I had an interesting conversation with a corporate client the other day about the best way for her company to pick a nonprofit partner.

I have to admit my first response was: "It can be kind of complicated."

It's complicated because there are a lot of variables that go into picking a nonprofit partner. As I talked to her, I started drawing circles and writing things on them. I eventually came up with the acronym T-W-A…

Here's our first pick for the Social Impact Book Club! Megan Strand from Engage for Good and I chose Darren Walker's From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth.

We're really excited about this book because Darren is proposing a new, bold vision of philanthropy that is truly transformative and world-changing. That sounded good to us - and is just the kind of "meta" message we wanted to kick-off the book club.

You can download this book (or audio book) for FREE at the Ford Foundation web site.

A few questions to ask as you read this book…

Q. Any suggestions for getting local businesses to “pay up” after an event where we gave permission to use our name/logo in exchange for a set % of sales that day? By no means is this the first time I’ve had to “nudge” for payment. My usual follow-up email works in getting the check. But right now I have 2 places who are dragging their feet. My typical emails say: "Just following up, would like to get something in the next newsletter, or need to report results to the Board" (something along those lines). Meanwhile, I provided pre-event social media coverage, attended the events, even provided some activities for the kids. Oy vey. Help, Joe!

John Haydon didn't work in corporate partnerships and cause marketing. He was so much bigger than our little niche. John was a bonafide superstar in fundraising. He had tens of thousands of followers and was frequently ranked the #1 influencer in the nonprofit sector.

John was a speaker, consultant, blogger, podcaster and author. He was also a dad, brother, friend and fiancé. He was everything. He was my best friend.

Near midnight on Saturday and under the light of the full moon, John passed away after a courageous two-year battle with cancer. Our friendship began a decade earlier in an unlikely place: Twitter. On Monday, I returned to the site to memorialize my friend...

Q. I work for a larger arboretum in the Chicago suburbs and believe it or not, our biggest challenge is working with other teams here to stay organized! I am hoping to find suggestions or ideas from other organizations that work to ensure that internal teams are keeping up with mutually agreed benefits such as logos or signage, acknowledgement in press releases, and on-site presentations, etc.

Do you like to read? I ❤️to read! So does Megan Strand at Engage for Good. And we're hoping you do too because we want you to join our new Social Impact Book Club. Here's how it will work.

1. Every quarter we'll pick a business book that's relevant to your social impact work. (BTW: I'd rather do a book monthly than quarterly, but let's take baby steps!)

2. At the end of the quarter, we'll meet online to discuss the book and announce the next book.

3. Want to join? It's FREE. Just hit reply and say YES! Bonus points if you have a book to suggest.

Join the club. Hit reply and say YAY to books!…

While I was goofing off in Paris earlier this month with my twin brother - drinking red wine 🍷and searching for the perfect Chantilly whip cream - the team at Accelerist was already back at work. A few days earlier, their CEO, Brittany Hill, had posed a challenge to the team:

"What do corporate partnership professionals need to know to be successful in 2020?"

To answer this question, the team did their research and collected insights from Alzheimer's Association, Direct Relief and JDRF, and brands such as Amazon, PwC and RE/MAX. They are sharing what they found in a new, FREE, must-attend webinar on Wednesday, February 12th at 12pm EST…

I'm super excited to be joining the Southeast Produce Council and its 2,500 members at Southern Exposure, their annual conference next month in Tampa, Florida. What a great time to escape the cold of Boston's winter! 🧊❄️🥶

I've already found several examples of cause marketing programs, like the one above, between Sunrays Citrus and Save the Children. But I would love to learn about YOUR campaigns with produce providers, suppliers, retailers and consumers. Send them my way. You could be featured in a big way to an important audience…

Thanks for the great start to 2020. After taking two weeks off, I was wondering if you folks would remember me. You did!😊

Open Rate is the percentage of people who opened my newsletter. Most newsletters are lucky to get 15 to 20%! My highest open rate last year was almost 60%.

Click Rate is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on an article to read. The industry average is 2.5%.

Clicks is the total number of links that subscribers clicked on. 1,000+ is a lot for a niche newsletter.

This year is off to a great start! 🙏I even added 73 new subscribers last week. Check out the many ways you can sponsor my newsletter in 2020….

