Ten things I've learnt about effective partnerships between business and charity

Civil society organisations have at their core distinct social missions to tackle problems that are often outside the scope of conventional market appetite and may be ill-addressed by existing government institutions. However increasingly the lines between CSR, state intervention and social action are becoming blurred and new partnerships that cross sectors are emerging, galvanised by shared objectives and mutual benefit.

Many businesses are already engaged in programmes that have significant social value, either through their core business or through ancillary CSR endeavours. As a charity, identifying and partnering with these organisations can have profound benefits due to the reach and resource of big business. In return, the insights and access that working on the front line of social change can bring often hold wider commercial value to organisations working in complementary areas.

Here are a few thoughts that may be useful to those wondering how to create valuable relationships with business:

1. Have a clear idea of your organisational needs and priorities. It helps to know if you need funding support how much, when and for what, but remember that in these times corporate donations are hard to come by and companies are looking to partner with not just support charity. By understanding your core costs you may be able to find areas where you can benefit from in-kind support (for example space, time or training) which may have equal value and be a more realistic request.

2. Think about areas where a business could enhance the goods or services that you deliver. This may be expertise from their core business, technology, scale or geographic location.

3. Make sure you think not just about your organisational needs but also your end user needs. Holding end user/customer focus groups can surface up areas of potential for improvements that you may not have picked up on or may be less equipped to address than someone else.

4. Map the needs of your organisation to sectors and start to think where in that sector support could come from. Is there a tech firm that might help with systems implementation or could a bank help with impact measurement? Find out what priorities these companies have in the CSR space and whether they may be similar to your own organisation. Websites like Business in the Community or CSR networks like this can be useful.

5. Talking to the right people in companies helps ensure discussions are productive. If people in your networks work at or know people at the organisation you are interested in approaching they may be able to suggest the most appropriate person to contact.

6. When approaching companies be clear about why you are contacting them, what your organisation does and where you see potential to collaborate.

7. It's helpful to go to meetings with an idea of how you see a partnership working but be prepared to release your agenda. Take time to hear what they are already doing and about their organisational priorities, culture and business environment. Work together to identify areas of mutual interest.

8. Be clear about the value proposition of what you are suggesting. Where possible quantify it with facts and figures (for example the City of London released a great report on the business case for employee volunteering in education). Thinking from their perspective about the cost-benefit of their support is a useful exercise that may lead you to other areas where you can add value.

9. Understand how perspective may vary depending on the level in the organisation that you engage. Painting a creative and inspiring 3-5 year plan of collaborative innovation could excite a CEO but come across as completely unrealistic to someone less senior.

10. Remember that relationships take time to cultivate and what may be a conversation this year could be a pilot the next and grow into something deeper. Using a robust CRM system (such as Salesforce) is extremely helpful when maintaining a large number of relationships. Don't just cultivate the successful relationships, take time to explore and follow up on proposals that didn't get off the ground, there may be useful insight that helps you make more effective proposals in the future. Finally, be meticulous in your communication, ensure you follow up in a reasonable time, help where you can with information and be prepared to know the difference between gently pushing and hassling someone!

Dominic is currently Partnerships Manager at Teaching Leaders, a charity that addresses educational disadvantage by training and developing high potential middle leaders in challenging schools.

Guardian Social Enterprise Network: On Purpose Interview Series

Over the last 8 weeks the On Purpose Associates have been contributing to a series of articles for The Guardian's Social Enterprise Network. Each week, one Associate talks to a 'builder or runner' from a social enterprise or commercially-driven charity, many from our current placement organisations.

So far we've interviewed:

Charlotte Glynn, Head of People at Just Giving

Jonathan Bamber, International Sales & Development Director at Tough Stuff

Damian Peat, Operational Director and Financial Controller at Terra Plana and VIVOBAREFOOT

Ariane van de Ven, Head of Future and Trend Insights at O2

Sylvia Lowe, Head of UK Innovation at Comic Relief

Miriam Turner, Innovations Director EMEAI at InterfaceFLOR

Patrick Reyburn, Strategic Development Manager at HCT Group

Lucy Payton, Associate Director at Teaching Leaders


To check out the series of interviews click here.

