BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, is a development organization based in Bangladesh dedicated to empowering the poor to bring about change in their own lives through interventions in healthcare, microfinance, education, and legal services. BRAC’s health-related services touched 100 million people in 2012.
A systematic approach to partnerships at the largest NGO. BRAC and GlobalHealth Lab developed a student project in 2013 that would enable its leaders to assess potential partnerships and select appropriate innovations and collaborations that leveraged the organization’s vast reach and deliver value to BRAC’s beneficiaries. Informed by an in-depth case study review of successful and unsuccessful partnerships in order to glean best practices and potential pitfalls, and guided by dozens of interviews and discussions with BRAC leaders and staff, the students developed a framework, process, and tools to help BRAC to adopt a systemic, lifecycle approach for screening, evaluating and managing partnerships.