The cost of maintaining a partnership is an item that almost no school budgets for, because it never shows up as a specific line item.
But it’s real, and it’s why many schools have a long partner list where hardly any relationship is actually active: resources get spread too thin across too many relationships.
This guide outlines six real cost categories, how to build a budget estimate, and how to decide whether to keep or end a relationship.
Why this cost gets overlooked
Three reasons why maintenance cost is nearly invisible in every budget.
It’s mostly time, not money. Time spent answering emails, preparing for meetings, writing reports, updating materials. These items don’t pass through accounting, so no one counts them.
It’s spread out over time. A business trip is a large, visible expense. Spending two hours a month on a relationship is not.
It arises after the project has already been approved. Budgets are usually set for the establishment phase, and no one goes back to account for the maintenance portion.
The practical consequence: a school signs up more partners because the initial cost looks low, then finds the team overloaded without understanding why.
Six cost categories of maintaining a partnership
Category one: time spent on routine communication. Answering emails, handling questions, coordinating. For an active relationship, this usually takes a few hours a month.
Category two: periodic meetings. Preparing content, attending, and writing minutes. A one-hour meeting actually costs about three hours once preparation and note-taking are included.
With time zone differences, add the hidden cost of meetings held outside normal working hours.
Category three: updating materials. Capability profiles, program catalogs, cost information. Every update requires drafting, translating, and reviewing.
Category four: operating costs for each activity. Organizing joint projects, webinars, coordinating exchanges. This is the most visible category.
Category five: keeping the relationship warm when there’s no active work. Periodic newsletters, sharing information, seasonal greetings. Small but necessary, and if dropped, the relationship goes cold.
Category six: handover costs when staff change. A new person needs time to get up to speed, and during that period the relationship tends to slow down. This item arises unevenly but can be significant.
Building a budget estimate
A simple three-column table is enough for decision-making.
Column one: each partner relationship.
Column two: estimated time per month, in hours, covering all six categories.
Column three: monetary cost per year, if any.
For column two, the most realistic way to estimate is to ask the person in charge directly: roughly how many hours a month do you spend on this relationship. Their figure is usually far more accurate than a top-down estimate.
After filling it in, add up column two. Total hours per month divided by standard working hours will show how much staffing international cooperation activity is actually consuming.
This figure is usually much larger than expected, and it explains why the department in charge is always overloaded.
Three maintenance levels
Not every relationship needs the same level of investment. Sorting into three levels helps allocate resources sensibly.
Fully active level. Has an ongoing joint activity, regular meetings, frequent exchange. This is the most costly level and should be reserved for relationships that produce real results.
Minimum maintenance level. No ongoing activity, but contact is kept, twice a year, each a short letter. Cost is nearly zero but keeps the relationship alive.
Dormant level. No proactive contact, only responding when the partner reaches out. Suitable for relationships that have run out of content but aren’t ready to be ended outright.
A common mistake is keeping every relationship at the first level, or letting all of them drift into the third level without intent. Both misallocate resources.
The level assignment should be reviewed every year, and a relationship can move up or down as circumstances change.
How many relationships a school should maintain
There’s no single right number for every school, but there is a practical way to calculate it.
Take the total hours the school can realistically allocate to international activity each month, and divide by the average hours a fully active relationship consumes.
The result is usually much smaller than the number of relationships that exist on paper.
A logical example: if a school has one full-time position for this work, and each fully active relationship costs about a tenth of that time, then the number of relationships sustainable at the full level is about ten. The rest must sit at the minimum or dormant level.
The key point: this isn’t a reason not to expand, but a reason to sort levels clearly. A school with forty agreements where eight are fully active is still far better off than one with forty agreements all sitting at a half-hearted level.
Deciding to keep or end a relationship
At review time, three questions help decide.
What has this relationship produced over the past two years? If there’s been no activity at all, the answer is already clear.
How does the maintenance cost compare with the value received? A relationship that costs five hours a month but produces only one small activity a year is taking up space that could go to another relationship.
Is there a reason beyond results to keep it? Sometimes there is: a strategically important relationship for the future, or a partner going through a temporarily difficult period. These reasons are valid but should be stated explicitly rather than assumed by default.
If the decision is to end it, moving it to dormant level is usually better than terminating it outright, since it preserves the ability to reconnect without consuming resources.
When you need to place your own level of investment in comparative context, data on education spending from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides a general reference.
Reducing maintenance cost without reducing quality
Four practices that let the same resources serve more relationships.
Standardize materials. One capability profile used for every partner takes far less effort than drafting a separate one for each.
Combine meetings. For partners in the same region or field, a joint session can replace separate meetings with each.
Use a shared update letter. A short newsletter sent to the entire partner network, twice a year, replaces most of the communication needed at the minimum maintenance level.
Keep records systematically. Much of the time gets consumed searching for old information. A well-organized shared repository saves more than any other measure.
The third practice stands out for being cheap and effective: a single newsletter keeps dozens of partners in touch at once.
Building this cost into planning
Three things to do when planning a new partnership.
Budget for three years of maintenance cost, not just the setup cost.
Set the expected maintenance level from the outset, and adjust after the first year based on actual results.
Check total workload. Before adding a new relationship, check how many hours are already committed and whether the team has any capacity left.
The third action is the one most often skipped, and that’s why the department in charge often ends up overloaded without anyone noticing until someone asks to quit.
For content related to recognition of academic outcomes in cooperative activities, the framework of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a shared reference document that reduces the time both sides spend discussing it.
Summary
The cost of maintaining a partnership consists of six categories, most of which are time rather than money, which is why it never shows up in any budget.
The way to handle it is to build a time estimate table for each relationship, then sort them into three maintenance levels rather than keeping every relationship at the same level.
And before adding a new partner, check the current total workload, since that is the most common cause of the responsible department becoming overloaded.
Next Steps
Ask the person in charge of international cooperation at your school one question: roughly how many hours a month do you spend on each partner relationship.
Add them up and divide by the number of working hours in the month. The resulting figure usually shows that this activity is consuming far more staff time than officially recorded.
