Corporate Relations & Engagement

Do you have a strategic plan, operational plan, target markets or bull’s-eye target in mind to determine and strengthen community partnerships? A simple exercise consisting of three steps may help any nonprofit executive determine how to strengthen community partnerships going forward...

A partnership between Uber and the Red Cross in New Zealand was announced this week. A similar partnership between Uber and the American Red Cross earlier in the month went almost unnoticed. How come? The clue may be in the recent abandoning of a plan for Uber to partner with UN Women, as reported in…

Walmart's eighth annual Global Responsibility report came out not long ago, and it suggests that the company is feeling pretty proud of itself. It boosted its minimum wage for associates to $9 an hour in April of this year and will boost it again to $10 in February 2016. That will cost them $1 billion,…

I’ve spent 14 years as a fundraiser, pitch coach and trainer to fundraisers. And after conducting interviews with some of the most successful pitchers on the planet, I have noticed fascinating patterns in how the regular winners approach pitch design. Their habits are different from those who work hard but usually fail to get through. Here are seven of the mistakes that are most likely to sabotage all the hard work — and how to solve them.

Every organization’s revenue stream is different, but for most, at least a portion of fundraising comes from corporate support. Besides traditional corporate grants, which you apply for directly through a company’s grant-making arm, corporations offer a variety of programs to give back to communities where their employees live and work. Collectively, corporate philanthropy accounts for nearly $15 billion in annual giving to nonprofits.

You might be surprised at the number of ways that corporations spread around their corporate giving dollars. Here are some of the most common.

While many big merchants are struggling to sustain their sales, one of the fastest growing retailers in Minnesota is a nonprofit. Sales at the thrift stores of Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota have been soaring thanks to a surge in the opening of new stores beyond the urban core. Consumers' growing frugality is also boosting sales. In the past three years, Goodwill's retail sales have jumped about 75 percent to $67 million, a growth rate any business executive would be happy to brag about.

A new website created by the co-author of "Freakonomics" allows donors to combine support for their favorite charities with online gambling. For a small fee (say, $1 or $5), Spin for Good allows people to enter online slots or blackjack tournaments. The winner’s take then goes to a charity the player chooses from a list of more than two dozen organizations that have struck partnerships with the site. (Participation for nonprofits is free.)

Matching gifts are one of the largest sources of untapped funding for nonprofit organizations, but it doesn't have to be that way. Here are five ways to get matching gifts, courtesy of Adam Weinger, president of Double the Donation: 1. Promote matching gifts on social-media platforms. 2. Include information about matching gifts in acknowledgment letters. 3. Mention matching gifts in fundraising-related emails. 4. Dedicate space in newsletters and blogs to matching-gift information. 5. Direct donors to the electronic matching-gift submission process.

A new app for streaming music service Spotify wants people to donate to charity in return for getting their favorite songs played during friends’ parties. The Guilty Pledgers app requires party hosts to sign in using Facebook, then open up a party playlist. Friends can then pledge to any of a range of charities — more than 13,000 available on the JustGiving website — in return for adding tracks of their choice to the playlist. It’s the first fundraising app to be launched on Spotify.

When Room to Read set itself the challenge of recruiting a younger supporter base, it knew it needed something really cool to inspire the younger generation to take on a fundraising challenge for the charity. Barclays’ MoonTrekker event has helped do just that. In the last three years, the event has raised more than $2 million Hong Kong Dollars for the charity, helping fund 26 projects across Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.