What's a Multi-Stakeholder Coalition?

While “multi-stakeholder collaboration” is a commonly used term, that doesn't mean it is easily or clearly defined. It is used and interpreted to describe many different types of collaborations.  So if we're going to discuss them, we ought to start with a common understanding of what is meant by multi-stakeholder collaboration (MSC).

For the purpose of accurately capturing the lessons, learnings and stories that I and others will be sharing on this blog, let's agree to define a multi-stakeholder collaboration as:

A convening of groups and/or individuals that come together or are brought together based on a shared concern, issue, objective or need, with the idea that through information sharing, discussions, and coordination of activity they may affect mutually desired change. 

That's still a pretty broad definition But truthfully, its a pretty big ecosystem. These collaborations may be narrow or broad in scope, and may be short or longer term in duration.  They may be comprised of two or more of the following groups: non-governmental organizations, industry representatives, philanthropic representatives, individual experts, governmental and/or regulatory bodies.  While all of these types of groups do not need to be involved in a collaboration for it to meet the multi-stakeholder definition, at least more than one type needs to be included. 

To maintain consistency, we will exclude initiatives led by governmental and/or regulatory bodies, as these usually represent a unique type of MSC. However, we will not exclude multi-stakeholder collaborations that involve governmental and/or regulatory representatives, provided the collaboration shares substantive characteristics otherwise.

It's from this common baseline that we'll discuss, dissect and diagnose what makes some collaborations highly effective and others underwhelming.

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