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Co-Creation & Multi-Stakeholder Engagement

Lean Startup for Social Innovation

Collective Impact and Partnership Facilitation

Design and Systems Thinking

What We Do

We specialize in working with multi-disciplinary teams, across multiple cultures, and at multiple levels of economic development.

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This modular set of courses teaches our CollaborateUp Formula, the underlying theory and principles of co-creation, along with practical, hands-on approaches and tools for conceiving, convening, creating, managing, and scaling effective collective impact programs.

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Sample Projects

CollaborateUp brings people together around the tough issues they face in common to quickly create innovative solutions using the CollaborateUp Formula.

See Our Work

Faith & COVID-19

DC-Area Faith-Leaders Responding to Coronavirus CollaborateUp and the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, DC hosted an interactive roundtable and media briefing on how faith leaders and faith organizations are responding to the COVID-19 crisis. This is the...

Cyber Security Co-Creation Workshop in Ukraine

Cyber-security is a large-scale problem in the Ukraine, and it doesn’t stop at their borders. It spills over to the United States and eventually becomes a global problem. Cyber threats are sufficient to stall development progress, so USAID/Ukraine brought eight...

Ebola Tech Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) Inter-Operability Co-Design

CollaborateUp supported USAID to convene a cross-sector group of highly technical information systems developers, on-the-ground implementers, end users, and donors to fundamentally reconceive how all these parties manage the interoperability of systems and data across...

VukaNow Combating Wildlife Crime

The recent and rapid increase in the illegal trade in wildlife is a manmade international disaster that threatens the survival of endangered species in southern Africa and is a conservation, environmental and natural resource crisis. After helping USAID/Southern...

CollaborateUp is an innovative, international consulting firm and SBA certified 8(a) small business. We accelerate cooperation among governments, companies, and nonprofits as they tackle some of our world’s toughest challenges.

“Even with a diverse set of stakeholders and a very limited timeframe, the CollaborateUp Formula allowed us cut through a complex set of issues and develop a concrete and pragmatic proposal for tackling a very tough problem. Richard Crespin is exactly what you want in a facilitator, someone able to bring people together to recognize their shared goals and the best ways to achieve them.”

Amit Ronen Director, George Washington University Solar Institute

Extremely practical and extremely easy to implement once you have an understanding of the steps and the formula and the requirements of the process.

– CollaborateUp Academy Participant

“Building up the capacity and capability of nonprofits to make a difference in the world is a core part of the Office Depot Foundation’s mission. CollaborateUp had a really big impact on the nonprofits we support, giving them tools and insights they can use immediately.”

Mary Wong

“I soon discovered that it doesn’t really matter whether your introduction to CollaborateUp is through an issue solving workshop, or at an event as Richard brings all the chaos together with his savvy charm and good humour – the most important thing is that you get to engage and work with these great folks! My biggest take out over the past five years of being a part of their world – collaboration is a process and you’re not going to get very far unless you know what problem you’re all trying to solve together. The CollaborateUp framework helps by asking simple questions to help reveal the big answers.”

Cate O’Kane, Founder, &co partnership consultancy

“I soon discovered that it doesn’t really matter whether your introduction to CollaborateUp is through an issue solving workshop, or at an event as Richard brings all the chaos together with his savvy charm and good humour – the most important thing is that you get to engage and work with these great folks! My biggest take out over the past five years of being a part of their world – collaboration is a process and you’re not going to get very far unless you know what problem you’re all trying to solve together. The CollaborateUp framework helps by asking simple questions to help reveal the big answers.”

Cate O’Kane, Founder, &co partnership consultancy

“The CollaborateUp Workshop gave our delegates a set of tools they can use immediately to collaborate more effectively across multiple departments and organizations.”

Erika Lopez, Global Impact

“The course was great! Great value and great insights into collaborating with various partners in multiple situations. It really change my thought process and how I view situations with our clients and stakeholders.”

CollaborateUp Academy Participant

“The course actually aids with more than just collaboration – it helps drive thinking into issue clarification, meeting handling and setting up, communicating with stakeholders. I loved it!”