Partnerships, Community Investment and Social Impact

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) increasingly depends on an organisation’s ability to work with others. Complex social problems—poverty, unemployment, public-health inequality, educational exclusion, climate vulnerability and community displacement—rarely can be solved by a company acting alone. Effective CSR therefore requires partnerships with community organisations, public agencies, social enterprises, universities, employees, customers and sometimes competitors.

Partnerships create access to knowledge, legitimacy, local relationships and delivery capacity. They can also create risks. A poorly designed partnership may reproduce unequal power relationships, displace local organisations, create dependency, expose beneficiaries to harm, or allow a company to claim social value that would have occurred without its involvement. Professional CSR leadership must therefore connect purpose, strategy, governance, implementation and impact assessment.

This chapter examines how organisations can design community investment, employee volunteering and social innovation initiatives; select suitable partners; establish safeguards; manage community relationships; and assess outputs, outcomes, additionality and longer-term impact.

Learning objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Distinguish philanthropy, community investment, employee volunteering, social innovation and cross-sector partnership.
2. Align community initiatives with stakeholder needs and organisational strategy without subordinating community interests to commercial objectives.
3. Identify and assess potential partners using transparent criteria.
4. Design partnership governance, safeguarding, accountability and exit arrangements.
5. Develop employee volunteering programmes that create value while avoiding tokenism and unintended harm.
6. Construct a practical theory of change and distinguish inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, impact and additionality.
7. Select appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods for evaluating social impact.
8. Apply these principles to a realistic CSR partnership scenario.

1. The meaning and scope of community investment

Community investment is the planned allocation of organisational resources to improve social, economic, cultural or environmental conditions in communities connected to the organisation. Resources may include money, staff time, expertise, facilities, technology, procurement opportunities, data and advocacy.

Community investment is broader than charitable giving. A donation may transfer resources to a worthy cause, but community investment normally involves a defined objective, a relationship with stakeholders, a delivery plan and an assessment of results. It may be strategic, but “strategic” should not mean that commercial benefit is the only measure of legitimacy. A responsible programme creates a defensible relationship between organisational capabilities and community priorities.

Common forms include:

• grants to community-based organisations;
• investment in education, employability, health or local infrastructure;
• support for social enterprises and inclusive supply chains;
• low-cost products or services for underserved groups;
• employee volunteering and skills-based support;
• community-led environmental restoration;
• impact-oriented investment and blended finance; and
• partnerships that influence public policy or systems.

Philanthropy, shared value and social investment

Traditional philanthropy is primarily motivated by charitable purpose. Corporate philanthropy may provide immediate relief, but it can be episodic, donor-led and weakly connected to local decision-making. Community investment attempts to achieve more durable benefits through planning, participation and learning.

The shared-value perspective argues that companies can address social problems while strengthening competitiveness—for example, by improving workforce skills or developing affordable products. This can encourage innovation and resource mobilisation. However, it has limitations. Not every social need produces a commercial return, and communities should not be treated merely as markets or sources of reputational advantage. A responsible approach recognises both social value and legitimate organisational interests, while managing conflicts transparently.

Social investment refers to the deliberate use of financial or non-financial capital to generate social outcomes, often with a longer time horizon than charitable donations. It may include recoverable loans, guarantees, equity in social enterprises or outcome-based contracts. Social investment requires careful attention to risk, affordability, power and the possibility that financial requirements could distort social priorities.

2. Social innovation and cross-sector partnerships

Social innovation is the development or adoption of new ideas, relationships, processes, products or institutional arrangements that address social needs more effectively, fairly or sustainably than existing approaches. Innovation is not necessarily technological. A community-managed service, a new referral process or a revised procurement model may be socially innovative.

Cross-sector partnerships bring together organisations with different resources, incentives and accountabilities. A business may contribute finance, logistics, engineering or management expertise; a government agency may provide statutory authority and public infrastructure; a non-governmental organisation may contribute trust and local knowledge; and a university may contribute research and evaluation.

A partnership is not simply a collection of organisations signing a memorandum. It involves interdependence: each party contributes something necessary to the agreed objective. Partnerships are most valuable where:

• the problem is complex and no single actor controls the solution;
• stakeholders possess complementary resources;
• decisions require local legitimacy;
• learning and adaptation are important; and
• sustained coordination is more useful than isolated projects.

