Top Tips for Engaging Corporate Partners

Partnerships can help corporate organisations and charities pursue common goals. These 8 tips will help you get started.

Corporate-charity partnerships bring benefits to both sides, such improved public visibility, enhanced fundraising power, and an increased audience reach. Here are our top tips to help build and nurture these partnerships:

1. Positive branding and messaging attract corporate sponsors

Ensuring that your charity has a positive public image is important for corporate sponsors. Public trust in private organisation is low. MissionBox, points out that only 37% of the public trust business leaders, whereas an nfpSynergy survey found that 52% of people trust charities. Promoting trust, ethics and transparency within the partnership can help attract and grow successful relationships.

2. Be aware of corporate trends

Senior charity leaders should be aware of what makes business leaders tick when it comes to looking for non-profit partners. Charitable Advisors says that companies are thinking about community impact, accountability, and funding for non-profits. For charities, these corporate aims tie neatly with the sector’s well vocalised community impact reporting and transparency around use of funds. For new relationships, charity digital leaders should make sure to present awareness of corporate aims, and how to improve on them.

3. Make sure that the companies you partner with are a good fit

Brand agency Bond+Coyne recommends that charities look for how they can align with a company’s products, services and values. To build a successful partnership, the agency recommends considering how charities can enhance a partner’s existing or future campaign.

When looking for corporate partners, make sure they are a strategic fit for charity purpose or cause. Digital inclusion charity Good Things Foundation offers free digital skills courses in partnership with BT. As both organisations are directly involved in digital, each brings operational expertise to the programme. By combining efforts, BT and Good Things Foundation were able to drive the mission to increase digital inclusion.

4. Make sure your ask is specific

CAF recommends that small charities “be confident and clear about the specifics of what’s required,” so that the funding or help-in-kind received is clearly defined in the partnership. The Juice Academy and Hootsuite have formed a partnership where digital marketing apprentices are trained to use the social media platform and granted free licenses. Hootsuite also funds a place for people who run digital programmes at charities, so that selected individuals receive professional training. For programmes like these, the deliverables and asks from each organisation must be clear and defined.

Read the full Charity Digital article by clicking here.

Source: Charity Digital News