The Power Of Four: Lessons from the VOYCE collaboration

This report by the Centre for Social Impact associate, Rachael Trotman, presents the story of and lessons learned from a collaboration between four philanthropic funders that led to the establishment of VOYCE – Whakarongo Mai.

VOYCE is an independent charitable trust for children and young people in foster care.

The funders harnessed ‘the power of four’ to generate significant change in the foster care system. They are The Tindall Foundation, the Todd Foundation, the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation (Vodafone Foundation) and Foundation North.

The focus in the report is on the funders’ experience of the VOYCE collaboration, which also included care-experienced children and young people, central government, iwi and the foster care sector. The funders wanted to “identify what we learned and what works, so we can do it again; to show what collaboration looks like to us”. The journey that led to the April 2017 establishment of VOYCE from the funders’ perspective is shared, then lessons and key messages arising.