Developing Corporate Partnerships

Developing Corporate Partnerships with Denise Cranston

Designed to enable not-for-profits to have the confidence to secure amazing corporate partnerships and unlock so much potential to create greater social value, Denise explained what the goal of partnerships should be:

“To support charities and businesses to develop purpose-led partnerships that look beyond the immediate short-term financial results, and focus on building long-term business and societal value, that will create a world in which:

• Business prospers
• Societies thrive
• The environment flourishes

Partnerships exist along a continuum

The type of collaboration you have with a business partner differs along a continuum:

• Philanthropic – Company gives and charity gets
• Transactional  - Both charity and company give and receive in return
• Strategic – Partner organisations align their mission and combine to create new resources rather than exchange existing resources
• Transformational – Together the mission of both parties achieves a “disruptive social innovation” that can transform the lives of beneficiaries and potentially the social landscape.

Denise highlighted case studies where partnerships can bring about positive change. An example of a Transformational partnerships is HSBC and Shelter. This relationship resulted in the creation of a bank account for homeless people meaning that homelessness is being tackled directly by supporting beneficiaries who now have a means to access benefits, pay rent, and secure a job. Certainly, donating money could help Shelter address homelessness but this action changes lives.

A poll of the participants revealed that 39% had no partnership, 45% stated they had a transactional partnership, 16% strategic, and none had a transformational partnership.

How to shape your approach to corporate partnerships

For charitable organisations to recognise what they could bring to a partnership it’s best to see the world through the company’s eyes noting the challenges they face and additional goals behind their businesses operations beyond profit making.

For example, the climate in which businesses operate has changed since the pandemic.

• Employees may now be working remotely meaning businesses have to work harder to build their company’s culture and team’s motivation.
• Businesses are driven to be attractive to employees, consumers, and investors but their actions mean more than words to these stakeholders.
• The cost-of-living crisis often results in costs being passed onto consumers, so business may look to offset this by giving back to the community and maintain a positive public image.

Such factors offer an opportunity for the voluntary and community sector to potentially help firms establish attractive qualities, meet regulations, and achieve social impact.  So, could you as an organisation offer a business a way to meet this need?

How to Engage Corporates

Purpose-led businesses place a purpose at the core of everything they do, throughout their operations, and in the decisions they make, to deliver wider stakeholder value and appeal.

Identifying a shared purpose behind your partnership can help organisations see opportunities for collaboration. Start by looking at what you both have in common within each of your mission statements. It may not be instantly recognisable, but it is possible to see a path to developing an engaging partnership.

Denise highlighted a local example.

Glow NI’s mission is:

To empower women and girls in Northern Ireland (and beyond) to discover their true identity and purpose so they can achieve their full potential.

They partnered with local business bBold whose mission is:

Passionate about affordable products that provide breath-taking results.

Together, their shared purpose is:

“We both empower women to glow inside and outside”.

Beyond profits

The bottom line for corporate partnerships is remembering that where businesses are high in resources, they are often low in meaning whereas not-for-profit organisations are the opposite, so combining your efforts has dividends for both parties.

Securing a corporate partner can bring in added resources and funds, but successful partnerships can also extend your organisation’s reach, add value to both parties’ work, and achieve a bigger impact on society.

To really maximise on the partnership, charities should support the relationship with well-thought out communications.  

The Importance of Communications with Louise Heatley

Louise explained that your communications activity can contribute to maximising potential partnerships with corporates.

Good communications and PR can:

• inspire existing supporters
• attract new partnerships /donors,
• raise your profile with key stakeholders,
• give a good return or ‘pay-back’ to your funders and corporate supporters, and
• demonstrate why your organisation needs support alongside funding often displaying your integrity in how you manage any funds you have received.

The more people know about your organisation and its over-arching goals, the more likely they will be to support you.

Therefore, it’s key to ensure your communications activity includes over-arching messages about your work and how people can and should support you. For this to be done well, you should create a Communications Plan.

Create a Communications Plan

Louise discussed the main elements of a Communications Plan:

• Conduct a situation analysis.
• Set communications objectives: what are you trying to achieve? (Align these to your broader organisational objectives.)
• Identify and clearly define your target audiences.
• Agree on your key messages (over-arching and broken down by audience).
• Identify the tools and tactics you will use to communicate with your target audiences (e.g. press releases, newsletters, social media, advertising / marketing, etc.).
• Establish a system for monitoring impact and measuring results.

Engagement and Interactivity

Engaging with audiences can be done via your printed materials (collateral), website, social media, and other channels. But Louise stressed that communication is all about interactivity and engagement - don’t just share information about you and your organisation.

Make sure to engage in two-way conversations, for example, when using social media spend time retweeting, quoting tweets, commenting on other people’s posts, etc., as well as including calls to action for your followers.

WorkEqual

Highlighting the case of WorkEqual, Louise demonstrated how this organisation’s messaging and focus evolved from not only supporting women re/entering the workforce by providing new businesswear and coaching, but also to one that had a much stronger message of gender equality leading them to rebrand from Dress for Success Dublin to Work Equal  - a more politicised campaign, supported by stakeholders and corporate partners, commanding the attention of politicians, and raising and leveraging funds in excess of £250,000.

Contact:

	Denise Cranston Head of Partnerships Practice at 2into3 can be contacted at [email protected] (01) 584 5983
	Louise Heatley, Head of Alice Public Relations NI can be contacted by email at louise@alicepr.com.