Why do we cooperate? For many years, the Belgrade Open School team has been continuously working on strengthening the capacity of the civil sector, its professionalization and establishing itself as an equal actor standing side by side with the public and private sectors. In these efforts, we conducted several researches and analyzes aimed at examining and discovering the capacities of civil society organizations to advocate publicly, but also to openly engage in dialogue with public authorities. Guided by the idea that dialogue and cooperation are some of the basic drivers of positive changes in society, and that the need for change strengthens democratic capacities, we came to the question of how else can changes be encouraged in order to build a better society based on freedom, knowledge and innovation?

The answer we came up with is – through partnerships. Although there are no concrete data to confirm this, the main impression is that there are not enough partnerships in our society. By that we mean all forms of partnerships and cooperation, but what particularly caught our attention concerns intersectoral cooperation, that is, cooperation between two sectors - for-profit and non-profit. At first glance, it can be assumed that these two sectors do not have much in common. Some compete on the market, others on public tenders. Some operate with the aim of maximizing profits, and others with the aim of positive changes in the community. Some respond to shareholders and consumers, others to donors and citizens.

In this regard, you are presented with an analysis that was created as a result of the need for more partnerships, but also more advocacy. The analysis aims to examine cooperation between the business and civil sectors, whether it exists, what the nature of the relationship is, what motivates them and what obstacles members of both sectors face while cooperating.

The research was conducted in 3 segments:

1) desk analysis of previous research at the international and national level,

2) focus groups with civil and business sector representatives in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Užice with the aim of achieving as even a geographical distribution as possible and

3) case studies with representatives of the business and civil sectors that represent examples of successful cooperation.

The final product of our research are concrete recommendations on how to improve cooperation between the business and civil sectors.

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