Better Bureaus for Business Partnerships: Collaborating Across USAID to Improve the Development Impact of Private Sector Partnerships

The U.S. Global Development Lab’s Center for Transformational Partnerships (CTP) built a private sector engagement (PSE) community of practice that is a resource for USAID staff working on and interested in innovative approaches to PSE. The community of practice is a series of collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) activities aimed at building capacity across USAID to engage business in development.

CLA Approach

• Knowledge Management: CTP tracks more than 1,000 individuals and their work to incorporate and engage the private sector so we can identify and leverage their “PSE readiness.” We use these data to capture and analyze information about the staff members who have been trained and engaged in PSE activities and those using CTP advisory services, such as PSE assessments.
• Continuous Learning & Improvement: CTP engages with this community through CLA activities, including direct, lighter-touch engagements, such as phone calls for information or semi-regular email outreach highlighting innovative and interesting new PSE activities and approaches from across USAID. We also offer a five-day in-person course to train and empower staff to consider and undertake PSE in their work.

Lessons Learned

• Building connections is the foundation of our work. Connections help individuals feel they are part of the great PSE movement and allow them to share their challenges and creative solutions.

Outcomes

• Our work reaches across the agency. During fiscal year 2015, for example, 193 staff members participated in our quarterly all-agency calls and the five-day training saw participation from 256 people in nine country missions across every USAID region and headquarters.
• We conduct participant evaluations during training, with consistently high ratings for every session, at 4 or above on a 1 to 5 scale.