The Board has legal obligations to ensure your organisation is fulfilling its purpose, remains solvent, meets obligations and will ultimately be responsible for dealing with any ramifications from a corporate partnership.  Therefore, it’s imperative that you have Board sign off prior to ‘going to market’.

In my experience many Board members, even those that have previously worked in the corporate sector, are not specialists in corporate partnerships and may not realise the complexities involved. It’s your job to educate them.

It’s vital to explain that it’s not as simple as providing their contacts for you to call, and it’s not about sending out 30 proposals on email.  When you negotiate a legally-binding agreement with a corporate partner it could ultimately impact your level of awareness (which in some instances, can put immense pressure on a service), provide access to new donors, set a precedent for how much you are willing to...

Although the road ahead is going to be challenging, we all know that it’s vital that changemakers adopt an abundance mindset if they intend to pursue corporate partnerships. I’ve always thought it very strange that the For-Purpose sector defines itself by what it’s NOT – it’s why I prefer to use terms like ‘For Purpose’ and ‘Changemakers’ because Not For Profit just sounds so, well, demeaning.

Successful corporates and brands have a positive, can-do attitude, and innovation inevitably flows. A Collaboration, Big Picture Thinking, Risk Embracing approach is in their DNA. This is often called Abundance Thinking or the Abundance Mindset.

There’s a whole world of psychology behind this, and it’s fascinating. The opposite of Abundance Thinking is Scarcity Thinking. Bushfires, Corona and looming recession aside, what is typically your organisation’s culture and default thinking – is it Abundance or Scarcity?

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My favourite science communicator Carl Sagan once said “somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”.  Market research, a little like marketing & branding, is vital to corporates and brands but its often considered a luxury by non-profit management.

Non-profits, like companies, exist to solve a problem.  How can you solve a problem if you don’t understand it?  How do you enrol donors if you don’t understand their motivations?  And how do you make a compelling pitch to corporates without verifiable statistics to back up what you’re saying?

Corporates live and breathe market research, for them it’s a necessity not a nicety. Long gone are the days of expensive research, so there’s no excuse for NOT becoming a research ninja!

Research
A key element about doing research is to ensure that its conducted in a credible and professional manner (otherwise it won’t be taken seriously by management or indeed...

My dear friend Susan Ryan, a brilliant artist and business coach, said this to me in the early days of Cavill + Co. It became a favourite saying, one that my students loved.

But like all sayings, it took me experiencing it to truly get it. One day, I had several deadlines to meet and I’d made a promise to my man, Tyrone, that I’d finish on time (for once) and we’d cook dinner together. We both run our own businesses, so quality time together is scarce. Stupidly, I answered the telephone which involved long, unnecessary conversations with persistent salespeople - basically frittering away my day. Because I’d made commitments to clients and firm deadlines, I simply had to complete my work. This meant that I wasn’t finished when Tyrone got home and yet again, I’d broken a commitment to spend quality time with him. In that moment, I ‘got it’.

I’d put all these relatively unimportant people and tasks ahead of the most important person...

The BePartnerReady.com® program guides you through 7 critical steps as you implement them within your organisation and move closer to success. In Part 1 – blog we covered step 1: SWOTA) and Step 2: Assets Inventory and Valuation. Here we cover the remaining steps 3-7.

Before beginning the process it’s important to understand what precisely you want from a corporate partner.  There’s more to a partner than just funding – download this infographic detailing the 7 benefits of a corporate partnership.

If you would like to discover what a corporate partner could mean for you and your organisation, sneak into our program before 1 July to create your Corporate Partnership Intention 

Our process enables you to gift-wrap programs/campaigns/events for sponsorship (giving you ‘tied’ funding) but also package up partnerships, which invariably provide significant ‘untied’ funding.  It’s flexible enough to...

DOWNLOAD INFOGRAPHIC HERE 

It’s no secret that winning corporate partnerships is challenging, especially now with a recession on our doorstep. Failing to secure a partner after months of hard work is one thing. Securing the wrong partner – that can result in over-servicing, staff burn-out or even a damaged reputation.

The needs of your community will be immense, and you’ll be asked to Do More in a myriad of different ways. You’re going to need the support of the Business and Corporate sector. However, they are going to want to partner with progressive, impactful, purpose-driven organisations in mutually beneficial partnerships – there will be no room - or spare cash - for handouts in 2021.

No matter how clever, connected, or hard-working you are, there’s one monumental thing standing between you and success –your state of readiness.

We make a BIG thing of readiness, it’s why it’s in our name, because it’s the...

In the last decade we’ve seen different kinds of companies emerge, to meet the demands of a newly conscious consumer. The dot-com revolution has already spawned some incredibly successful companies, run by entrepreneurs who have a strong sense of purpose, which is embedded into the company culture – for example Atlassian, an Australia software success story.

As we said in Blog 8, which looks at corporations, public companies, NGOs and franchise operations, if you want to partner with the commercial sector, it’s important to understand their makeup.

Let’s look now at those organisations that are rewriting the rules of business:

Private company

A private company is privately owned, for example, KPMG and Cotton On Group, and may not receive as many proposals from non-profits as public companies. If they’re a ‘challenger’[1] brand (like Karma Cola, Dodo, Airbnb & Ola) they could be a good prospect because they’re renowned for having a...

The most innovative and wealthy sector – Business & Corporate – will come through this crisis leaner and stronger. However, if you want to partner with them, it’s important to understand their makeup. No two companies are the same, and yet their structure and legal obligations will certainly influence the way that they go about partnering with causes.

There’s a handful of different legal structures that ultimately impact a company’s motivation for partnering, as much as their culture does. Let’s take a look:

Corporation

A corporation is like a person - it has an identity that is separate from its investors and workers, and has its own legal rights and responsibilities. A Corporation has a legal obligation to return a profit to shareholders. If they practice ‘philanthropy’, its likely they’ll do it in a structured way, such as through a Foundation.

In recent times, shareholders have begun to realise that companies have...

We all know cash is like oxygen for any company or non-profit, but some forms of cash certainly make you breathe easier. Corporate partners can provide both ‘tied’ cash, for specific vital programs and events, but also significant ‘untied cash’. How would you feel if a large chunk of your daily operating costs – salaries, rent, utilities, fundraising expenses and so on – were covered by a corporate partner?

How relaxed would you feel if you had cash in reserve, for a ‘rainy day’ or if an income stream dries up or, dare we mention it, a global pandemic or recession? Research suggests that the majority of non-profits have less than 6 months cash in reserve for lean times.

In my experience of working for a global non-profit, I’ve found that so many income streams provide ‘tied’ funds, that is, the donor requires the money to be spent on something specific. Government and philanthropic grants, bequests, major gifts,...

Cash is king in a non-profit, so it’s worth examining your annual costs to see how they can be reduced. It’s a lot easier to save a dollar than to earn a dollar, especially in a recession.

Partnering with a corporate is a fantastic way to bolster your organisation; very few income generating-strategies bring so many rich and diverse rewards. Partnering with a company or brand should absolutely provide financial assistance to enable your organisation to operate, that’s a given. Beware of merely focusing on the bottom line, because there’s a variety of juicy benefits available. Tapping into a corporate partner’s expertise and resources can improve your efficiency, spark innovation and reduce costs.

Physical resources and goods in kind (GIK): Non-profits can utilise their partners’ office space (for conferences and meetings), technology (Zoom, video-conferencing), second-hand computers, recording studios, etc.

When Hailey worked with The Leukaemia...