Type ‘Charity of the Year partnership’ into an internet search engine and the results page that appears looks like the not-for-profit sector’s equivalent of a lonely-hearts column. But tugging at heartstrings is no longer an effective approach for loosening corporate purse strings. The focus is shifting to how two or more organisations from different sectors can leverage complementary strengths to achieve shared objectives – often identified as important by companies and not charities. Both partners also need to be able to demonstrate the value they create for each other.
However as a recent report from the World Economic Forum points out (see page 5), mapping common ground and opportunities for sharing skills and expertise or products and services takes more effort than writing a cheque. Briefing spoke to three very different companies – Rio Tinto, Argos and EDF Energy – and their not-for-profit partners to explore the transition from philanthropic models of engagement to more strategic and fruitful long-term partnerships.
We identified seven key attributes to building successful partnerships: mutual benefit; clear links to a CSR strategy or organisational goals; robust yet flexible project management; great communication; employee engagement; evaluation and responsiveness.
1) mutual benefits
“To deserve the name, a partnership must be genuinely mutually beneficial,” says John Hall, corporate relations manager at mining giant Rio Tinto. And for that to happen there needs to be basic common ground between partners. Each organisation has its own set of objectives, but where these overlap, there is scope for collaboration – which often increases as a partnership flourishes.
For example, EDF Energy is committed to providing better service for vulnerable customers, while its charity partner Mencap is committed to building a more inclusive society for people with learning difficulties. The objectives of both parties are being furthered through a programme, which sees Mencap train EDF’s vulnerable customers team to provide a better service to customers with a learning disability. The activities of mining giant Rio Tinto have significant impacts on the environment and biodiversity, while environmental not-for profit Earthwatch promotes an understanding of sustainability through scientific research. Earthwatch offers Rio Tinto employees sustainability master classes that help the company to mitigate the negative impacts of its activities.
2) A strategic approach
For Rio Tinto, the primary value of engaging with civil society through partnerships is to bring on board complementary skills that help it manage its core social responsibilities, which include community, sustainability and employee health and safety. The company’s relationship with biodiversity charity Earthwatch began in 1990. It was the first time it had attempted to engage with a non-governmental organisation, and at the time the idea of businesses collaborating with an NGO was “rather radical”, says Hall.
The original motive for working with Earthwatch was that it was a good idea for employees to volunteer on the charity’s scientific research projects. Over time, the starting point for collaboration has shifted to a shared commitment to improve environmental behaviour – for Rio Tinto in its operations and for Earthwatch in the world at large, turning the partnership into a driving force behind the company’s strategic approach to managing sustainability and biodiversity.
One of the reasons EDF Energy chose to partner with Mencap, an advocacy charity for people with learning disabilities, was that the work they could do together linked in with the company’s core values and ambitions: respect for the individual, social responsibility and integrity, says Alison Braybrook, the company’s community investment strategy manager. After the first year of the partnership, Mencap tied its proposed activities to EDF’s five ambitions as a business, to show clearly the potential benefits it could build for the company.
The partnership now focuses on EDF’s commitment to help vulnerable customers, which is actually dictated by the terms of its license to operate. Mencap is to provide training for the company’s existing vulnerable customers team, which provides an enhanced call centre service to ensure that the specific needs of such customers are met. Mencap will raise awareness of how to recognise and serve customers with a learning disability, furthering EDF’s ambition to be an industry point of reference for its service to vulnerable customers. “We want to care for our customers and continually improve customer experience, and we want to be a safe and responsible company regarding our people, the environment and the communities we serve,” says Braybrook.
According to Argos’s parent company GUS: “Companies that are quick to respond to shifts in social attitudes are often better placed to take advantage of new markets and opportunities as they arise. A company with a positive social reputation will also benefit from increased customer and employee loyalty, leading in turn to advocacy on its behalf from these important groups”.
While the same motivations do not drive Argos’s desire to develop strong community relationships, Liggett says the company looks to partner with charities that share its values and outlook and focus on the family and home.
Cash hungry charities can’t afford to be so choosy, but they too have criteria to meet. Mencap applied to be EDF’s Charity of the Year partner, partly because EDF was a large company with “a great reputation”, says corporate account manager Fiona Stanley. More importantly though, Mencap was aiming for national reach at several levels, both to a partner’s employees and to its customers. It also sought an association with a company likely to strengthen its own brand.
