CorpComms Magazine

They say charity begins at home, but for many the workplace can be very important as well. Picking the right companies to work with can be vital for the survival of any charity, especially in these straitened times.

For companies, too, a charity partnership can be an important part of marketing and employee engagement. But, with the many different causes and charities out there, how can companies create successful partnerships, and how can charities pick the right people to work with?

Get it wrong, and the publicity generated can be negative for both sides of the relationship. When children's health and welfare charity Unicef announced a link up with fast-food chain McDonalds, the headlines were predictable, as were the global protests against ‘McUnicef'.

Other controversial tie ups in the past have included the Red Cross and Nestle and the World Wildlife Fund and BP. Given the pitfalls charities face, dealing with companies with flawed ethical track records, it can be tempting to withdraw from the corporate world altogether. By doing so, however, charities would miss out on some of the biggest funders and best marketing opportunities open to them.

The stakes are higher than ever at the moment, given that cash strapped donors are likely to stop giving as a result of the current economic climate.

A poll by research group YouGov in September revealed that almost half of individual donors would consider giving less to charity if the credit crunch continued. This comes at a time when running costs for charities are rising, so, for many, corporate partnerships are an increasingly important part of survival.

The right corporate/charity partnership can enhance both parties. Consider Marks & Spencer's announcement that it would donate all the profit from charging 5p for plastic bags to Groundwork, a charity improving parks, play areas and neighbourhoods across the UK.

By announcing that all the profit would go to charity, the company has effectively removed most of the opposition to charging for plastic bags, at the same time generating positive, instead of negative publicity. The company describes its package of measures to help the environment, including the Groundwork partnership, as Plan A.

Companies with charity partnerships are often able to use them to gain good publicity, whether, like M&S, generating press coverage, or by aligning the charity's brand with their own on promotional literature and packaging.

Partnerships such as the one between Innocent Drinks and Age Concern illustrate how a charity partnership can help a corporate brand.

Age Concern might seem like a rather staid partner for Innocent, which has a reputation for being young and dynamic. However, since 2003 the company has provided a twist on the idea by getting people to knit little woolly hats for smoothie bottles, which are then sold in Sainsbury's. For each behatted smoothie sold, 50p is donated to Age Concern. Last year £200,000 was raised, bringing the total amount donated to Age Concern over the past five years to £370,000. This year Innocent Drinks hopes to raise £250,000.

The partnership gives the company's products a distinctive new look for winter, and advertises the quirky brand as well as its ‘caring' side.

The partnership also draws people to the Innocent website as a source of knitting patterns and a forum for knitters themselves. There is even a hat of the week feature on the website, which for Halloween revealed a fairy sitting beside two toadstools - all on the top of an Innocent bottle.

WaterAid, the water and sanitation charity, has a particularly strong reputation for its corporate partnerships. They include most of Britain's water companies as well as clothing company H&M.

Duncan Wilbur, corporate development manager at WaterAid, says that the partnerships are not just about raising money for the charity, there are plenty of other important factors. ‘Raising money is high up on our priority list,' he acknowledges, ‘but there are other important things like building links with staff members.'

To avoid the McUnicef problem, however, WaterAid does not accept money from just anyone. ‘If there is a reputational risk, we just won't do it,' he says. ‘We have an ethical policy and also sign up to Corporate Watch [a research organisation providing critical corporate research].'

Wilbur adds that the charity has turned down a number of companies who wanted to partner with it because of the risk to its reputation. ‘I don't want to name names but it is important,' he says. ‘We've turned down some potentially lucrative deals.'

Once the charity has decided to partner with a commercial organisation, it can provide a powerful marketing tool for the company. WaterAid has recently signed a deal with Ecover, which markets environmentally friendly washing powder and other cleaning products. ‘Ecover wanted to get across the fact that the product is better for water close to home than rival products, whilst also getting across a message about water elsewhere in the world,' Wilbur says.

Staff members at companies involved in charity partnerships are also often given the chance to get involved. ‘Employee engagement is really important,' he adds. ‘It is good for the company if it engages them, and also for us, because these are all people who will go around talking about the charity in school assemblies, and lots of other places outside.'

Other WaterAid partners go even further when it comes to involving the staff. Thames Water is just one of the water companies who support the charity. Liz Banks, who runs the partnership for Thames, explains that employees often speak on behalf of the charity, and even go on trips and fundraising drives for them.

She feels the company gets a lot of positive coverage from its partnership with WaterAid. ‘We have a very strong relationship with them and are hugely supportive,' she says.

For Thames, it is important that the organisations it partners with have integrity. Banks describes WaterAid as ‘very credible, with lots of exposure'.

She says that, for Thames, charity partnership has to be about more than just writing a cheque. ‘We want to take the relationship further than that. The WaterAid partnership involves lots of our employees,' Banks adds. ‘The partnership comes from a very high level. Lots of executives are involved.'

The company starts promoting its partnership with WaterAid before employees even join the company. ‘We talk about it at our induction days and there is an annual graduate challenge on fundraising for the charity.'

Many of Thames Water employees become WaterAid speakers, explaining at public events how the charity works. Because so many of these employees are water engineers they can explain at first hand how the charity is making a difference.

Banks says that even when the employees retire, many of them continue with the speaker programme. ‘Even when they leave Thames, they continue to make a difference with WaterAid,' she says.

Brokering a good partnership like the WaterAid one takes a little more than just luck. The Charities Aid Foundation, a registered charity itself, works to matchmake charities and corporates. Liz Davies, senior corporate responsibility manager, says it is vital to make a good fit between the charity and corporate.

‘Cultural fit is particularly important,' she says. ‘It is not necessarily always the case that a big company needs to partner with a big charity - instead we look at how they work. If a company is entrepreneurial, it may want to partner with an entrepreneurial charity. If it is more established, a traditional charity may be more appropriate.'

It is also important to discuss what both sides want to get out of a charity partnership. ‘Of course, fundraising is very important to the charity, and lots of companies want to get positive PR out of it,' she says. ‘However, there are other issues. The company might want assurances that its employees will be allowed to volunteer - employees do want the opportunity to feel involved and make a difference.'

Davies says that when these partnerships do go wrong, it is because clear parameters have not been set, so it is important to discuss these from the start.

‘If there is a feeling that the company is just doing it for its own PR or that the company has not been given the opportunities that it wanted with the charity then it will not work well,' she says. ‘Companies should not feel that they have the upper hand just because they are the ones providing the money. Charities are able to bring a lot to the table too.'

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