The Partnering Initiative promotes the development of case studies to profile both partnering processes and partnership outputs.
Our experience suggests that well prepared case studies can provide a range of material readily adaptable for different target groups.
We have undertaken a range of partnership case studies from widely different contexts. We have developed an approach for our case study work that is:
- Consultative: engaging with, and signed off by, as many partners and key stakeholders as feasible
- Credible: always incorporating a consultative approach
- Diverse: drawing on a range of methods for data collection, triangulation and interpretation
- Creative: suggesting innovative ways to present and disseminate the case study’s outputs
- Useful: ensuring that all the case studies can be used strategically as tools for change both within and beyond the partner organisations.
The challenge for partners is how to convey their story well – so their own organisations, and partnership practitioners more widely, can understand what worked and what didn’t. More than a marketing piece for communicating success, a learning case study is designed and written to enable the process and approach to be transferred to new initiatives.
The TPI ‘learning’ case study approach captures the experiences and challenges of developing a partnership from multiple perspectives, and draws out the lessons learned.