COVID-19 has caused budgets to shrink, not just for nonprofits, but for corporations too. Fortunately, there are still plenty of opportunities to partner with businesses and executives to get pro bono support for your organization! This week on the Nonprofit Jenni Show, we’re talking about best practices for navigating relationships as your nonprofit collaborates with corporations.
Who is Common Impact?
Our first guest this week is Danielle Holly, the CEO of Common Impact, which connects nonprofits with corporations that can offer pro bono volunteers. In fact, Common Impact has a podcast called Pro Bono Perspectives which shares stories about people who have worked for nonprofits pro bono.
When Common Impact connects nonprofits and corporations, they start with the corporate side. They work with companies to figure out where they want to have an impact in their communities, and what type of skills they can offer through their employee volunteers.
Then Common Impact will release an RFP to connect the companies with nonprofits in need which have the time to invest in a meaningful partnership.
What types of pro bono services could corporate professionals offer to nonprofits?
Pro bono services may include:
Software development
Database building
Creation of marketing collateral
Legal advice
Any other skills-based volunteer activity
How Can Nonprofit Leaders Form Mutually Beneficial Pro Bono Relationships?
Danielle offers some tips for nonprofit leaders to ensure a pro bono relationship is beneficial for both sides--the nonprofit, and the corporate employees:
Make sure both sides are clear about what they hope to get out of the partnership. For example, a corporation may be interested in PR recognition or offering professional development opportunities to their staff.
Don’t immediately accept every corporate offer of group volunteerism. For example, if a corporate executive calls and offers to send 50 volunteers over to your nonprofit’s offices for a two-hour time span next week, this offer may not actually be very beneficial to your organization. Danielle recommends that you calculate how much time it will take your staff to lead and support a group volunteer project, decide how much that time is worth, and ask the corporation to make a monetary contribution to support the volunteer project. Alternatively, you could mention some skills-based volunteer needs that would be more valuable to your organization.
Consider how pro bono support could help your organization with capacity-building despite your limited budget for overhead. This way, when corporations approach your organization for volunteer opportunities, you’ll be prepared with ideas.
Get free help with your skills-based volunteering projects at capacitycommons.org (run by Common Impact) with resources like sample projects, support tools to value your project, and volunteer search tools.
Example of a Successful Pro Bono Relationship
My second podcast guest this week is Brenda Jimenez, CEO of MENTOR New York, which helps build mentoring programs at nonprofit and for-profit entities. Common Impact connected Brenda’s organization with JP Morgan Chase, a corporation which was looking to offer free consulting advice to a small nonprofit. Brenda had the opportunity to ask up-and-coming JP Morgan Chase executives for their recommended solutions for three of MENTOR New York’s most pressing challenges:
How to price their business-to-business (B2B) services
How to find new staff with a robust, time-efficient hiring process
How to improve their primary marketing messages
Brenda explains that having a facilitator from Common Impact helped her team and the corporation work together to define the scope of the volunteer project. Through conversations with Common Impact, the nonprofit and corporation decided to come together for a one-day intensive workshop. JP Morgan Chase had thirty of their executives split up to work with three different MENTOR New York staff members so they could divide and conquer the three challenges Brenda mentioned.
During the workshop, MENTOR New York had the opportunity to describe their challenges in detail and answer the executives’ follow up questions. The executives shared their ideas, and then worked collaboratively with the MENTOR New York staff to identify the best solutions that could work within the nonprofit’s budgetary and other constraints.
Recommendations for Your Next Pro Bono Relationship
Based on her experience with JP Morgan Chase’s executives, Brenda offers the following recommendations for your next pro bono relationship:
Walk into the relationship recognizing that if you want your organization to grow, change will be necessary.
On the other hand, you also have to know how to balance the need for change with your current capacity to grow.
Be open to all of your pro bono partner’s ideas. Even though JP Morgan Chase pitched some ideas which couldn’t fit into Brenda’s budget and other constraints, she was able to modify some of their recommendations to fit MENTOR New York’s structure.
Continue to nurture the relationship, even if you only work with the pro bono partner for one project! Brenda followed up with the executives at JP Morgan Chase as soon as she implemented their recommendations, and also let them know when she started to see results. As a result of their continued relationship, JP Morgan Chase became a MENTOR New York client.
Get Professional Help Deciding Your Next Steps
I started this podcast series on the COVID-19 crisis because I’ve been hearing from so many nonprofit professionals who are unsure how it will impact their funding opportunities and relationships. I can’t wait to hear from you too! Schedule a free initial consultation call to chat with me about your idea for a new nonprofit, social enterprise, or other social sector organization. I would love to help you figure out the best next steps to take to protect your organization and mission. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the Nonprofit Jenni Show for free so you won’t miss any new episodes about resilience through COVID-19!
Also, I want to thank Little Green Light for sponsoring this episode! Little Green Light is my favorite donor management system because it was built by nonprofit development professionals who know what features and metrics nonprofits really need for their fundraising and relationship building. LGL is also extremely affordable for small nonprofits and offers free fundraising resources for my podcast listeners! Visit www.littlegreenlight.com/jenni for free ebooks like “How to Retain Donors After Your Giving Day”, “Six Steps to a Successful Appeal”, and more.