Partnerships may be classified by purpose:

The greater the ambition, the more important it becomes to clarify authority, risk, decision rights and accountability.

3. Designing an effective community initiative

Begin with a community-defined problem

A common failure is to begin with an organisation’s preferred solution—such as distributing computers, building a facility or offering a short training course—rather than understanding the problem. A sound design process begins with stakeholder analysis and a needs assessment.

Stakeholder analysis should identify:

• affected groups and their differing interests;
• people who are often excluded from formal consultation;
• existing local capabilities and assets;
• potential harms and unintended consequences;
• legal, cultural and political constraints; and
• the relationship between the issue and the organisation’s operations.

Consultation must be more than asking for approval after a decision has been made. Participation may range from information sharing to joint decision-making or community control. The appropriate level depends on the potential impact and the community’s rights and interests.

Build a theory of change

A theory of change explains how resources and activities are expected to contribute to desired change. It should identify assumptions and external conditions rather than presenting a linear chain as certainty.

A practical structure is:

Inputs → Activities → Outputs → Outcomes → Impact

Inputs include funding, staff, facilities and partner capability. Activities are what the programme does. Outputs are immediate, countable products or services. Outcomes are changes in knowledge, behaviour, access, condition or institutional practice. Impact refers to significant, lasting changes in people’s lives, communities or systems.

For example, a digital-employability programme may use finance and volunteer mentors (inputs) to deliver training and job-search support (activities), producing completed courses and mentoring sessions (outputs). Participants may then gain digital confidence, obtain employment and experience increased income (outcomes). Longer-term impact might include improved household security and reduced exclusion, although these results may depend on economic conditions beyond the programme.

A theory of change should state assumptions such as the relevance of the curriculum, the availability of jobs, participants’ ability to attend and the absence of discrimination in recruitment. Testing assumptions is a central leadership responsibility.

Define objectives and indicators

Objectives should be specific enough to guide action but not so narrow that they encourage gaming. Indicators may be quantitative or qualitative and should be selected for decision usefulness, not simply ease of collection.

Indicators should be disaggregated where ethically and practically appropriate—for example by gender, age, disability, income or location. Disaggregation can reveal whether aggregate success conceals unequal outcomes. Personal data must be collected only for legitimate purposes, protected securely and handled in accordance with applicable privacy law and informed-consent requirements.

4. Selecting and managing partners

Partner selection is both a strategic and ethical decision. An organisation with strong public visibility may not have the best local capability, while a small community group may possess deep legitimacy but require support with financial systems or reporting.

A partner assessment should consider:

1. Mission and values: Is the partner’s purpose compatible with the initiative?
2. Community legitimacy: Do affected people trust and recognise the organisation?
3. Capability: Can it deliver safely, inclusively and reliably?
4. Governance: Are roles, oversight and financial controls adequate?
5. Safeguarding: Does it protect children, adults at risk, employees and volunteers?
6. Financial integrity: Are funds managed transparently and proportionately?
7. Learning capacity: Can it collect evidence and adapt practice?
8. Independence: Can it raise concerns or disagree without retaliation?
9. Sustainability: Can benefits continue after the initial funding period?
10. Risk profile: Are legal, political, security, corruption or reputational risks manageable?

Due diligence should be proportionate. Excessive requirements can exclude smaller local organisations and transfer administrative costs to those least able to bear them. A useful approach is to distinguish non-negotiable safeguards from capacity gaps that can be addressed through support.

The partnership agreement should specify the purpose, contributions, budget, milestones, decision rights, reporting, intellectual property, data protection, safeguarding, incident reporting, audit access, communications, dispute resolution, termination and exit arrangements. It should also state who owns assets and relationships created by the programme.

Power and equity in partnerships

Partnerships are rarely equal. A corporation may control finance, branding and access to decision-makers, while a community organisation bears delivery risk and depends on continued funding. Ethical partnership management therefore requires attention to power.

Good practice includes paying for reasonable participation, funding core capacity where necessary, avoiding unrealistic reporting burdens, sharing credit, recognising local knowledge and enabling confidential complaints. Community representatives should have meaningful influence over priorities and changes to the programme. A partner should not be required to endorse corporate claims that it cannot substantiate.

