Winning partnerships

Part­ner­ships formed between cor­po­ra­tions and non-​profit organ­i­sa­tions, to tackle devel­op­ment chal­lenges, are on the increase. Though not with­out its chal­lenges, a part­ner­ship that focuses on joint objec­tives and clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion of expec­ta­tions can intro­duce new ways of work­ing and help realise the win-​win sit­u­a­tion for both the com­mu­nity and the business.

By MABEL WONG

Cor­po­ra­tions and NPOs are start­ing to rethink and change their rela­tion­ships with each other, and are find­ing ways to work together to meet both social and busi­ness goals. For com­pa­nies, the move away from cor­po­rate phil­an­thropy towards part­ner­ships with NPOs and a strate­gic and long-​term pur­pose to both social devel­op­ment and busi­ness objec­tives seem to be the way to go. In tra­di­tional cor­po­rate phil­an­thropy, there is typ­i­cally lit­tle inter­ac­tion or exchange of knowl­edge and resources between the donor and recip­i­ent. More sig­nif­i­cantly, there is a lack of strate­gic busi­ness inter­est for the com­pany. With­out a busi­ness ratio­nale, phil­an­thropic dona­tions may be rel­e­gated to just a “do good” effort, which may be reduced or even sus­pended dur­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times.

With the con­cept of part­ner­ship chang­ing and evolv­ing over time, what do we mean by part­ner­ship and what is strate­gic part­ner­ship? McK­e­own & Brown (2000), one of the many stud­ies defin­ing part­ner­ships, talks about four mod­els of part­ner­ship in increas­ing order of com­mit­ment: Con­sul­ta­tive or advi­sory; con­trib­u­tory; oper­a­tional; and, col­lab­o­ra­tive. Each part­ner­ship is dif­fer­ent and has its own char­ac­ter­is­tics, func­tions, juris­dic­tions and para­me­ters. Part­ner­ships can be cat­e­gorised along any num­ber of dimen­sions such as time (short– vs long-​term), struc­ture (sep­a­rate vs inte­grated), and intended audi­ence (tar­geted vs broad). Part­ner­ships are also not sta­tic and should involve a cycle of ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing to eval­u­ate impacts and review to decide on the future of the part­ner­ship (i.e., will end or scale-​up). In short, part­ner­ships are not neat and tidy.

Mak­ing the part­ner­ship a win-​win

We are often told the story of pos­i­tive part­ner­ships and what they look like – the win-​win sit­u­a­tion of com­bin­ing the best of busi­nesses (capa­bil­i­ties, tech­nol­ogy and exper­tise) with that of other organ­i­sa­tions to meet global devel­op­ment chal­lenges. But are part­ner­ships always the way to go?

Some devel­op­ment agen­cies would argue that a part­ner­ship is not always the best approach; some­times, tra­di­tional phil­an­thropy is a bet­ter option. Sim­i­larly, we have seen instances of com­pa­nies decid­ing to ‘go at it alone’ and imple­ment com­mu­nity devel­op­ment projects directly. The terms under which each part­ner­ship takes place (and con­tin­ues) should be clearly dis­cussed and agreed upon. Each part­ner­ship is unique and requires care­ful plan­ning and clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion of expec­ta­tions. Part­ner­ships work when both par­ties are clear on what they are get­ting out of it and offer the other part­ner some­thing in return. 

Fun­da­men­tally, part­ner­ship is not a sin­gle one-​time event but an ongo­ing jour­ney, dur­ing which the part­ners build trust over time and with effort. Some of the key sug­ges­tions to ensure suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships include:

• Man­age expec­ta­tions: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing clear expec­ta­tions by both par­ties is an impor­tant first step to ensure suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships. Part­ner­ships break down when mis­con­cep­tions arise stem­ming from a lack of under­stand­ing of each partner’s expec­ta­tions or some­times an overly sim­plis­tic under­stand­ing of the other’s val­ues, phi­los­o­phy, con­straints, resources, expec­ta­tions and objec­tives. There­fore, each part­ner must be aware of what the other part­ner is expect­ing to gain from the expe­ri­ence. For exam­ple, com­pa­nies must recog­nise that NPOs often want to fur­ther their cause with­out com­pro­mis­ing their posi­tions. At the same time, NPOs need to under­stand that com­pa­nies may want recog­ni­tion from the part­ner­ship or are look­ing to include employee engage­ment in the pro­gramme. Some cor­po­rate com­mu­nity invest­ment pro­grammes are designed to attract, moti­vate and retain staff. How­ever, com­pa­nies need to realise that many NPOs strug­gle to man­age employee vol­un­teers. Part­ners need to recog­nise the impor­tance of hav­ing an exit strat­egy and man­age each other’s expec­ta­tions by com­mu­ni­cat­ing the con­di­tions under which this exit strat­egy will be implemented.

• Appro­pri­ately esti­mate time and effort required for an effec­tive part­ner­ship: Part­ners con­sis­tently under­es­ti­mate the time and effort required to launch and main­tain a part­ner­ship. The mis­al­lo­ca­tion of time and resources can some­times hap­pen when one part­ner per­ceives that the ben­e­fits of the alliance is too low and thus give less time and resources to make the part­ner­ship work. Some­times an imbal­ance arises when a stronger part­ner emerges and decides on the project’s time­line and process, which may not fit with the other partner’s resources. Part­ners should also be aware that turnover of key peo­ple is a pos­si­bil­ity that would cost both sides more time to re-​build rap­port and rela­tion­ship to get the project going again.

