There’s an increasing interest in collaboration and the importance of a range of organisations working together.  There’s also a recognition of the importance of including the voices of smaller grassroots organisations and people representing those who are heard less often. 

But, there is often not money or resource to support this.  So an organisation may be asked to be part of a partnership where 3/4s of the people sitting around the table are being paid to be there by their organisation and the other quarter are either there on their own resource or are having to find budget from their own very small organisational budgets to pay staff or volunteer expenses – taking away resource from their day-to-day delivery. 

Or perhaps a large infrastructure organisation asks small grassroots organisations to deliver workshops or give a speech at an event they are hosting – but they have forgotten to build in expenses to pay for this.   

This creates a challenge for those small organisations – who do want to be able to have a voice at the table, but who feel under-valued compared to the others at the table.  Do you attend and put across your views and make sure that you client’s experiences and needs are represented?  Or do you walk away because you can’t afford the resource involved, and the day-to-day delivery has to be your priority? 

Ideally, those running the partnerships or events would pay a market rate for attendance, but this is often not the reality.  Are there more creative ways of making sure that the smaller organisations and unheard voices can be valued?  How can the larger and well-resourced organisations really create equal platforms for all voices to be heard?  I’m not sure I have the answers, but it is something that does need to be considered.