5. Safeguarding and responsible community relationships

Safeguarding means preventing and responding to abuse, exploitation, neglect, discrimination and other harm. It applies particularly where programmes involve children, older people, people with disabilities, displaced populations or people in situations of economic dependence.

A safeguarding framework should include:

• risk assessment before activities begin;
• codes of conduct for staff, volunteers and partners;
• appropriate recruitment and background checks;
• clear supervision and boundaries;
• accessible, confidential reporting channels;
• survivor-centred response procedures;
• referral pathways to qualified services;
• training and periodic refreshers; and
• protection against retaliation.

Consent must be informed, voluntary and capable of withdrawal. A participant’s agreement to appear in a photograph or provide data should not be assumed merely because they receive services. Communications should avoid portraying beneficiaries as helpless or using suffering to create emotional appeal.

Community relationships also require honesty about constraints. Leaders should avoid promising jobs, services or infrastructure that cannot be delivered. They should explain selection criteria, time limits and possible changes. Where a project may create land, livelihood, cultural or environmental impacts, engagement must occur early enough to influence the decision. In relevant contexts, internationally recognised principles concerning Indigenous peoples, including free, prior and informed consent, may apply.

6. Employee volunteering: design and management

Employee volunteering can contribute skills, strengthen employee engagement and build understanding of social issues. It becomes problematic when it displaces paid local work, imposes short-term solutions, or treats communities as training grounds for employees.

A robust programme distinguishes three forms:

• Time-based volunteering: employees contribute general assistance.
• Skills-based volunteering: employees apply professional expertise, such as accounting, engineering, legal or marketing skills.
• Board or pro bono service: employees provide continuing governance or specialist support.

Programme design should address selection, preparation, supervision, working hours, insurance, expenses, accessibility, safeguarding and evaluation. Volunteers should receive cultural and contextual preparation and understand that they are supporting partner-led work rather than directing it.

Volunteering is most effective when the partner defines the need and when assignments are long enough to produce value. For example, a finance employee may help a social enterprise establish cash-flow controls over several months. A one-day activity may still be useful for environmental restoration or logistical support, but its limits should be acknowledged.

Employers should not make volunteering effectively compulsory or penalise employees who cannot participate because of disability, caring responsibilities, religion or other legitimate circumstances. Recognition should value contribution without turning community service into a competition for visibility.

7. Measuring outputs, outcomes, impact and additionality

Impact assessment asks not only what happened, but what changed, for whom, compared with what would otherwise have happened, and whether the change is likely to last.

Outputs and outcomes

Outputs are under the programme’s relatively direct control: services delivered, participants reached or products produced. Outcomes are changes experienced by stakeholders. A programme can achieve excellent outputs and weak outcomes—for example, delivering many training sessions that do not improve employment.

Additionality

Additionality is the extent to which observed change is attributable to the intervention rather than to factors that would have produced the change anyway. A simple conceptual expression is:

The “without” condition is called the counterfactual. It is often difficult to observe because the same people cannot simultaneously receive and not receive an intervention. Evaluation methods may include comparison groups, phased implementation, before-and-after measurement, contribution analysis, qualitative case studies and mixed methods.

The expression is a conceptual framework, not a claim that all social change can be reduced to one precise number. It is most useful when the outcome is clearly defined and the counterfactual is credible. Where randomised trials are feasible and ethical, they may provide strong evidence of causal effects. In many CSR settings, however, communities are small, interventions are adaptive, and randomisation is impractical or inappropriate. In such cases, triangulation is important: combine administrative data, participant perspectives, partner evidence and independent observation.

Avoiding false attribution

A company should distinguish:

• Contribution: the initiative plausibly helped produce the result alongside other actors.
• Attribution: the result can be causally linked to the initiative with stronger evidence.
• Association: the initiative and result occurred together, but causality is uncertain.

Responsible reports should disclose external influences, negative effects, incomplete participation and missing data. They should not count volunteer hours as social impact, or equate money spent with lives improved.

Cost and value measures

Cost-effectiveness compares resources with a defined outcome, such as cost per participant completing training. It is meaningful only when the outcome definition and quality are clear. Social return on investment (SROI) may monetise social outcomes, but monetisation requires contestable assumptions about financial proxies, deadweight, displacement, attribution and drop-off. It should therefore be treated as an interpretive decision tool, not an objective market price for human wellbeing.

