April 19, 2022

The invasion of Ukraine reminds us why the world needs the United Nations—and why it’s important for global businesses and Civil Society Organizations to engage effectively with the UN.

Saniye Gülser Corat was Director of Gender Equity at UNESCO for sixteen years. She now serves on a UN Sustainable Development Goals task force and leads Coopersmith Law + Strategy’s Public-Private Partnership team. Gülser offers insight into how to deliver sustainable, scalable results when working with the UN:

Curate projects. Focus resources on high-impact projects most aligned with the organization’s values. Resist the temptation to do smaller things that diffuse resources and impact.

Select capable partners. Select UN partner organizations based on their  capabilities and strengths. Collaborate with multiple UN entities in order to leverage their respective assets, create healthy competition for funding and capacity building, and improve performance.

Look beyond title and rank. There is tremendous talent throughout the UN family. The challenge is how to find the right talent for your needs. Title and rank alone are not signifiers. Once identified, the challenge becomes how to keep your project progressing among the many competing demands on the U.N.’s bandwidth.

Maintain influence over the project lifecycle. For most PPPs, the launch is the simple and fun part. Too often, though, projects end up underperforming. Creating alignment and maintaining influence are key to increasing the likelihood of success. Being an active partner means helping to execute the strategy and to adjust when inevitable barriers are encountered.