Towards Trust-Based Partnerships Workshop Honeydew - Johannesburg.

The Women in Philanthropy South Africa (WiPSA) launched their first physical meeting in Johannesburg at a workshop held on Friday 19th August 2022.

All previous meetings have been held in Cape Town, and CivSource South Africa had the pleasure of hosting and sponsoring the venue and banqueting arrangements, in true philanthropic style. CivSource CEO. Ms Jacqueline Asiimwe was called up by Nyasha Njela the WiPSA Committee representative, to give the opening remarks, which she did, with the aid of an Ice-breaker called the Weave that knits us together.

The workshop was attended by 27 participants ranging from Civil Society organisations involved in Education, to Fundraising initiatives, as well as International Funding organisations and Foreign Consular representatives.

This workshop hoped to offer a think-tank space with diverse colleagues from our social impact sector for sharing experiences and co-visioning what trustbased partnerships in the sector might look like. The programme incorporated practical tools for building on existing relationships, generating shared understanding, and deepening our connections to support systemic change as organisations strive to ensure they create equitable trust-based partnerships to create true impact in their work.

Participants were invited to think and work together on:

Purpose and Practice
Governance and Guidance
Trust and Transparency
Power and Partnership
Intent and Integrity
Relationship, Results, and Resilience
Resonance and Reflection

WiPSA identified a need to provide a platform in Johannesburg for non-profits to connect with other organisations facing similar issues, since they believe partnerships and collaboration benefit us all. The feedback from most was that there is a lot more collaboration based on mutual values, respect, and similar goals, than simply as a business transaction.

The facilitator Robyn Whittaker premised the discussion heavily invested in approaches that deepen partnerships and build relationships, exploring the theme of trust-based partnerships with members of WiPSA and its guests with the hope that it will increase an understanding and expand ways of collaboration.

The desired outcome is to have more social impact through collaborations based on mutual trust and relationships.

Participants got into twos to think in pairs together about:

Trust and Transparency
Intent and Integrity
Relationship, Results, and Resilience.

The values discussed were aligned with Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment premised in the observation:

“The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first”

Comments from Attending guests: