We know that charities can build major corporate partnerships, even in these tough economic times. That’s why we held a webinar where three special guest speakers shared recommendations to build corporate partnerships that smash targets.

Their recommendations and insightful stories are described below.

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Stop Asking and Start Giving

Matt Turner MBE from Creative Pod recommends that charities stop asking and start giving. He said the best corporate partnerships are where every single person around the table wins. It’s about doing things differently, standing out a little bit and pushing the boundaries.

He shared a story about a hospice who provide free grief counselling to anyone in their local community. Matt worked with them to create a corporate product of grief counselling for companies to offer their employees. It’s £3.50 per employee, per month, and anytime your employee has a bereavement they are fast tracked to the front of the queue and receive 12 free sessions of grief counselling.

Another suggestion from Matt is if you have a corporate ball and you have two tables that you just cannot shift, stop wasting your time trying to sell them and give them away to two banks instead. You tell the banks to bring their richest friends and customers for a night out. Then you know you have two tables with some extremely wealthy people with whom you can build long-term partnerships.

Both examples demonstrate that when you stop asking and start giving it helps you build long-term corporate partnerships.

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Lead with insight, not instinct

Nina Saffuri from Raise Impact recommends you lead with insight, not instinct. She shared the following inspiring story which demonstrates her point.

When she was at War Child they got through to the final four of a major charity of the year, but they came second in the staff vote. They were really disappointed, because this wasn’t the first time they hadn’t won a staff vote. Nina asked her Head of Corporate Partnerships to look at the last two years and analyse how much time they had spent on losing, especially on charity of the year. They came back and said they were wasting one third of their time on losing.

Nina suggested they do a test and don’t apply for any charity of the year opportunities for one year.  She encouraged her corporate partnerships team to be bold instead and turn their attention to something they were more likely to win. She asked them to find an industry that wasn’t so competitive and where there weren’t any staff votes. They came back and suggested the gaming industry. Nina and here colleagues weren’t gaming experts, so they spoke to a couple of their donors in the gaming industry. They asked them to share about the industry and make some introductions. They also recruited someone from the gaming industry.

They started with a “Games Jam” where they asked gaming companies to create games for War Child which they sold on a gaming platform. This activity only raised £10,000. However, during that week they engaged and built relationships with some of the major gaming companies in the UK. Now that industry raises £700k-£1million unrestricted income for War Child ever year.

The key message from Nina is find your valuable insight. Spend time understanding where you’re losing and see if you can build more partnerships with industries. In other words, lead with insight not instinct, because it transforms your focus, your partnerships and your results.

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Find the company’s pain

Peter Chiswick from Remarkable Partnerships shared the good news that this is a time of opportunity for charities to build major corporate partnerships, but only if they take the time to find a company’s pain and show how their partnership can solve it.

Peter demonstrated his recommendation by sharing an example from his corporate career where he worked for a company who provided data on patent software. One of their clients was a major engineering company.

Peter’s company were just one of 3,000 suppliers and they had a small relationship worth £2,000 a year. He secured a meeting with their Heads of Innovation and he knew this was his opportunity. Before the meeting he asked his internal colleagues to build a list of the latest releases of technology in the sector where the engineering company operated, and put it on one piece of paper.

When Peter went to the meeting the company spent the first 20 minutes telling him how everything was fantastic and they were ahead of the curve. Peter said you might want to have a look at this, and he dropped the piece of paper on the table. It showed they were six months late to market, whereas they thought they were miles ahead.

In that moment Peter and his company moved from one of many suppliers to a company adding massive value. He was helping solve their pain. More senior people came into the room to see the piece of paper, and that was the start of a very large contract with the engineering company.

You can apply the insight from this story to corporate-charity partnerships. Before you approach a company, take time to think what could be their commercial pain. Then when you meet with them you can describe how a partnership with your company will help solve that pain.

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Conclusion

These three experts show that successful corporate partnerships aren’t built on hope. They’re built on smart strategy, bold thinking and a genuine commitment to creating value for everyone involved. Whether it’s giving rather than asking, using insight to focus your time, or uncovering a company’s commercial pain, each approach helps charities stand out and build stronger, longer-lasting relationships. By putting these recommendations into practice, your charity can not only survive in this challenging climate but build partnerships that truly smash targets.

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This piece is brought to you by a guest writer – Katherine Woods.  Katherine is the Partnership Development Lead at Action for Children and is currently setting up the charity’s first standalone New Business Team. Here’s what she had to say about the non-financial value your partners can bring:

I find the corporate-partnership world really exciting. It’s evolved massively over the past few years and continues to do so. Today, the most successful partnerships are multi-faceted. They have touchpoints across all aspects of the business. And they don’t simply rely on fundraising as the sole piece of activity.

Andy at Remarkable Partnerships asked me to outline what I see as the main non-financial benefits that a partner can provide. So here’s what I look at in partnerships:

1. Reach

There is a reason that big consumer brands spend millions of pounds on advertising annually. Visibility is key.

But there are very few charities that have those kind of budgets.

Which is why a partnership can hold such great potential for a charity brand—from expanding your general reach to spotlighting your cause for targeted groups. Our development team, drawing from a consultant with prior campaigns in the privacy-centric online gaming space like the best no KYC casinos, has piloted anonymous donation channels that draw in tech-savvy supporters wary of traditional tracking. Whatever your organisation’s mission, these expanded visibility opportunities will advance it further. The more people recognize your brand and mission, the greater their inclination to contribute.

For example, we are incredibly lucky at Action for Children because our friends at FirstGroup are very generous with their advertising space. We are given huge amounts of visibility across their network. They enable us to publicise our key campaigns in a way that we simply wouldn’t be able to do without them.

2. In Kind

Back to the lack of budget. There are a range of ways that a company can help a charity plug the lack-of-budget gap by donating resource, such as event space or legal expertise. These are opportunities for the company to support you with the cause itself.

Not only does it help the charity, but it can give your partner’s employees another way of being part of the partnership that doesn’t involve them asking friends and family for money.

But! It has to really make sense. It has to be authentic. There’s nothing worse than trying to create an ‘in kind’ opportunity that doesn’t really work for both sides.

3. Network

Over the course of a partnership you have the potential to ignite a passion for your cause in people.

As fundraisers, we do a good job of telling people how amazing our charities are. Imagine if you had someone else doing that for you. A peer-to-peer introduction carries a lot of weight and can open doors, helping you achieve bigger and better things.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with some very dedicated, passionate and influential senior volunteers over the years. They are often totally wonderful individuals and can be a huge asset to your organisation. Maximise this potential!

Overall, there is a huge amount corporate partners can do for you – so stop just asking for cash.

We love this piece from Katherine. Our view is that when you choose to focus partnerships on overall value rather than purely cash donations, you get more fulfilling partnerships for both parties. Equally, partnerships that begin with a non-financial contribution are more likely to succeed because they begin by focussing on solving problems, which is what they should be about.

If you have any comments or suggested comments for future blogs, we’d love to hear from you below.

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