If a programme uses an impact ratio, a general form is:

The numerator and denominator must be defined consistently, and the result has no meaningful comparison across programmes unless valuation methods, time periods, populations and assumptions are comparable. Non-monetary evidence remains essential.

Long-term impact and learning

Long-term assessment may require follow-up after funding ends. Indicators should examine persistence, scale, equity, unintended effects, institutionalisation and resilience. Evaluation should be used for learning rather than only for public relations. A partnership review should ask what should be continued, adapted, transferred or stopped.

8. Governance, ethics and accountability

CSR partnerships raise governance questions at board, executive and programme levels. The board or relevant committee should oversee material social risks, alignment with organisational values, major financial commitments and public claims. Executives should allocate responsibility, resources and escalation routes. Programme managers should maintain operational controls and stakeholder communication.

Key ethical issues include:

• conflicts of interest in partner selection;
• political or religious neutrality where appropriate;
• corruption, bribery and diversion of funds;
• exploitation of beneficiary stories and images;
• data protection and surveillance;
• discrimination in access to services;
• dependency on a single funder;
• greenwashing or social-washing; and
• corporate influence over independent civil society organisations.

A partnership should not be used to evade legal duties. For example, community investment does not compensate for unsafe working conditions, pollution, tax avoidance or labour-rights violations. The first responsibility remains to prevent and remedy harm arising from core operations and value chains.

9. Technology and AI in community programmes

Digital platforms can extend access, coordinate volunteers, monitor services and support data analysis. Artificial intelligence may help identify service gaps, translate materials or analyse unstructured feedback. However, technology can intensify exclusion through poor connectivity, inaccessible design, biased models and automated decisions that are difficult to challenge.

Before using AI, leaders should establish the purpose, data provenance, accuracy requirements, human oversight, appeal process, security controls and responsibility for errors. Sensitive personal data should not be collected or inferred merely because it is technically possible. Community members should know when automated tools affect them and should have access to human review. Technology should support relationships and professional judgement, not replace accountability.

10. Applied case: the Riverside Skills Partnership

This is an illustrative fictional case.

Background

Riverside is a manufacturing company operating near a town with high youth unemployment. The company wants to support employability and anticipates difficulty recruiting technicians over the next five years. A local youth organisation, municipal employment service and technical college already provide disconnected services.

Problem

Riverside initially proposes a twelve-week workshop delivered by employee volunteers. The youth organisation warns that previous short programmes produced certificates but few jobs. Young women, people with disabilities and participants without reliable transport are underrepresented in technical training.

Analysis

A joint needs assessment finds four barriers: limited access to equipment, weak employer networks, transport costs and low confidence among participants. It also finds existing strengths: the college has instructors, the youth organisation has community trust, and the municipality can coordinate transport and employment data. The partners agree that the objective is not simply course completion but sustained access to decent work.

Approach and safeguards

A steering group gives each sector equal voting representation and reserves two seats for young participants. Riverside funds the programme but cannot unilaterally change eligibility or publish participant stories. The youth organisation leads recruitment; the college leads training; the municipality coordinates transport and employer referrals; Riverside provides paid placements and mentors.

Safeguards include consent procedures, accessible facilities, safeguarding training, a confidential complaints route, data-sharing agreements and a prohibition on unpaid productive labour being presented as employment experience. An independent evaluator designs the baseline and follow-up study.

The theory of change links equipment access and training to skills, confidence, interviews and placements. Indicators include completion, assessment results, participant-reported confidence, interviews, placement quality and employment retained after six and twelve months. Results are disaggregated by gender, disability and neighbourhood. A comparison with eligible applicants placed on a later programme provides a cautiously interpreted counterfactual.

Outcome

After eighteen months, completion and placement rates improve, particularly after transport support is introduced. The evaluation finds that mentoring and employer interviews appear to contribute strongly, but local labour demand also increased during the period. The partners therefore report contribution rather than claiming that Riverside alone created the employment gains. They also discover that some participants left because placement schedules conflicted with caring responsibilities, leading to a redesign.

Learning points

The case demonstrates that effective partnership is co-designed rather than donated. It links corporate capability to community priorities, treats equity as a design requirement, protects participant rights, measures outcomes beyond activity counts and reports uncertainty honestly. It also shows that adaptation is evidence of responsible management, not necessarily programme failure.

