In 2023, Bridge Innovation in Learning (Bridge) closed its doors. The nonprofit had pioneered a collaborative approach to supporting education development in South Africa. In the 14 years it operated Bridge left a lasting impression on the sector. We explore how the organisation’s unique approach to collaboration might inform and inspire future joint efforts to tackle complex social challenges.
Post-apartheid South Africa’s ailing education sector was a complex and challenging space. Major overhauls to transform the sector and expand access to quality education, while desperately needed, had brought their own complications and money for education support interventions was in short supply. The education support sector reflected a defensive, survival-mode mindset as organisations competed for limited resources.
It was from this fraught space that Bridge emerged to challenge these tensions. The education NPO was established around the metaphor of building a bridge to enable the individuals involved to discover higher levels of possibility in their work and amplify efforts being made in education.
Unlike traditional outcomes-, project- or location-based interventions, Bridge’s vision was unique. It sought to transform the education system by focusing on the collaborative process, pioneering multistakeholder communities of practice (CoPs) as its primary tool for change. Adopting a knowledge management role, Bridge contributed to the systemic improvement of education outcomes and the scaling up of successful national and provincial initiatives through duplication and adaptation.
Where the collaborative process itself might sometimes be overlooked or relegated to an administrative function, Bridge viewed collaboration as a tool for potential radical transformation. Examining Bridge’s journey, understanding its achievements, challenges and the impact of its process-oriented methodology, provides an opportunity to uncover important principles for making collaborations work.
As John Gilmour, one of Bridge’s co-founders, reflects, “Bridge was a front-end invitation for the collaboration of a community of practice. It was built around the notion of bringing people together, bringing innovation, focusing on people in education to actually find each other and therefore to be more useful to the world.”
The Bridge story
Bridge’s novel approach was carefully documented in the legacy document created on its eventual closure. The Bridge Story – Learning through Communities of Practice chronicles the organisation’s contribution to education in South Africa.
Founded in 2009, Bridge emerged from a series of consultations to try and address the fragmentation and siloed nature of educational initiatives in post-apartheid South Africa.
“The launch of Bridge was timely given where we were in South Africa at the time. It allowed us to start owning our reality and explore opportunities for sharing in a way that we needed to learn how to do. Bridge’s intellectual property was in the knowing of how to convene from a neutral space, rather than from the space of a single organisation, and to put those learnings together.”
“During the first nine years of Bridge, we were constantly surprised by how people had been waiting for this kind of connecting opportunity. There was a sense of relief as people found themselves able to have difficult conversations and truly express their experiences,” comments Gilmour.
At its core Bridge’s mission was to connect people, foster collaboration and spread successful practices to promote systemic improvements in education. The organisation used CoPs as its primary methodology, creating spaces where diverse stakeholders could share knowledge, solve problems collectively and drive innovation.
Under the management of its board of directors, which included some implementing partner and funder representatives, and an executive team, the NPO operated in five focus areas: school leadership, teacher development, early childhood development, learner support and cross-cutting themes. Within these areas, Bridge convened 26 different CoPs at national, provincial and district levels. The CoPs were designed to be inclusive, non-hierarchical spaces where practitioners, policymakers, funders and other stakeholders could engage in open dialogue and collaborative learning. The long-term goal was for these collaborative and information-sharing CoPs to lead to action in the form of education projects.
The CoP model was characterised by regular – usually quarterly – meetings, facilitated discussions and activities, knowledge-sharing and co-creation, and reflective practice. Bridge’s approach emphasised the value of process over immediate outcomes, recognising that systemic change often emerges from ongoing dialogue and collaboration.
Zenex Foundation was one of Bridge’s initial funders and its CEO Gail Campbell notes that knowledge management formed a critical component of Bridge’s work. The organisation documented CoP discussions, created knowledge products and disseminated insights through various channels. This approach aimed to make collective learning accessible to a wider audience and prevent the loss of valuable innovations in the education sector.
Over its lifespan Bridge’s CoPs engaged over 750 organisations and 3 500 individuals. The organisation played an important role in normalising collaborative approaches in education, influencing policy discussions and fostering a culture of shared learning among practitioners.
Despite its innovative approach and contributions to the sector, Bridge faced ongoing challenges with sustainable funding. Gilmour explains that the organisation’s focus on process-driven outcomes often conflicted with funders prioritising more tangible, quantifiable results. Additionally, as the concept of CoPs became more widespread, Bridge’s unique value proposition became less distinct.
Other education collaboratives such as the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT), the National Association of Social Change Entities in Education (NASCEE) and the Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa had emerged, alongside donor organisations such as IPASA. These contributed to an ecosystem shift that Bridge had to navigate.
