Our Offer
Collaboration for Collective Impact
Many changemakers struggle to work together well.
This is especially true when collaboration must cross sectors, institutions, or political divides. We prefer familiar partners, shared language, aligned values.
But the problems we face do not respect these boundaries. Climate breakdown. Inequality. Failing public services. Shrinking civic space. None of these can be solved by single organisations acting alone.
Collaboration: necessary, not optional
Collaboration is often treated as a nice addition — something to try once a strategy is in place, or when funding requires it. In reality, collaboration is frequently the only credible path to impact at scale. No one actor holds all the levers; no one perspective is sufficient; no one institution can move the system alone.
Yet working together is hard. And many collaborative efforts fail — not because collaboration is flawed, but because it is poorly understood and under-supported.
Why collaboration breaks down
At Kiungo, we see three recurring challenges.
1 – Purpose: what are we really here to change?
Too often, shared purpose is vague or overly narrow. “Youth empowerment” means everything and nothing. At the same time, interests and incentives are left unspoken. Very few actors are fully vested in the success of a collective, and many are pulled by competing priorities. Collaboration requires clarity and honesty about interests.
2 – Process: how we work together
We consistently underestimate the human and relational work required to collaborate well. Trust is rushed or ignored. Groups either talk endlessly and stall, or move too quickly without alignment. Good collaboration does not emerge by accident – it is designed and stewarded.
3 – Power: who is in the room
We gravitate toward people like us — those we trust, agree with, or feel comfortable around. But real change often requires working with those we disagree with, compete with, or actively distrust. Sometimes, collaboration means engaging the enemy.
Collectives @ Kiungo
At Kiungo, we are deeply invested in building effective collectives.
Our experience tells us that collaboration is one of the most under-developed and under-resourced capacities in social change efforts — despite being one of the most critical. We support organisations through the early and often neglected stages of collective impact work:
Identify the right actors
Not just who you know, but who has influence over the change you seek — including actors outside the usual circles.
Build relationships before convening
Trust does not begin in workshops. It is built through careful, often quiet work long before people gather in a room. This work takes time. And it cannot be rushed.
Clarify leadership and roles
Who invites? Who convenes? Who guides? Effective collectives require people with the standing to bring diverse actors together, and the skill to facilitate across difference toward action.
This work often emerges naturally from strategy and implementation processes. In some cases, it becomes the strategy.
Backbone leadership: holding the work
Where welcomed by the broader group, Kiungo can play an ongoing role in supporting collectives. In particular, we can act as a backbone leader – an enabling role focused on holding the collaboration together and keeping it oriented toward impact.
Backbone leadership is stewardship not control. Backbone leaders support shared learning, sustain relationships, and help groups navigate tension, drift, and fatigue. They keep attention on purpose and progress, even when interests diverge. Aligning diverse actors — with different incentives, power, and agendas — requires a different kind of leadership and this is the role that Kiungo is energised and enthused to play for collective efforts.
Where Kiungo cannot directly support the collective as the backbone leader, we are also able to provide support, thought partnership and tools to the leader selected.