Our Partnerships Initiative
A core priority of the Internews 2025 Strategy is to ensure that Internews has a trust-based partnership with organizations in the communities we serve. To do this, we make sure to listen to our partners through collecting data on our partnerships, conducting feedback surveys, and creating tools, benchmarks, and collaborative initiatives with our partners to further improve our performance.
Guiding Principles for Internews’ Partnerships
The Guiding Principles for Partnerships were created to strengthen the relationship with our partners and the communities which we ultimately serve. It is a set of five principles that are aspirational in nature, written with our key project partners in mind. This guidance is used to train our staff and onboard partners on how we commit to working together, improve our partnerships over time, and want our partners to hold us accountable.
(French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian translations are coming soon.)
Listening and Learning – Annual Feedback Survey
In an effort to better understand our partners’ experience working with Internews, we started conducting an annual survey in early 2020 that was distributed to all organizations that receive Internews funding. Our goal was to better understand our partners’ experience working with Internews and how we can best serve their needs. Our 2022 survey found that 93.1% of our partners responded with Yes when asked if Internews staff were respectful to them and their staff, 45.03% and 39.77% responded with Strongly Agree and Agree, respectively, when asked if they felt encouraged to provide feedback and 40.35% and 31.58% responded with Strongly Agree and Agree respectively, when asked if their feedback was incorporated into the project.
Internews 2021 Fellowship
In 2021, Internews created an opportunity for its strategic partners to enroll in a one-year fellowship. The fellowship allowed participants to receive technical assistance beyond that afforded through their existing or past projects with us, as well as support to collaborate with Internews in joint initiatives and events. In turn, Internews received their insights and advice on how to strengthen our service to partner organizations, as well as their help in advancing our Global Change Agenda. The cohort of fellows finalized their fellowship in 2021 and received benefits throughout the year to enhance their organizations’ exposure, competitiveness, and sustainability.