Rio Tinto and Earthwatch’s work programme over the past eight years has evolved through the identification of mutual objectives and activities that relate to the company’s commitment to environmental stewardship and responsibility; and to the charity’s objectives and approach. The two looked for synergies in what they could achieve and deliver. Over time the partnership has provided both organisations with opportunities to learn from and teach each other about how business and civil society engagement can work, allowing them to map out where their interests coincide and build what Hall describes as “a highly strategic partnership…of substantial benefit to both sides”.
3) project management
Another feature of the new breed of partnerships is the rigour brought to managing them. According to Hall, Rio Tinto takes its engagement with civil society “as seriously as it does any other joint venture business partnership”. In the case of its work with Earthwatch, three-year rolling partnership agreements set out respective objectives and management and governance processes. These set clear objectives with concrete deliverables for both parties, all of which are articulated in the agreement.
The purpose of these frameworks is to ensure a professional approach to the project management of partnerships, without stifling innovation, responsiveness and creativity with bureaucratic procedures. A steering committee with representatives from both parties meets formally twice a year, to keep things on target.
While such an approach might seem daunting to would-be partners, Hall says it indicates the company’s desire to take partnerships seriously. Rio and other companies frequently fund the employment of partnership managers at partner organisations, to ensure that sufficient resources are available to implement and manage the partnership.
For example, since Lorna Liggett is Argos’ community affairs ‘team’, it was important that whichever charity they chose to work with had the organisational capacity to manage the programme across the company’s head office, distribution centres and 650 stores. Funds raised at the head office go directly to support the work of Help the Hospices, Argos’ charity of the year partner.
4) communication is key
A successful partnership is not just about strong management structures and CSR strategy. It is also effective communication. Anne Seymour, the Argos account manager at Help the Hospices says that a secondment at the company’s head office helped her develop a good understanding of the company’s business practices and how to communicate better with its employees. Knowledge of what the company’s priorities are and where Help the Hospice fits into the picture has helped her to pitch ideas in a way that the company will understand and to present information to them in the format they prefer.
She and Liggett speak frequently on the phone and meet a couple of times a month. In particular Seymour values “the honesty, and openness” in their communication.
Earthwatch’s Hillyard agrees that it isn’t the formal structures that are key to the success of the Earthwatch/Rio partnership. He says that the critical thing is communicating regularly and frequently on an informal basis so that activities and approaches can be adapted when necessary and opportunities taken advantage of. “We’re able to pick up the phone and deal with issues as they arise in a transparent way,” he adds.
The question on the mind of many practitioners contemplating entering into a partnership is what happens when things go wrong or there is a clash of values. Hillyard says: “Good communication helps us to get through tricky areas. We are always talking…Each partner must retain the right to express their own views – otherwise there would be no value added to the partnership through different perspectives.”
5) employee engagement
The real communications challenge is not between head offices. It is that of building employee awareness, support and active engagement. This is one of the reasons why Argos leaves the final choice of charity partner down to its employees – “It’s really important for staff to make the decision…” says Liggett.
EDF chose Mencap as a partner because it wanted to work with an organisation that would facilitate employee engagement at a local level, as did Argos, which was looking for a partner with a good national spread that would allow its stores to get involved and build relationships at a local level.
However building employee support at a national level presents charities with both an opportunity and a challenge. It isn’t just geography but the diversity of the target audience. Help the Hospices’s Seymour highlights that to engage such a large and diverse workforce of 24,000 staff, it’s important to communicate in a way that’s relevant to all.
For Help the Hospices, the partnership is as much about raising awareness and building long-term relationships between staff and their local hospices that will endure beyond Argos’s two-year formal partnership as it is about raising funds. So the pairing up of stores with local hospices is central to the Argos partnership. Every store, distribution centre and contact centre is matched to its local hospice, which is then supported by the store’s staff.
Employees at each store or distribution centre nominate a charity champion to drive forward fundraising efforts. While Help the Hospices organises events during the year, employees can come up with their own ideas, with funds raised locally go to the local hospice partner. The partnership has national reach but operates locally. Argos says it has seen greater levels of participation in fundraising this time round. It puts this down to the fact that employees can see the positive impact their efforts have on an organisation in their own community.
A two-year time frame works better than a one-year partnership, Seymour says, otherwise by the time you’ve built awareness and got people motivated to work with you, the company is already trying to sort out its next charity partner. Mencap’s Stanley agrees: “Things don’t happen overnight, so its good to have the longer term perspective that a two-year partnership gives you”.