In its later years, and in a bid to meet financial needs, Bridge increasingly took on project-based work to sustain its operations, which sometimes diverted focus from its core collaborative mission. The Covid-19 pandemic also disrupted the organisation’s work, even as it brought about instant acceptance of online engagement that made Bridge’s CoPs easier to convene.
Bridge ceased operations at the end of 2023.
“Bridge lived its life. It served a real purpose, activating a sorely needed awareness of process, relational connectedness and coherence rather than competition,” Gilmour reflects.
He adds that although the organisation was ultimately unable to recalibrate its operations in response to external factors in a way that would ensure its sustainability, its legacy continues through the numerous individuals and organisations that have adopted and adapted its collaborative methodologies, and through the thorough knowledge resources it left behind for the sector, which are now housed in NASCEE.
Reflections on Bridge
The successes
- Bridge pioneered CoPs, introducing and normalising this collaborative approach in South Africa’s education sector.
- By creating spaces where all participants’ input was valued, regardless of position or experience, the organisation amplified voices that might otherwise have been neglected. This resulted in powerful professional development, where expert-led workshops gave way to transformative peer learning and shared experiences.
- The CoP practice delivered invaluable capacity building, empowering thousands of education stakeholders and practitioners through non-hierarchical, collaborative learning.
- The organisation’s knowledge management approach delivered an effective system for capturing and sharing insights from collaborative work.
- Perhaps most important of all was the paradigm shift Bridge ignited, moving the education support sector away from a competitive mindset to one of collaboration and shared learning.
- Bridge excelled in convening diverse stakeholders (funders, NPOs, researchers, academics, practitioners and government) and creating space for engagement and building trust.
- CoPs created the foundations for recognition of shared goals that led to some collaborative projects.
- Bridge created meaning from a wealth of information, collating that knowledge and making it available to the sector.
- Projects that emerged from Bridge’s CoP processes served burning sector needs and were enabled by access to the right stakeholders and funders. One such project, the M&E CoP inspired several M&E organisations to support the drive for good M&E practice in the education sector, gaining significant traction for M&E in South Africa.
The challenges
- As with many NPOs, securing sustainable funding was one of Bridge’s key challenges. Gilmour explains that funders are accustomed to outcomes-based projects rather than process-focused work with harder-to-measure impact.
- As a result the organisation struggled to maintain financial stability while staying true to its core mission, eroding its long-term sustainability.
- The urgency of securing basic operating costs diluted Bridge’s capacity to adapt to change and dedicate energy to the process of reinventing itself as the landscape evolved and other collaboratives emerged.
- Finally, measuring impact proved more difficult than it would with project-based work since available traditional evaluation methods could not capture the full value of Bridge’s process-oriented work.
- Maintaining contextual relevance in a shifting landscape while trying to deliver its core objectives and secure funding sources proved difficult and led to a degree of ‘mission drift’.
- One of the key difficulties in the CoP model is how to maintain the process through the constant turnover of individual stakeholder representatives. This can risk the CoP process devolving into information sessions rather than productive CoPs.
- CoPs did not always evolve organically into actionable projects that delivered measurable sector impact.
- Meeting the diverse expectations of multiple donors in a network proved difficult to navigate.
- Maintaining a service provision offering that delivered education implementation projects proved a capacity challenge.
Lessons from Bridge on collaboration
The Bridge story highlights several learnings aspiring collaborative initiatives and funders might consider.
Collaboration comes with costs
Bridge’s CoP process was an innovative approach to collaboration. That they managed to secure funding to do this work for a time was an achievement. Campbell says that funders don’t fully appreciate the real cost that collaboration requires.
“Everybody wants to collaborate but it is difficult to source donor funding to support collaboration. Donors mainly provided project funding, however, need to consider funding organisations more holistically to include administration (finance and governance) and ongoing staff development. While donor funding is inevitably time bound, donors should consider multi-year funding and include these additional types of funding to project funding as it contributes to long-term organisational sustainability.”
Expectations need to be aligned
The expectation of measurable milestones and attributable outcomes can also create a mismatch between donors and change practitioners. In the case of Bridge, the organisation’s theory of change was difficult to assess and measure in a way that satisfied some funders.
Ideally, CoPs would lead to scaleable projects in the education sector with quantifiable outcomes. While several projects did emerge as a result of Bridge’s CoPs, including the Post School Access CoP to support the transition from higher education to the workplace and the M&E CoP, which was influential in improving M&E in education interventions, among others, the evolution of these projects did not happen organically or spontaneously. Emerging projects require a catalyst, independent drivers and funding to bring them to reality.
