My friend Amy recently celebrated her 50th birthday with a big party. The table was loaded with delicious food, her family and friends were on sparkling form and the drinks were flowing. Until she noticed that a few guests were nursing empty glasses, looking glum. It turned out that Amy’s enterprising tweens, who were tasked with helping dispense drinks, had decided to charge the guests $20 per glass. It was an ingenious solution to augment their pocket money, but not great for the party mood.
Partnership managers want to maximise the opportunity with a corporate collaboration. Sometimes they get the standard brush off ‘we don’t have any budget’. But there are multiple sources of cash in a corporate and you don’t need to restrict yourself to one wallet of opportunity. Some wallets are bigger than others, but the most valuable partnerships tap into multiple sources of value. Here’s where to find them.
Corporate money
People often describe the purses of money within a corporate as typically HR, marketing, PR or CSR. Yes, they all have their own budgets. You need to avoid spending too much time with the smallest ones. For example, the HR budget is usually tiny. Think of your non-profit’s learning and development budget only on a slightly bigger scale. The HR budget is a useful place to start if you’re opening up some volunteering or staff engagement, but don’t expect big commitments of money.
Marketing, advertising and PR budgets are usually larger, especially if your corporate target is an FMCG company. Coca-Cola is simply a mix of water, sugar and flavouring that wouldn’t exist without its enormous marketing effort. However, marketing and PR budgets are vulnerable, especially in tough economic times. When things are tight, the marketing budget is often seen as an easy controllable cost to cut. For example, sport sponsorship in the USA fell by $17bln due to COVID impacts. If you’re looking to position a cause marketing initiative, then marketing or PR is the obvious place to start.
Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, hints at a bigger social purpose approach within the corporate. But here’s a tip- check out where it’s placed within that business. If it reports to corporate affairs or PR, then the business will view your partnership as an investment in goodwill. There’s a good reason the supermarket giants started heavily promoting their community partnerships when they were accused of shameless profiteering. CSR can be a useful place to start if the corporate has some serious PR pain points.
The biggest value is derived from aligning with the corporate’s core business. Then you don’t have to pick off individual department budgets or squeeze your partnership within a narrow description of that area’s responsibilities. Alignment means you can tap into what makes the corporate successful- and then you unlock oodles more value for your non-profit. Your partnership will integrate across multiple corporate departments, giving you a stickier, more valuable and more long- lasting relationship.
The partnership between UK grocery chain Tesco and World Wildlife Fund goes direct to Tesco’s core operations. It aims to reshape what the average customer puts in his basket, making healthier choices, sourcing more sustainably and reducing packaging waste. It gives Tesco a point of competitive difference in a cut-throat grocery market, reduces the waste and cost of their production and ensures a more reliable supply chain.. By going to the heart of Tesco’s core business i.e the things that generate the real P&L, this partnership has unlocked much bigger value than targeting budgets in its individual cost centres.
Customer money
A cynical view says that corporates like nothing better than spending other people’s money. But the opportunity for your NFP is to tap into their extensive networks and inspire their customers to give. Each of the four big banks in Australia has roughly 4 million customers. When we worked with NAB to allow customer donations through branches and online, it yielded over $600,000 in value for an emergency campaign. In the same way, Tesco UK holds regular ins-store campaigns for its major charity partners.
Staff money
Workplace giving is a valuable and reliable source of income for non-profits. Income from employees can be regular giving or periodic staff fundraising and is often matched by the company itself. The team at Wynstan Blinds have supported Ovarian Cancer Australia for many years. The company support is augmented by regular staff fundraising campaigns that mobilise their entire workforce and increase value for the charity.
Corporates can sometimes choose to leverage their supplier network and tap into extra sources of value. Amart Furniture have been long-term supporters of Ronald McDonald House Charities. Every year they host a gala celebration for their suppliers and raise thousands of dollars for RMHC from their network.
Partnerships managers can extract more value from corporate partners by exploring the multiple sources of cash and support. In tricky economic times, the cash can come from a range of sources You don’t have to shamelessly exploit your relations, like Amy’s kids charging Granny for a glass of wine, but you’d be wise to tap into more than one source of cash.