Corporate Partnerships for Non-profits; a Match Made in Heaven? What Your Organization Needs to Know about Successfully Collaborating with the For-profit Sector By

Any serious non-profit Board discussion of development strategies inevitably reaches a point where someone asserts, " why aren't we doing more with corporations? Our organization is a perfect match for corporate sponsors… so why aren't we pursuing those opportunities more aggressively? " Well, perhaps your non-profit is a perfect match for corporate sponsorship support. But attracting sponsorship dollars, as opposed to corporate foundation gifts, is often an involved and complicated process, and on many levels puts the cultural differences between non and for-profits under a critical magnifying glass. Before exploring corporate sponsorships, non-profits would be wise to step back for a moment and consider a few threshold questions:  What does the organization want or expect from a sponsorship? Is it merely an unrestricted gift? Or are there other benefits?  What organizational cultural issues or differences can a non-profit expect to confront in establishing a successful partnership?  How does an organization identify the best opportunities? Is there a process? Are there specific criteria that make for an ideal partner?  How should a non-profit be structured to take advantage of such opportunities?  How can a corporate sponsorship best be optimized and leveraged?  How would the success of a corporate collaboration be measured? The answers to these and related questions often mean the difference between productive and non productive sponsorship relationships, and will be addressed in the discussion that follows. The Win-Win In my experience, every successful non-profit corporate relationship has at its core a mutual recognition that the partnership is a win-win situation.