That CoPs did not always lead to projects was not an indication of a process failure.
Gilmour explains how the CoP process was a catalyst for the paradigm shifts that bring about complex change. “We can’t keep thinking that incremental improvement is what is going to move us forward. The scale of the problem, the huge economic factors and massive inequity demand the exponential thinking that comes from paradigm shifts.”
“Working on paradigm shifting is always more difficult because it’s more personal. Funders like the safety of structural change. They like the safety of political or policy change, but they forget that the longest lever is actually personal change,” he notes.
Measurement should include personal shifts
Given that transformative change can come from how people work together and not just what they produce, Gilmour highlights the need for new ways to measure this effect. “M&E needs to evolve to find ways to measure personal paradigm shifts.”
He notes that the move towards quantifiable wellness and resilience indices is taking place internationally, particularly in the corporate sector. Increasingly, efforts such as The Club of Rome, a platform of diverse thought leaders, are exploring more equitable economic, financial, and sociopolitical models that reflect an inclusive human dimension in systems change.
The sustainability of collaboratives needs consideration
Funding for development sector support interventions remains a perennial problem. In an ideal world, interventions contribute to resolving a social problem in such a way that the intervention becomes redundant. Donor funds then become available for other interventions.
In reality, social ills are far greater than the funds and resources available to solve them. Donors allocate funding according to their change strategies and donor-reliant organisations must navigate the uncertainty of precarious future funding. In the absence of secure long-term funding, organisations must find ways to become self-sustaining or close.
While Bridge turned to the provision of short-term education project service delivery to supplement its funds, this ultimately proved unsustainable.
Acknowledging the limited nature of long-term donor funding, Campbell encourages funders and partners to consider long-term capacity building. She says donors might do well to reflect on their responsibility for the long-term sustainability of the organisations they support.
Build flexibility and individual growth into the collaborative
Reacting to financial pressures can prevent organisations and collaboratives from remaining relevant. Gilmour highlights some of the aspects that could ease the way for organisations navigating the sustainability challenge.
He recommends investing in anticipatory leadership that is proactive rather than reactive. This can help the organisation navigate the ever-changing development ecosystem and reinvent itself to continue serving its cause.
He also advocates for a positive attitude towards individual growth and transitions. The loss of skilled staff can have a significant impact on organisations, particularly as nonprofits tend to maintain lean staff complements that meet their budgetary constraints.
Gilmour suggests that active development of internal talent, rather than seeking external professionals, is another avenue through which to exert positive influence on a sector. Celebrating staff graduation to other organisations and leadership positions where they can expand positive influence should be viewed as a success rather than a loss.
Responsible closure
An often-overlooked consideration is how organisations and their funders can gather to navigate the end of collaborative partnerships responsibly and intentionally.
Campbell says that the closure process should be handled in a way that maintains relationships and manages reputations fairly. This is part of the process of building trust in the nonprofit sector. As legal entities, nonprofits and their boards carry liabilities that need to be properly managed.
In the case of Bridge, a small collection of donors made funding available to cover staff and service provider costs and to curate the knowledge that Bridge had successfully collated.
Building collaborative bridges
An organisation’s impact can continue through the people and practices it influences. Bridge’s legacy lives on beyond the organisation through the many individuals and organisations that have adopted and adapted its collaborative CoP methodologies.
As collaboration rises to the fore in the move towards social change, the Bridge story demonstrates the importance of creating safe spaces where stakeholders can gather to learn from one another and potentially co-create development support initiatives together. It also serves as a reminder as to how influencing paradigm shifts at the individual level is one of the fundamental steps towards systemic change.
“Bridge taught us the value of process and not just outcomes. Transformative change often comes from how people work together, not just what they produce,” Gilmour concludes.
While many seed funders, core funders, CoP-specific and project-specific funders supported Bridge during its existence, key funders included:
Anglo American Chairman’s Fund, Apex Hi Trust, Barloworld, Convene Venture Philanthropy, CoZa Cares Foundation, DG Murray Trust, Deutsche Bank, Dorper Wind Farms, Epoch and Optima Trust, European Union, FirstRand Empowerment, Gauteng Education Development Trust, Get It Done Foundation, Grindrod Family Centenary Trust, JET Education Services, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, National Education Collaboration Trust, Old Mutual Foundation, Penreach, Porticus, RMB – FirstRand Bank Limited, Sasol Inzalo Foundation, Save the Children SA, Standard Bank Tutuwa Community Foundation, Telkom Foundation, The Bertha Institute, The LEGO Foundation, The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, Yellowwoods Social Investments and Zenex Foundation.
Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2024 (27th edition).