Challenges and limitations

Community initiatives face recurring difficulties. Social problems have multiple causes, so impact may emerge slowly and unevenly. Funders may prefer visible short-term outputs while communities need patient investment in organisational capacity. Evaluation can burden small partners, and causal inference is often limited. Partnerships may also become symbolic coalitions in which organisations attend meetings without sharing authority or resources.

Another risk is mission drift. A community organisation may alter its priorities to secure funding, while a company may select projects primarily for brand visibility. Short funding cycles can produce dependency and discourage long-term planning. Finally, exit can cause harm if services are withdrawn abruptly. Responsible exit requires early notice, transition planning, local ownership and honest communication about what cannot continue.

Best-practice principles for CSR leaders

1. Start with rights, needs and local capability, not corporate publicity.
2. Address harms from core operations before presenting community investment as responsibility.
3. Define the problem jointly and document the theory of change.
4. Select partners for legitimacy and capability, not only reputation.
5. Match reporting and compliance requirements to risk and partner capacity.
6. Put safeguarding, data protection and complaints mechanisms in place before delivery.
7. Treat employees as supporters and learners, not rescuers.
8. Measure outputs, outcomes, equity, additionality and unintended effects.
9. Report contribution and uncertainty honestly.
10. Plan sustainability and exit from the beginning.
11. Share decision-making, credit and learning with community partners.
12. Use evaluation to improve practice, discontinue weak interventions and allocate resources responsibly.

Chapter Summary

Partnerships, community investment and social impact are central applications of CSR strategy and leadership. Community investment is more than charitable giving: it involves planned resource allocation, stakeholder participation, implementation and learning. Social innovation can involve new technologies, services, processes or relationships, while cross-sector partnerships combine complementary resources to address problems no single organisation can solve.

Effective initiatives begin with community-defined needs and a clear theory of change linking inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact. Partner selection should consider legitimacy, capability, governance, safeguarding, financial integrity, independence and sustainability. Agreements must define roles, decision rights, data responsibilities, reporting, dispute resolution and exit arrangements. Power differences require equitable participation, reasonable funding and protection for partners that raise concerns.

Employee volunteering creates value when it is partner-led, properly prepared, inclusive and sufficiently skilled. Safeguarding, informed consent, privacy and respectful communication are essential. Impact assessment must distinguish outputs from outcomes and consider the counterfactual. Additionality concerns the change beyond what would have occurred without the intervention, but causal claims should reflect the quality of evidence. Quantitative indicators should be complemented by qualitative accounts, disaggregation and independent scrutiny.

Finally, CSR leaders must recognise that community investment cannot substitute for responsible core operations. Ethical partnerships prevent harm, share power, report uncertainty and plan for sustainability. Their success is measured not by expenditure or publicity, but by credible, equitable and durable improvement in community conditions.

Key Terms

Community investment: Planned allocation of organisational resources to improve social, economic, cultural or environmental conditions in communities.

Cross-sector partnership: Collaboration among organisations from different sectors that combine complementary resources and responsibilities.

Social innovation: A new or improved idea, process, relationship or arrangement that addresses a social need more effectively or fairly.

Philanthropy: Voluntary transfer of resources for charitable or public-benefit purposes.

Social investment: Use of financial or non-financial capital to generate social outcomes, sometimes alongside a financial return.

Theory of change: An explanation of how activities and assumptions are expected to produce outcomes and impact.

Input: A resource invested in a programme.

Activity: An action undertaken by a programme.

Output: An immediate product or service delivered by an intervention.

Outcome: A change in behaviour, condition, access, knowledge or experience resulting from an intervention.

Impact: Significant and lasting change in people, communities or systems.

Additionality: The extent to which change occurred because of an intervention beyond what would otherwise have occurred.

Counterfactual: The estimated result that would have occurred without the intervention.

Safeguarding: Measures to prevent and respond to abuse, exploitation, neglect and other harm.

Stakeholder legitimacy: The degree to which an organisation is trusted and recognised by affected stakeholders.

Skills-based volunteering: Volunteering in which employees apply professional or technical expertise.

Contribution: The plausible role an intervention plays among several causes of an observed result.

Disaggregation: Analysis of results separately for relevant demographic or social groups.

