Newsletter: Am I Too Small for Corporate Partnerships? 🤔 ; 25,000 Salvation Army Kettles Go Cashless📱; The Causes Influencers Most Want to Work With 🤩
The second most popular article in last week's newsletter was Am I Too Small for a Corporate Partnership. I agree with everything the authors wrote. No nonprofit is too small for a corporate partnership! Yay...right?
But I would add a corollary to this: small nonprofits SHOULD NOT actively focus on corporate partnerships.
Yep, it's a waste for small nonprofits to dedicate so much time, resources and staff chasing and cold-calling potential corporate partnerships.
Why?
Because it's hard, labor-intensive work and ultimately you probably won't raise enough to justify the expense. Remember, dead people give twice as much money to nonprofits as companies do. And living people give the majority of the money, representing a whopping 70% of the fundraising pie. Companies have been stuck at around 5% for a generation.
So, if you are a small nonprofit, how should you approach corporate partnerships?
1. Pick the low-hanging fruit. If a company contacts you and wants to partner with you, explore the opportunity. If a major donor owns a chain of coffee shops, ask them to host a fundraiser for you. Stick to the easy stuff that's right in front of you.
2. Focus on building a strong, engaged, and describable audience for your nonprofit. Audiences send a signal to companies of what's good, popular and profitable in the world. My promise to you is this. Build an audience and companies WILL BEAT A PATH TO YOUR DOOR!!
Consider the example that Linda and Sharon wrote about last week:
One Girl was a small charity with only four staff, but a loyal supporter base of young, affluent, educated people. More importantly, they had researched their audience and could describe in detail their demographics, buying behaviours and profile. This made them very attractive to an FMCG company who wanted to build a cohort of younger consumers. The result was One Girl’s first corporate partnership.
I believe that the best corporate partnerships are not so much discovered as they are detected. They are right there in front of you. Your nonprofit needs to be the magnet that pulls companies in and makes for easy picking!
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. The Salvation Army will have "cashless kettles" at its 25,000 donations spots this holiday season. Shoppers can give via text-to-give, QR code, DipJar or Apple Pay. Hopefully the QR code will work better than did in the news story!
2. When in doubt about a B2B fundraiser, fall back on a proven favorite: golf. Booz Allen has raised $800,000 for The Salute Military Golf Association with 13 employee-led tournaments.
3. Free Webinar TODAY! How legacy organizations are measuring impact, placing tangible value on their partnerships, and proving the ROI of each corporate investment. [SPONSORED LINK]
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. This article debunks several myths about email deliverability. Are plain-text emails more likely to reach the inbox? What about emails with images?
2. Have you ever played the card-game Bridge? If you have, you're probably in your early 60s, married, with a college degree and no kids at home, according to the nonprofit the American Contract Bridge League. The ACBL is hoping to bring younger players to the game with a new microsite, Try Bridge.
3. Good news! Influencers ❤️working with cause-based brands. Here are the causes influencers most want to work with.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Corporate & Foundation Relationships Manager, FIRST (New England Region)
2. Director of Partnerships, DoSomething.org (NYC)
3. Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations, AIDS Foundation of Chicago (Chicago)
4. Director of Digital Strategy & Content, First Book (Washington, DC)
Have your cause-related job featured here for FREE. Hit reply to this email and give me the details and a link to the position.
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. Cool or not cool? Yellowstone to add wifi in move that may spread to more national park.🌲🐻
2. Last week I explained what Gen Z meant by "Ok, Boomer." But if you were born between 1965 and 1980 - as I was - they have a name just for us (and it's not nice).😡
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hi? Just hit leave a comment or head over to Twitter.
P. S. We had 126 registrants for last week's webinar How to Leverage Influencer Marketing 🤩presented by Rocket Social Impact! If you missed the webinar you can watch it here.