6) evaluation and assessment
“Each part of the programme must be able to stand up and contribute directly to the missions and objectives of both partners to justify their involvement with each other,” says Rio Tinto’s Hall. “Partners must always be prepared to innovate and to challenge themselves,” he adds.
The last evaluation of Rio’s Earthwatch partnership highlighted that both organisations had changed and evolved. Their priorities had shifted and new collaborative opportunities were emerging. So they spent a year looking at hard issues that could bring them both greater value, and developed a set of activities that brought the focus of the programme to tackling operational issues within Rio, such as sustainability master classes for staff and the development of biodiversity indicators.
Help the Hospices has sent out its first survey six months into the partnership, to assess the programme. The charity will use the findings to try to understand what works well and what doesn’t and adapt its approach to win staff support. But Help the Hospices constantly monitors the programme and modifies its approach. For example, having found that simple fundraising ideas work best, the charity has developed sheets of fun and easy ideas for staff. They also provide staff with regular updates to keep them motivated and aware that they are making a difference.
7) innovation and adaptation
Assessments highlight weaknesses in a partnership as well as strengths. Partners should use the information gleaned from such exercises to improve the way they work and radically change their approach if necessary. The focus should be on solutions that enable partners to meet their objectives most effectively.
“A year is too short,” Mencap’s Stanley comments, “There isn’t time to bring on new ideas or scope for innovation”. For example, developing volunteering opportunities for staff presented difficulties for both EDF and Mencap as the charity doesn’t offer an’off the shelf’ volunteering package to corporate supporters. Since EDF had always used brokers to organise volunteering opportunities for staff, it did not have the internal capacity to coordinate activities either. Initially Mencap offered several different challenges to several company sites, but without internal structures to promote these in the company, it was difficult to build staff support or interest.
As of March this year, however, EDF will introduce 30 internal community ambassadors, part of whose role it will be to encourage their colleagues to participate actively in the company’s charity partnerships. Ambassadors will be given two hours a week to fulfil their responsibilities.
“EDF’s willingness to keep trying to get things right until they succeed really shows their commitment,” says Stanley. The volunteering programme, however, has been scaled down for the moment and the focus shifted to developing a mentoring scheme that matches senior managers at EDF with departments or individuals within Mencap that could benefit from their skills.
The assessment at the end of the first year of its partnership with EDF gave Mencap an opportunity to develop a new set of ideas that linked in more closely with company’s core business objectives and responsibilities. It was also an opportunity to highlight what programmes hadn’t worked and why, and to develop more effective programmes or put in place the structures within the company that would allow them to flourish – such as the community ambassadors scheme. “It is this responsive, dynamic and open-minded approach that makes EDF a good partner to work with,” says Stanley.
Concerns about health and safety procedures on an Earthwatch research project where Rio employees were volunteering threatened to be a “showstopper” at an early stage in the partnership, says Hall. However Rio offered its expertise and resources to help Earthwatch manage health and safety on field-based scientific research projects, a solution that the charity welcomed.
Both parties highlight how the longevity of their commitment to each other has enabled trust and openness to develop, allowing them to be creative, innovative and flexible – and find joint solutions to the challenges faced.
in conclusion
There is clearly great enthusiasm about what was being achieved and what could still be achieved in all three partnerships. We also found features that enable companies and charities to develop true partnerships: choosing partners whose objectives link to a broader CSR strategy and organisational/business goals to ensure mutual benefit – and support from senior management; employee engagement; evaluation and innovation to ensure that objectives are being met in the most effective way possible.
This enthusiasm was tempered with a realistic view of the shortcomings and limits to collaborative efforts. Challenges and conflicts do arise but frequent, open and honest communication between partners helps to manage challenges and conflicts in a constructive way, sometimes strengthening the partnership. As Dax Lovegrove, business relations manager for WWF, points out, choosing a partner isn’t just about shared objectives, it is also about chemistry – finding an organisation that shares your passion and that you can work with. This often comes down to the level of individuals and the compatibility of their work styles, a feature particularly noted by Help the Hospices in its partnership with Argos.
Clearly cash is an important ingredient for most charity partners but for Rio Tinto’s Hall, the acid test of the company’s partnerships is that many of its partners would continue to work with the company, even without money, as their partnerships are all about achieving outcomes.
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