This research explores collaborative societal governance by developing a theoretical framework for resource governance in partnerships between social enterprises and beneficiary communities. While the social benefits of such partnerships are well documented and include critical social value outcomes, such as leveraging community knowledge, promoting community empowerment, and increasing the capacity of the social enterprise to scale, much less is known about the collaborative governance arrangements that might best promote creation of social value. We argue that social value creation will be greatest when the ownership and control of key resources take into consideration the communities’ perceptions of social value and consensus concerning the use of these resources. Using these characteristics, we develop a framework and propose optimal resource governance structure between the social enterprise and beneficiary communities to enhance social value creation in developing countries. We explore the implications of this theoretical framework for value creation within cross-sector social partnerships.