Should NGOs be more empathetic in partnerships with the private sector?

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Over the past few years, I have focused a lot on improving partnerships between the private and nonprofit sectors. This has involved work for Medecins Sans Froniteres (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) among others, assessing what’s worked and what hasn’t from previous collaborations between sectors.

For MSF, this culminated in the Innovation Partnership project report, offering an improved step by step towards scaling innovation and leveraging MSF’s respected brand favourably in the private sector. The report can be found here.

During this work, I also authored a blog piece after facilitating a workshop for the MSF Scientific Days in London entitled ‘Does MSF need a more intelligent/empathetic approach to partnerships?’. Please check in out and get in touch if you have any comments.

I am also currently working with the EPFL EssentialTech centre to improve collaborations between academia and the nonprofit sector, following a workshop that was held earlier this year. We hope to have an article on the key pitfalls to avoid in such collaborations published in the coming months.

If partnerships between the development/humanitarian world and other sectors if of interest to you, please get in touch!

About Louis and Outsight International

Louis is one of the Co-founders of Outsight. He has a wide range of experience covering development, health, innovation, technology and research. Having worked in in the field with Medecins Sans Frontières as well as with other NGOs, he is well acquainted with the practical realities of delivering impact in the field. In recent years, has been helping organisations to improve innovation processes and outcomes. In particular, this has included managing projects focused on improving healthcare provision in hard-to-reach contexts through new technologies. He is an experienced facilitator and has been closely involved in efforts to improve collaborations between the nonprofit, academic and commercial sectors in recent years. He is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, and received his MSc in Global Health from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Outsight International is an organisation specialising in providing services to the humanitarian and development sector in an efficient and agile way. We build on the range of expertise offered by our network of Associates in order to deliver quality results adapted to the specific tasks at hand. If you’d like to discuss working Nicola and the Outsight team, please get in touch or follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates.