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Partnership Conversations
Enduring Partnerships: Resilience, innovation, and success
Good for business and good for the community are objectives that often seem at odds. This can be challenged when companies and nonprofits create win-win partnerships based on business goals and societal needs. But what factors determine how a win-win partnership that provides positive impact for at least the short term can grow to last several years or decades? That question is examined in a soon-to-be-released report from The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College.
During a recent 18-month period, The Center studied four corporations — Advanced Micro Devices, State Farm Insurance, TJX Companies, and Union Bank of California — and their respective nonprofit partners — Capital Area Training Foundation, National Housing Services of Chicago, Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, and Operation Hope. Each of these alliances fit the criteria for win-win partnerships, which utilize resources from the for-profit operating budget to address a business opportunity or need in a way that also generates benefits for low- to moderate-income individuals and/or communities.
The research team examined the roles and relationships between the partners, the ways in which the parties navigate difficult and unexpected circumstances, the expected and unforeseen outcomes of these partnerships, and the positive and negative consequences of these joint ventures. These partnerships are not philanthropic, but are based in a business and community development model of mutual benefit. The partners have a track record of working together for at least three to five years, and in most cases, much longer.
The robustness of each partnership in this study was enhanced by several key arenas of action:
- creating a unique partnership identity
- strategic flexibility
- evolving the partnership beyond a business venture
- entrepreneurial planning
- institutionalizing the partnership
- measuring and evaluating appropriate to stage
- anticipatory communications
The report was funded by The Ford Foundation.
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