Ten top tips for charity corporate partnerships
Julian Lomas
What makes for a successful partnership between a charity and a corporate?
In recent years we’ve worked with a number of clients on strategies for fundraising from corporates. Surprise, surprise, there is no one magic formula for success but we have noticed a number of common ingredients that we’d like to share. Here are our ten top tips for successful charity-corporate partnerships:
Partnerships are increasingly about how the partners can work together to bring about lasting change than about money alone. The good news is that this tends to result in longer-term partnerships.
There needs to be a good fit between the partners - not just in what they do but also in values and outlook, in size and target audiences/markets. With increasing use of staff nominations to identify charity partners, it helps to have strongly overlapping networks.
Don’t kid yourself that the corporate is in it for purely philanthropic reasons - even though they will want to help deliver lasting change, they also what to build brand capital, gain visibility and reach potential new customers (or at least protect existing customer relationships from competition).
Deliver a meaningful and memorable “brand experience” and audience engagement for the corporate partner. Simple “badging” of publicity materials etc with their logo, “broadcast” messages to your supporters/members and involvement in genetic events is of limited interest. Corporates want targeted access to people or organisations in their target markets and to the the people in target organisations that make purchasing decisions.
Think creatively about the benefits you can offer a corporate partner such as employee volunteering opportunities, access to prestige venues, interesting angles on fundraising etc…
…and think creatively about what benefits you can get from the corporate partner beyond cash, such as volunteers, in-kind contributions (e.g. the partners products/services that you need), publicity, etc.
Do not undervalue your brand and what the corporate will gain (e.g. in repetitional enhancement) from being associated with it. Exclusivity (within the corporate market segment at least) is particularly valuable, so don’t give it away cheaply.
Be confident and clear about the specifics of what’s needed and negotiate hard but fairly. As Gavin Kennedy says “never give an inch, trade it” and be prepared to walk away if the partner wants to take you outside your negotiating range.
Make sure you have data and evidence of the access you can give to supporters/members and for other benefits you are offering. How extensive is the reach of your publicity (including social media)? What is the take up (e.g. percentage of “opens” for an e-newsletter or of “click-throughs”, shares and likes for social media posts?
Agree up front how you will measure/evaluate success (or otherwise) of the partnership from both the charity’s and the corporates perspective.
These are just a few of the common factors we have observed over recent years and in our view the most important ingredients for success.
If you would like to find out more about corporate fundraising or our fundraising services more generally, please contact us at julian@almondtreeconsulting.co.uk to arrange free initial telephone discussion