Keep an eye on this space for the 3 remaining interviews!

Finding meaning behind the numbers

I’ve dipped my toes in the waters of Excel over the years, but the waves can get a bit large. When I wade too deep into it, I tend to get swamped. Yet I do admire a well-built model where the cells spin out their numbers like a slot machine in response to my toggling a single scenario. I just don’t entirely understand how it got to be like that. But as my accounting professor Tomo Suzuki likes to remark, the poets are necessary to interpret what the boffins create.

I’ve trudged through Excel when I worked in a bank to check a company's financials, grumbled as I’ve used Excel to inventory cases of wine (long story), and muddled through Excel when balancing my own budget. But I’ve never put numbers into one end of the Excel machine and had the impact on people’s lives be spit out the other side.

Two months into my six-month placement at ToughStuff, I’ve discovered the opportunity to do exactly that. Not all on my own from scratch, mind you. Let’s not get carried away. That would be the domain of the former consultants in our On Purpose year. But with some handholding from the CFO at ToughStuff, I think I might get my head around this.

ToughStuff is a social enterprise that sells affordable energy solutions in the developing world, mostly targeted at customers who live off the electrical grid. We provide flexible solar panels, solar lamps, mobile phone chargers, and radio battery systems starting at US$10. These replace expensive, smelly, and dangerous kerosene lanterns and candles, as well as removing the need to buy D-cell batteries for a radio.

So far, so good. I like what I’m hearing…

The benefits of this are huge, and we do have the stats to prove it. Generally, customers start saving on energy spending 2-3 months after buying ToughStuff products and save at least US$100 on their annual energy expenditure. Health risks like pulmonary diseases, burns, and poor eyesight are reduced. And it keeps carbon and batteries out of the environment – each lamp saves 24 litres of kerosene per year, and used batteries aren’t dumped into the soil. The people who sell the products for us also benefit; we’ve found that each solar entrepreneur can earn an additional US$450 by selling our products to their friends and neighbours.

These stats are averages from our existing programmes, and they are good to know. But let’s say a funding partner wants to kick-start a solar entrepreneur programme with US$100,000 of working capital and wants to know what the bang they are getting for their buck. After all, impact is the point of their investment. When they ask how many tons of carbon their money will save, there should be an answer for them. But what sensitive factors are specific to this situation that might influence the answer to their question? What scenario do I choose from the drop down menu in Excel? Ooops, they have yet to be built.

Cue the On Purpose Associate, who arrives on the scene to think strategically about what factors make or break a successful programme and to discover which inputs impact the outputs. Two months ago, it seemed that everyone here knew more about clean energy and distribution channels and carbon than I did. In fact, that’s still likely true. But I’ve discovered that my value lies in the places between specific roles. I found my footing by looking at the links between the work that people undertake across the company and the impact it has in the field on people’s lives. Essentially, I've found myself translating many people's opinions into the key variables that influence the outcome of a sales programme. Having an outsiders’ viewpoint to interview people across the company and ask “Why?” dozens of times and propose new explanations can translate the Big Picture into the direct impact. We know we are doing good overall, but we wanted to know how much good we are doing in each community.

So how was this poet-minded associate finally won over by the power of Excel? By knowing that the yearly savings per household in cell CD289 mean that these families can afford to send their daughters to school. By seeing how the average mother in cell AF36 can increase her family’s income annual by $450 just by charging her neighbours mobile phones through her fleet of solar panels. And by realising that removing the carbon from 24 litres of kerosene multiplied by the thousands of lamps per year in cell BH57 starts to clear the air.

I just have to figure out what inputs go into the boxes – but I’ll leave the formulas to the boffins.