Happy New Year! Paris was great, and I was surprised that I actually enjoyed not publishing my newsletter.🤭

But it's time to get back to work! 

To kick-off the new year, let's take one last look back at 2019. Here are the top ten most-clicked posts from my 2019 newsletters. Enjoy!

1. How Much Do Partnership Professionals Make in 2019? [INFOGRAPHIC]

2. Should Your Nonprofit Require a Minimum Revenue Commitment from Corporate Partners?

3. Burger King Teaches You How to Do Cause Marketing Wrong…

With both Christmas and New Year's falling on Wednesday this year, I'm taking the next two weeks off. Woo-hoo! 🎉Truthfully, it's going to be weird not publishing my newsletter. It will be interesting to see if I can actually relax and not publish something.

Watch for my newsletter in your inbox again on Wednesday, January 8, 2020.

In the meantime, enjoy this awkward holiday photo of me and my twin brother, Jeff. Isn't it a classic? But which one is me? Am I on the right or the left? Hmmm....🤔I'm not sure I even know!

Three end of year housekeeping items...

You could learn a lot about influencer marketing from Lauren Lawson-Zilai, senior director of PR at Goodwill Industries International. The influencer marketing program she's developed is building an engaged audience for Goodwill®, particularly on Instagram, where the nonprofit has seen a 200% increase in followers.

Lauren's program is as much for local nonprofits as it is for national organizations. According to Lauren...

"We’ve started consultations with our local counterparts and implemented a model that they can replicate. We’ve given them talking points, taught them the difference between brand ambassadors and influencers, how to work with influencers on incentives, how influencer relationships benefit their social media channels, and how to measure impact."

And here's a big bonus of Lauren's program. It's focused on partnerships….

The holiday gifts 🎁are coming three weeks early thanks to Karen Wu at Perlman & Perlman!

Karen just finished the second installment of her four-part series on the four key legal issues you - my readers! - requested guidance on in the Selfish Giving / Accelerist Partnership Law Survey you completed earlier this year.

This week, Karen is answering your questions on registration and reporting requirements. She has separated the questions into two groups: Company questions and Charity questions.

The Charity questions Karen answers include…

This is the second-part of a four-part series on the four key legal issues you - my readers! - requested guidance on in the Selfish Giving / Accelerist Partnership Law Survey you completed last spring.

Today, our legal expert, Karen Wu of Perlman & Perlman, is answering your questions on registration and reporting requirements. Karen has broken the questions into two groups: “Company” questions and “Charity” questions.

The FAQ’s below were taken directly from the survey - although Karen and I modified some of the questions for the sake of clarity and completeness….

I've written before on how to turn your homepage into a lead-generating machine. You'll need an email pop-up and a service that pings you when a company visits your site (e.g. Leadfeeder, VisitorTrack, Leadberry).

The next step is to take a page from Wayfair's playbook. There was a report earlier this month that the online retailer was making unsolicited calls to customers while they were browsing the Wayfair website. Creepy, right?

I'm not suggesting you do the same thing.…

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?…

Marie Curie, a UK-based nonprofit that runs hospices and supports people living with terminal illness, has launched Talkabout, a microsite to get people talking about everyone's favorite topic: dying and death. The site is resource-rich - even offering a downloadable set of playing cards to promote conversations around mortality.

On Twitter, I asked Meredith Niles, Executive Director of Fundraising & Engagement for the charity, if she had a specific audience in mind for Talkabout.

We were aiming for a broad audience (we think this is an issue that could impact anyone at any point in their lives) but we acknowledged that this was an issue that assumes greater salience as you age. So we focussed our testing and media buying on people 55+, with a slight lean towards women.

How will Talkabout raise more money for Marie Curie? I think there are three key opportunities…

Influencer marketing is hot right now! Did you see that 600 YouTubers are teaming up with the Arbor Day Foundation to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees? And they plan to raise the money before the end of the year! I bet they'll do it too because these YouTubers have millions of followers. But the real key is that they have influence with these people.

When I read about this I thought: "Man, more nonprofits need to be working with influencers!"

I immediately called Rocket Social Impact. SVP Jenn DeBarge Goonan has been doing influencer campaigns for two decades, and she's agreed to do a FREE webinar on November 14th at 3pm EST…