, and how financial contributions such as match funding and non-financial contributions such as expertise are to made. This needs to be agreed with each partner for all aspects of project delivery.
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No partner can put infinite time and resources into an initiative so a balance must be struck, and empathy exercised with partners on their working pressures and priorities. This is particularly the case when dealing with business partners in a pandemic-struck developing country context: under VSCF, where many large retailers and suppliers have been delivering multiple interventions across their extensive supply chains, we have been aware that the VSCF project has been just one of many. As such, it has been necessary for the VSCF facility manager to exercise some flexibility with regard to expected levels of contribution and reporting.
3. Flexibility Conduct robust planning but be prepared to embrace complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability. Balance the risk tolerance of partners and manage those risks according to the unpredictability of the context.
Plan for plans to change •
Involve beneficiaries in refining the solution and be prepared to change understanding of the problem in the process. If not, the haste for a rapid response risks imposing solutions that don’t fit. At a facility level, VSCF has used a combination of remote beneficiary feedback data collected via mobile phone and physical field visits to project sites to ensure the beneficiary voice is heard, and partners can respond and adapt. At a project level, the Cadbury Farmer Resilience Fund project in Ghana evolved from a competitive call for proposals to a co-creation of proposals for fixed grant amounts. This was as a result of more information being gathered on what cocoa farmer unions would be most responsive to, and how funds could be used as quickly and as effectively as possible.
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Plans will not definitely change, but there is a likelihood that they will. In doing so, resist the temptation to respond without having first gathered data and consulted with partners sufficiently to take a considered and proportionate reaction.
Prepare to do things differently •
Moving fast doesn’t have to mean failing to evaluate and to learn, but it does mean the need to be adaptive. On VSCF, this has included focusing on impact not output level targets to keep the modality for achieving these impacts Workers prepare flowers for packaging at Nini Flowers, Naivasha, Kenya flexible; extending the usual window for measuring outcomes until after the grant Photo Credit: Karen Smith, BP4GG contracts have ended; and making use of digital tools to gather data remotely, (whilst being mindful of their limitations). As COVID-19 continues to restrict movement in Kenya, Bangladesh, and other countries, digital tools have been used to gather as much data remotely as possible. These have included remote interviews, and online platforms for anonymised feedback. Whilst this has depended on mobile connectivity and literacy that hasn’t always been possible, it has meant more data for better decision making without the need to risk the safety of in-person data gatherers. 4
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Identify opportunities for scale and replicability of activities from the outset. This will create manoeuvrability if funds need to be reallocated, or activities become unviable. This was done rapidly by VSCF when conflict broke out in Myanmar, and unspent funds needed to be quickly redistributed to have immediate impact in neighbouring Bangladesh.
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Be open for more partners to join, or others to exit, whilst remaining aware of what others are doing and adapting activities to avoid duplication. Whilst piloting the sea freighting of flowers from Kenya to Europe, the VSCF has attracted more farms to join as the pilot has proven the viability of this greener and cost-effective alternative to air freight, and the market is already responding.
Balance risks and manage them closely •
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Different organisations will have different capacities for risk taking. The blend of these will determine the balance between scrutiny and flexibility that works for the partnership. The VSCF has meant accommodating FCDO, multi-national corporation, small/medium enterprise, and international and local NGO risk positions from the outset. Allocate sufficient resources to pay active attention to the changing environment. This will include close communication with partners on the ground and wider constant monitoring of the situation and delivery environment. For the VSCF, delivery has been most effective where organisations have full-time people on the ground to assess the changing context. Build risk mitigation into financial management, for instance through the staged disbursement of funds upon activity delivery (where possible); and partnership agreements that allow for reallocation of funds as needed. For instance, the VSCF did not pay funds for emergency cash transfers upfront, but only once garments factories were onboarded and lists of workers to receive cash verified.
Conclusion The impacts of a large-scale disruptive event like COVID-19 are often hard to predict, especially in already fragile political and economic contexts. Whilst events may not be under any one individual’s or organisation’s control, how they manage relationships in response to them is. Strong relationships are needed to navigate these challenges. Relationships built on shared vision, agreed purpose, mutual trust, and clearly understood parameters for partnership that can survive the test of challenging, complex and ever-changing contexts. Trust, flexibility and clarity are mutually reinforcing. Well managed risk leads to lower levels of activity-level scrutiny, which leads to greater flexibility for delivery and more trust between partners. On the VSCF we consider our partnerships to be works in progress, needing constant attention and adjustment. This is not simply prudent, but vital in achieving the best outcomes for vulnerable people most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Business Partnerships as a Force for Good Learning Series VSCF Vision “To enable vulnerable people and supply chains to recover from and remain resilient to the economic and social impacts of COVID-19, by leveraging the reach and influence of responsible businesses through partnerships.” VSCF Mission “To enable recovery and resilience from the COVID-19 pandemic by forming strategic partnerships with global businesses. Working within supply chains in Africa and Asia, we will test and scale approaches to provide additional health and safety support, increase incomes, safeguard jobs, and ensure continuing access to markets. We will support vulnerable people within supply chains to recover from COVID-19, and support responsible businesses to build on these experiences to become more sustainable.”
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