• Find a good match: Sev­eral best-​practice reviews men­tion the impor­tance of a good fit between part­ners. Mis­matches can occur when NPOs and cor­po­ra­tions have con­flict­ing organ­i­sa­tional struc­tures or cul­tures, dif­fer­ent decision-​making styles, and dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies. For exam­ple, some com­pa­nies are more hier­ar­chi­cal and have faster, more author­i­tar­ian approaches to deci­sion mak­ing while vol­un­tary organ­i­sa­tions tend to have slower, more con­sen­sual approaches. Find­ing a good fit requires dili­gence by each part­ner to recog­nise and work through these differences.

Here are two exam­ples of good partnerships –

1) PepsiCo’s part­ner­ship with Water​.org and Water­Credit to facil­i­tate micro­cre­dit loans for water and san­i­ta­tion in India­ – Work­ing together with Water​.org (a US non-​profit organ­i­sa­tion with a mis­sion to pro­vide safe drink­ing water and san­i­ta­tion to peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries), Pep­siCo Foun­da­tion has com­mit­ted to accel­er­at­ing greater access to safe water and san­i­ta­tion for those cur­rently liv­ing with­out these basic neces­si­ties in India. This goal will be met through pro­grammes deliv­ered via grants and Water­Credit, an inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive that facil­i­tates micro­cre­dit loans for water and san­i­ta­tion. Core ele­ments of the pro­gramme include deliv­er­ing safe water sys­tems, pro­vid­ing access to improved san­i­ta­tion, pro­vid­ing health and hygiene edu­ca­tion, estab­lish­ing a revolv­ing loan fund of over US$1 mil­lion for water and san­i­ta­tion projects, and facil­i­tat­ing the growth of a com­mer­cial mar­ket for micro­cre­dit loans for water and sanitation.

The Water­Credit ini­tia­tive is much needed given the cur­rent water and san­i­ta­tion sit­u­a­tion in India. More than 120 mil­lion peo­ple lack access to safe water in India – a fig­ure that is larger than the pop­u­la­tion of all but 10 coun­tries world­wide. In addi­tion, 800 mil­lion peo­ple in India do not have access to a hygienic toi­let. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion reports that, in low-​income coun­tries, unsafe water and san­i­ta­tion are asso­ci­ated with three of the 10 lead­ing causes of death. At any given time, patients suf­fer­ing from a water-​related dis­ease occupy half of the world’s hos­pi­tal beds. Cur­rent meth­ods of address­ing India’s water and san­i­ta­tion cri­sis are not scal­able, as they rely on phil­an­thropy alone.

Pep­siCo and Water.org’s part­ner­ship will not only pro­vide safe water for peo­ple liv­ing in India, but it will also cre­ate a sus­tain­able and scal­able model to accel­er­ate access to safe water and san­i­ta­tion for mil­lions of peo­ple through­out the devel­op­ing world. For more infor­ma­tion, see: www​.pep​sico​.com/​P​u​r​p​o​s​e​/​P​e​p​s​i​C​o​-​F​o​u​n​d​a​t​i​o​n​/​P​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​.html.

2) Hos­pi­tal­ity Group Accor part­ners with ECPAT (End Child Pros­ti­tu­tion, Pornog­ra­phy and Traf­fick­ing of Chil­dren for Sex­ual Pur­poses) to com­bat child sex tourism ­– As a respon­si­ble actor in the tourist indus­try, Accor formed a part­ner­ship with ECPAT (an inter­na­tional NPO that brings together a net­work of 77 organ­i­sa­tions based in more than 70 coun­tries) to train its employ­ees in pre­vent­ing child sex tourism and raise the aware­ness of its cus­tomers of child sex traf­fick­ing. In addi­tion to imple­ment­ing pro­grammes, the Accor Group has signed the “Code of Con­duct for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren against sex­ual exploita­tion”, a doc­u­ment, drawn up by ECPAT and the World Tourism Orga­ni­za­tion, which sets out the prin­ci­ples for an active pol­icy to fight this scourge. In March 2008, Accor was appointed to the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee respon­si­ble for apply­ing the Code. At the end of 2009, Accor was a sig­na­tory to the Code of Con­duct in more than 30 coun­tries where the Group oper­ates. For more infor­ma­tion, see: www​.accor​.com/​e​n​/​s​u​s​t​a​i​n​a​b​l​e​-​d​e​v​e​l​o​p​m​e​n​t​/​e​g​o​-​p​r​i​o​r​i​t​i​e​s​/​c​h​i​l​d​-​p​r​o​t​e​c​t​i​o​n​.html.

Whilst part­ner­ships are not with­out its own set of chal­lenges, a part­ner­ship that focuses on joint objec­tives and addresses the larger com­mu­nity needs, a part­ner­ship that is invested into more tan­gi­ble long-​term projects with a mea­sur­able impact on the local com­mu­ni­ties, this when man­aged well, can bring together many of the objec­tives of a com­mu­nity invest­ment pro­gramme and can also intro­duce new ways of work­ing, and can per­haps realise the win-​win situation.

Mabel Wong is a senior project man­ager at CSR Asia. In her last three years with CSR Asia, her respon­si­bil­i­ties included facil­i­tat­ing CSR Asia’s Com­mu­nity Invest­ment Round­table in Sin­ga­pore and Malaysia. She has also advised and worked with com­pa­nies includ­ing Accor, Citi, Hewlett-​Packard, Intel, DHL and oth­ers. Prior to CSR Asia, Wong worked in the NGO sec­tor for over seven years focus­ing on children’s issues, in par­tic­u­lar, chil­dren in need of spe­cial pro­tec­tion such as street chil­dren, chil­dren in con­flict with the law (juve­nile jus­tice) and child soldiers.