Acevo has partnered with Neil Coulson Associates to form a joint initiative and a toolkit to assist with collaboration among charities.

The Consortia Support initiative, which has its own website, launched yesterday. Its toolkit is a seven-stage guide which takes charities from the initial stage of forming consortia through to consolidation and expansion.

As well as assisting charities to overcome barriers in forming consortia, the toolkit provides support to existing consortia including; managing the transition to contract delivery, quality assurement, maintaining reputation and operational vibrancy.

The toolkit package includes four days of consultancy with Acevo at an overall cost of £2000, with the fee spread depending on the number of organisations involved.

With the current financial constraints facing charities Acevo chief executive Sir Stephen Bubb said collaboration is more relevant than ever:

“Exploring consortium working should be a major strategic priority for those organisations which haven’t already done so. Our consortia support programme will be a major aid to those organisations who have faced barriers to and difficulties in consortia working in the past.”

The consortia package is being supported by the Local Government Association and Children England.