The bears and the bees

The bears were thinking.   Sunning themselves on a hillside clearing a pleasant breeze stirring the wildflowers that surrounded them they were grappling with a problem.   “To keep young bears fit and healthy we need to offer alternatives to sitting around eating and sleeping all day long.”  “We need activities that will challenge, educate and provide healthy exercise as well as being sociable and fun -  a picnic with a difference.”

Meantime, in the neighbouring woodlands, the honey bees were pondering another issue.  A bear related issue.  The woodlands were abundant and fruitful.  There were plenty of old trees and hollow logs in which to nest;  and many meadows and other clearings where flowers grew prolifically providing sweet nectar from which to  produce more than enough high quality honey to share with their neighbours.   The problem was that the neighbourhood bears were apt to take liberties, helping themselves to honey whenever and wherever they chose, often damaging bee colonies and the bee environment, despite the bees’ retaliatory stings (which as you know hurt the bee even more than the bear!) .  If only the bees could come to some kind of arrangement with the bears.

As the bees were thinking about the bears the bears started to think about the bees.  Or, more accurately, about honey.  Their plan involved competitions and prizes -  and prizes for bears mean honey in all its various shapes and forms.

And so it came about.  The bears went to the bees and made them a proposal.  If the bees would provide prizes for the games the bears would respond by promoting the honey’s goodness and the bees’ generosity.  As time went by the games became the highlight of the year and the young bears loved the opportunity to compete and win delicious prizes whilst benefiting from the healthy fun to be had.  The organisers were careful to publicize the importance of the bees to the success of the games.  The young bears learned to respect the bees and treat them and all aspects of their honey production with care.   Over time honey became even sweeter and richer, the bears stronger and healthier, the meadows and the woodlands vibrant and joyful; and bee stings came to be considered as some strange mysterious, vaguely remembered thing of the past.

The most obvious and for a long time the most common business partnership relationship is what is described as 'sponsorship'. The classic definition of 'sponsorship' is "an investment, in cash or in kind, in an activity, in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that activity”. The sports world remains, without doubt, the most obvious place to find examples of sponsorship.  Sports remain today where the bulk of sponsorship dollars are spent by business.  However, there are also many examples of businesses investing in and sharing in the benefits of linking themselves through sponsorship deals with other types of high profile activities, including cultural and educational events and other charitable endeavours.

More importantly, for many of you reading this blog, in the last decade or so there has been an increasing awareness that businesses benefit not only from traditional sponsorship arrangements but also from a wider and deeper choice of partnership mechanisms.  In addition to sponsorship, there is a whole spectrum of differing partnership relationships between organisations and businesses.  You may have come across these terms being used:

• corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• corporate philanthropy (CP)
• community engagement (CE)
• corporate community investment (CCI), and
• cause related marketing (CRM)
• corporate shared value (CSV)

However, you can forget the alphabet soup of CC, CCI, CP, CRM, CSR, CSV.  A better  way of thinking about types of corporate relationships with non profits is as a  scale -  from soft to hard, from philanthropy to advertising, and from long term and low profile relationships to high profile and short term relationships.

SOFT						HARD
PHILANTHROPY						ADVERTISING
<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NON-COMMERCIAL ORIENTATION						COMMERCIAL ORIENTATION
CHARITABLE GIFTS						MARKETING INITIATIVES
LONG TERM OBJECTIVES						SHORT TERM OBJECTIVES
LOW PROFILE						HIGH PROFILE

At one end of this spectrum are very commercial, sales and marketing driven aims.  Mid way are subtler, longer-term economic goals such as communicating positive images to a range of audiences, including employees, potential employees, opinion formers and the communities in which they do business.  At the other end are even subtler goals, sometimes at first glance only tenuously connected with the business such as community and education projects.

Thinking of your organization, which of these goals is you most likely to successfully provide for a corporate partner?  The best way of answering this question is to step out of your shoes and into the business owner’s shoes.  What do you see from their perspective?   What might they hear that would make them interested in you?  What feelings might they have about your nonprofit or the area in which it works?

By being able to put yourself into the shoes of a business or business person and see, hear and feel the world from their perspective, you will find that you can identify what a business is most interested in and, more importantly, what benefits you can offer that will meet their objectives in exchange for their support.