We like to set ourselves ambitious goals. Put a man on the moon, end poverty, get your teenagers to clean their rooms. We start hopeful and enthusiastic and sometimes wonder why we haven’t quite achieved them.
In his book Atomic Habits, the writer James Clear urges us to forget about goals and focus on systems instead. It’s the process that leads to the results, not just the goal itself. So, my goal to lose five kilos was doomed because I failed to put together a system that will help me achieve the outcome I wanted. Those Tim-Tams kept sneaking into my shopping basket.
In corporate-community partnerships we see this problem regularly. An organisation commits to building corporate partnerships, sets some goals but often comes up short. The CEO is scratching her head about the lack of progress and wondering if you’re the problem. Often it’s the organisation itself that is unconsciously sabotaging its own success.
Here’s how.
In the chase for corporate dollars the lack of proper processes can create unnecessary internal competition. Once non-profit leadership has given the green light for partnerships, the whole organisation behaves like a pack of beagles after a fox. There are no proper protocols for approaching corporate prospects and no coordination with the one person tasked with actually building partnerships. A large corporate once told me about four separate proposals he’d received from the same organisation. It’s confusing for the corporate and worse, very damaging for the charity brand.
Sometimes the internal competition is unconscious. When the COO came back from lunch with a corporate contact waving a cheque for $20,000 he expected to be greeted like Hillary conquering Everest. How easy was this partnership thing? You just needed to get out there. The partnership team had no prior knowledge of his meeting, let alone his personal network. If the COO had given them a proper briefing, the team could have attended the meeting, leveraged the relationship and got way more than a one-off cheque from the leader of a billion dollar tech business.
Other times the internal competition is more complicated. When the charity urgently needs money, a program is in danger of closing, or another department is not hitting their fundraising targets, your colleagues can start casting around for creative ways to fill the gaps. It leads to ad hoc speculative approaches to corporates by people without the skills or capacity to manage complex relationships.
Proper processes and protocols for approaching corporates, gathering information and professionally managing the relationships are key to avoiding internal competition. They need to be championed by leadership and clearly understood across the organisation.
The second sign of self-sabotage is the absence of a risk management framework. Corporate partnerships come with risks to your brand and reputation and must be managed carefully. I once dealt with internal conflicts over whether the charity should accept a partnership with a bottled water company. On the plus side, it was about water, on the negative side was the environmental impact of the plastic waste. People held passionate views on both sides but no-one knew who had rights over the final decision or what the protocols should be. After 6 months of wrangling the corporate got fed up and went with someone else.
Develop a risk framework with clear go/ no-go areas and decision processes. Then you’ll be able to decline an opportunity that doesn’t fit with your non-profit’s values and brand and everyone will have clear guard rails to manage the risk. Making the risk framework visible to everyone prevents someone going rogue and offering a partnership to a corporate that might compromise your reputation or conflict with other important partnerships.
Finally, the most common act of self-sabotage occurs within federated organisations. A combination of funding scarcity, lack of skills and sometimes just plain ego can lead to state based organisations undermining each other’s success. I encountered one organisation with a national partnership with a large energy company. At the same time, one of the state leaders signed up with a much smaller competitor and offered almost the same set of benefits. Cue a furious corporate asking why they were spending half a million dollars to get the same treatment as a business competitor who barely hit the $10k mark. It made the charity look highly unprofessional and seriously tested their partner’s goodwill. Creating mutually agreed protocols and putting the corporate relationship at the heart of the discussion can help to minimise the negative effects of inter-state rivalry.
Corporate partnerships are not a solo act, they’re an ensemble performance. If you want a valuable and sustainable set of relationships, then the right processes and practices are essential to stop sabotaging your own success. You won’t put a woman on the moon if the rest of your team are dismantling the spacecraft mid-flight.