Developing Successful Partnerships

What is a Partnership? A partnership is A voluntary arrangement working cooperatively shared or compatible objectives shared authority, responsibility and management for the project

What is a Partnership? A partnership is joint investment of resources (time, work, funding, material, expertise, information) shared liability or risk-taking mutual benefits (win-win situations)

Why Use Partnerships? Maximize efforts by sharing resources, headaches, successes two heads are better than one

Each Partner Benefits: Government departments want visibility and public support for their programs Non-government organizations want visibility and public and corporate support (resources) Companies want a return on investment and to be good corporate citizens

What To Do Step One: Know what you want have a plan with definite objectives think of it as a Business Plan be succinct think long-term

What To Do Step One: Know what you have what do you bring to the table? do you have the necessary human resources? Can you bring in skilled volunteers? What are your training needs?

What To Do Step One: Know your bottom line Develop Partnership Guidelines statement of principles screening criteria for partners an administrative process

What To Do Step Two: Do your homework know your targets be aware of potential conflict of interest and incompatibility issues learn as much as you can about an organization before you approach it or accept an invitation to work with it

What To Do Step Three: Go for it! Take proposal to a variety of possible partners know who to see – most companies have 3 types of funding that can be used to support partnership activities donations advertising promotions

What To Do Step Three: Go for it! Ask for something specific explore options, be prepared to deal don’t give up follow through have realistic expectations

The Partnership Agreement Scope and objectives roles and responsibilities benefits mechanisms for termination milestones and evaluation

Evaluation Partnerships should be monitored from development through execution – develop an evaluation process at the start Ongoing evaluations identify what elements contributed to the success or failure of the initiative Build on the strengths that these evaluations identify

You Should Know... You are competing in a volatile marketplace partnerships must be approached strategically although companies want to be good corporate citizens, they can not afford to ignore the bottom line

You Should Know... Potential problems must be weighed against lost opportunities not a short term activity - have to work at it everyday do ongoing evaluations to identify what elements contributed to the success or failure of the initiative

You Should Know… Build on the strengths that these evaluations identify If things don’t work out with your corporate partner (and this does happen), start working on a relationship with another corporate partner

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