Nonprofit/Corporate Partnerships Are NOT Forever Doomed!
The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog this week linked to Charity Governance’s disapproving view of nonprofit/for-profit partnerships in the wake of the Intel/One Laptop Per Child breakup and asked, “Are corporate partnerships effective for charities?” Here’s what CG blogger Jack Siegel had to say:
… [M]any of these innovative partnerships are viewed by businesses as nothing but marketing campaigns to build goodwill with the public. … [I]t really isn’t charity—its goodwill marketing. But as we saw … if the partnership begins to affect profits by competing with core businesses, the managers are always going to choose profits, abandoning charity.
Sometimes doing things the old-fashioned way is the better course of action. There is nothing wrong with nonprofits being innovative, but rather than partnering with corporate America, they might be better off following the traditional route of seeking grants from corporate foundations.
I disagree. Resources are scarce, and nonprofits are right to seek out new revenue streams. Even if those efforts fail, what is the harm in trying? And should they succeed, the causes those nonprofits seek to advance are helped; so what if the corporate partner reaps a nice PR windfall out of it? Isn’t that worth fulfilling your mission? This is not to say that the ends always justify the means, but simply that corporations that want to feel good about themselves and have something nice to put in the annual report shouldn’t be turned away simply because of their motives. As long as a nonprofit can walk away should things sour, as OLPC did, I fail to see the harm in trying.
What do you think? | 501(c)
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POSTED IN: For-profit, Marketing, Mission
2 opinions for Nonprofit/Corporate Partnerships Are NOT Forever Doomed!
Nonprofiteer
Jan 11, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Siegel is half-right, anyway: it is better to do things the old-fashioned way, by which I mean asking not corporations for grants but individuals for gifts. For most charities with annual budgets below $1 million, chasing corporate marketing money is a waste of time that could and should be spend identifying and cultivating individual donors whose support will continue year in, year out. The disproportionate attention paid to corporate-nonprofit “partnerships” has simply exacerbated the epidemic of fantasy-in-lieu-of-fund-raising (”Maybe the Gap will adopt us!”) that passes for nonprofit Board decision making these days.
tdurso
Jan 11, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Interesting thoughts, NP. I still think that even for small nonprofits, engaging with the for-profit world could be beneficial. No need to go to the Gap — how about the locally based retailers or corporate subsidiaries looking for a nice tax write-off?
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