Why we moved from consultancy to collective

For over a decade, Children Unite operated as a consultancy: bid for projects, deliver outputs, move on. It worked, but it had a ceiling. Knowledge generated on one project rarely reached the next. Relationships built during a contract often ended when the contract did.

In 2025, we started testing something different. Rather than treating our Partners (NGOs working directly with children) and Associates (consultants) as a list of subcontractors, we brought them together as members of a collective - a space to share learning, surface gaps, and agree on action together.

A year on, the results have surprised us. Some of our deepest impact this year didn't come from project deliverables at all - it came from what happened in the spaces between projects: the conversations, the relationship-building, the synthesis of learning across very different pieces of work.

For funders, this raises a real question: how do we resource the connective tissue between projects, not just the projects themselves? We don't think we're alone in grappling with this, and we'd welcome the conversation.

In a series of blog posts in July I will be exploring the key findings from our review of this pivotal year for Children Unite.  Please see Children Unite’s learning brief Towards a Collective Model.

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