Grantmakers should encourage partnerships between charities to end the ‘Hunger Games’-style fight for funding, charity lawyers have been told.

During a presentation at the Charity Law Association conference in central London last week, Fozia Irfan, director of impact and influence at BBC Children in Need, said there was “no motivation” to collaborate if organisations were fighting over the same funding pots.

She said that with charities losing sources of funding regularly and demands on their services increasing, the incentive to collaborate was not there.

“I remember when I came into the charity sector, somebody said to me: ‘You’re entering the Hunger Games,’ because literally charities are fighting over each other to get funding,” Irfan said.

“We, as funders, have to take responsibility because we have set this process up.

“I have seen some funders encouraging charities to collaborate and funders themselves have a role where we ourselves need to be role models for what we want to see.”

Irfan said charities and funders need to build collaborative movements because there is no single issue at the moment that one funder or charity can solve by themselves.

“Philanthropy cannot save the UK, we can make things better for communities if we work together in a more co-ordinated way,” she said.

Irfan referred to the work the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was doing with the Civic Power Fund, a UK donor fund dedicated to community organising.

“The Civic Power Fund’s model encourages charities who are doing brilliant work in similar areas to come together and they are also devolving their grant-making powers to those charities and the charities decide between themselves where the funding is going.”

Charities have also been encouraged to work together in different areas, such as explaining climate change to the public.

At the ACF Leaders Forum last month, foundation and trust leaders said charities often feel uncomfortable about investing in internal resources required to increase collaboration.

But the “pain” of collaboration would be worth it in the end because of the good outcomes working together would produce, the conference heard.