Social washing: Misleading presentation of limited or ineffective social activity as substantial responsibility.

SROI: Social return on investment, an approach that estimates social value relative to investment using explicit valuation assumptions.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. How does community investment differ from a one-off charitable donation?
2. What is the difference between an output and an outcome?
3. Identify four criteria for selecting a community partner.
4. Why is safeguarding important in CSR partnerships?
5. What does additionality mean in impact assessment?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how a theory of change can improve the design and evaluation of a community investment programme.
2. Discuss the ethical challenges created by unequal power between a corporation and a community organisation.
3. Compare time-based, skills-based and board-level employee volunteering.
4. Explain why a company should report contribution and uncertainty rather than automatically claiming attribution.
5. Evaluate the governance provisions that should be included in a cross-sector partnership agreement.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A company funds 500 training places, but only 40 participants obtain sustained employment. Analyse what additional information is needed before judging the programme’s impact.
2. Design a theory of change and three outcome indicators for an employee volunteering programme supporting a small social enterprise.
3. A community partner objects to the company’s proposed use of participant photographs in advertising. Recommend an ethical and practical response, including relevant safeguards.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes an output from an outcome?

A. An output is a long-term social change, while an outcome is a financial input.

B. An output is a product or service delivered, while an outcome is a change experienced by stakeholders.

C. An output is always qualitative, while an outcome is always quantitative.

D. An output is the counterfactual, while an outcome is the intervention.

Correct Answer: B. An output is a product or service delivered, while an outcome is a change experienced by stakeholders.

Question 2

What is the principal purpose of a theory of change?

A. To guarantee that a programme will succeed

B. To replace the need for stakeholder consultation

C. To explain how activities are expected to produce outcomes and impact

D. To calculate the market value of volunteer hours

Correct Answer: C. To explain how activities are expected to produce outcomes and impact

Question 3

Which criterion most directly concerns whether a partner is trusted by affected communities?

A. Community legitimacy

B. Brand visibility

C. Share-price performance

D. Advertising reach

Correct Answer: A. Community legitimacy

Question 4

Additionality refers to:

A. The total amount spent on a programme

B. The number of organisations in a partnership

C. The change that would have occurred without the intervention

D. The change produced by the intervention beyond what would otherwise have occurred

Correct Answer: D. The change produced by the intervention beyond what would otherwise have occurred

Question 5

Which is the strongest example of skills-based volunteering?

A. Employees attend a charity gala

B. Employees provide professional accounting support to a social enterprise

C. Employees receive a company newsletter about poverty

D. Employees make an unrestricted personal donation

Correct Answer: B. Employees provide professional accounting support to a social enterprise

Question 6

Why should impact results often be disaggregated?

A. To hide poor aggregate performance

B. To reveal whether different groups experience unequal results

C. To eliminate the need for privacy protections

D. To ensure every participant receives the same outcome

Correct Answer: B. To reveal whether different groups experience unequal results

Question 7

Which practice is most consistent with responsible safeguarding?

A. Using participant stories without consent if the programme is beneficial

B. Allowing volunteers to work unsupervised with children

C. Providing confidential reporting channels and clear response procedures

D. Treating complaints as reputational threats rather than safety information

Correct Answer: C. Providing confidential reporting channels and clear response procedures

Question 8

A programme reports many workshops delivered but no evidence of changed employment outcomes. What is the most accurate conclusion?

A. The programme has proven long-term impact

B. The programme has demonstrated outputs but not necessarily outcomes

C. The programme has established additionality

D. The programme has failed because all outputs are irrelevant

Correct Answer: B. The programme has demonstrated outputs but not necessarily outcomes

Question 9

Which statement best describes contribution?

A. The intervention is the only possible cause of a result

B. The intervention plausibly helped produce a result alongside other factors

C. The result would certainly have occurred without the intervention

D. The intervention’s budget equals its social impact

Correct Answer: B. The intervention plausibly helped produce a result alongside other factors

Question 10

Why can excessive due-diligence requirements be problematic for small community organisations?

A. They always improve local legitimacy

B. They may exclude capable organisations or transfer disproportionate administrative burdens to them

C. They eliminate all safeguarding risks

D. They guarantee financial sustainability

Correct Answer: B. They may exclude capable organisations or transfer disproportionate administrative burdens to them