Developing corporate relationships
Thinking about how to get more resources into the management of your parks and green spaces? Wondering about tapping into the potential of a relationship with the private sector? You need to wise up to an agenda that is driving strategic decision-making about external corporate relationships: corporate social responsibility. Frances Wells of FWA Consulting takes a look.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has come about as companies – and indeed major organisations in the other sectors – have begun to realise the business benefits of taking a more responsible stance to doing business. Often this includes putting something back into the community, especially the community most local to where they operate.
Understanding what this is all about means that you can angle your approach to corporates in a way that will hit the right buttons and bring benefits to both sides.
Companies have always given money to local good causes – so what has changed?
In the past, crudely speaking, the trend was for companies to respond to requests for cash or in-kind support from good causes either as pure philanthropy or in the expectation of some positive PR. Increasingly, bigger and more go-ahead companies are looking at external relations as part of a more holistic analysis of the way they operate and do business. This is all about doing business in a more responsible way that seeks to minimise the negative effects of business operations and products and maximise the positive impacts. As we’ll see later this makes good business sense, which is why the trend is catching on.
What this means is that you are less likely to do well out of asking for one-off cash donations for a park-based project in return for a bit of publicity than you are seeking to build strategic long-term relationships with corporates that will deliver special benefits to both sides.
What are the business arguments for engaging with parks in a good, local initiative?
To help you angle your approach, here are a selection of issues that the switched-on company should be thinking about from a CSR perspective. If they are not, you can give them a helpful nudge.
Some useful arguments about green spaces in this context:
Employee volunteering opportunities on site and at events
For them: helps team building and related skills, improves staff loyalty, helps recruitment, raises their profile directly with green space users and, if managed well, through PR.
For you: if managed well, gives you free, motivated labour or additional staffing to extend your events programme; you can charge a per capita fee for arranging the experience; ideally they should bring non-branded equipment for each volunteer (as specified by you) and donate them to your general volunteer programme; they may donate cash to assist the purchase of materials for the project or in-kind assistance; association with well thought of companies can help your standing in other arenas, for example with other funders.
Staff development through secondments
For them: motivation and development for high fliers; lateral thinking about your project can contribute to helpful innovation, cultural shifts and new ideas back at base; better understanding of different sectors is good for marketing; new, strong relationships in the local operating area are good for local reputation building and understanding the local area
For you:Professional input into project planning and management, IT management, communications and design, both print and web-based, legal and financial help, fundraising strategies, and training and mentoring for you and your staff.
Playing a governance or advisory role to a green space trust or project
For them: Motivation for the individual; creating direct links to other sectors and businesses. This offers potential for new alliances and is a quiet reputation earner.
For you: Enables your charity or project to enjoy business perspectives and links for improved strategy and operations; enhances the trust’s/project’s reputation; fulfils your governance needs.
Once the relationship is going well your corporate partner may well wish to encourage other companies from their own business networks to be involved as a further positive contribution – and it helps to further their positive reputation.
Cash and in-kind donations such as materials or loan of equipment are still important but will bring far greater impact for both sides if they are associated with some or all of the above.
Getting started
Identify the opportunities, and associated corporate benefits, you have to offer that will also meet your needs. These are the win-wins.
Profile the potential involvement and targeting of corporates, for example site volunteering, professional advice and secondments, governance, contributing other resources. Think about whether this will be short-term or long-term.
Assess your capacity to manage a corporate relationship well, to meet their expectations and engender confidence. This is critical.
Identify likely targets in your area, for example companies with headquarters in your town, companies with strong local identity or lots of office-based staff, or involved in business related in some way to the public, for example retail, financial and professional services, house builders or local commercial radio.
Prepare a compelling outline case, while being clear about potential risks, and decide who will front the approach – someone senior, with credibility and a passion for the project or green space, and also, ideally, a committed community partner.
Find a way of getting in touch. This can be directly to a named individual, using good mutual contacts if you have them. Who you go to within the company depends on what you have in mind but generally start as high as you can to get someone influential referring your case down through the company hierarchy.
If you are considering employee volunteering, you may need to approach them through a broker, such as the Community Service Volunteers (CSV). Give your potential corporate partners an exclusive invitation to visit your project or site, and manage it well so they can see the potential for both sides for themselves.
Be prepared to have an open-minded discussion of possibilities. They may wish to dip only a toe in the water initially till they know more about you. Or they may come with bigger ideas than you were expecting.
Follow up and then follow up some more. Demonstrate your commitment and seriousness from the start.
How to source local corporate information
To find out who’s in town, what they do, how big they are and what their projected image is refer to:
Some do's
Be creative, be open-minded and businesslike and see those new opportunities opening up for you!
FWA specialises in consultancy for sustainable regeneration – spanning strategy development, regeneration enterprise planning, stakeholder management, consultation and community engagement. Green space matters are a recurring theme in our work. For more information contact Frances Wells at frances@fwaconsulting.com or on 0114 253058 or see www.fwaconsulting.com
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has come about as companies – and indeed major organisations in the other sectors – have begun to realise the business benefits of taking a more responsible stance to doing business. Often this includes putting something back into the community, especially the community most local to where they operate.
Understanding what this is all about means that you can angle your approach to corporates in a way that will hit the right buttons and bring benefits to both sides.
Companies have always given money to local good causes – so what has changed?
In the past, crudely speaking, the trend was for companies to respond to requests for cash or in-kind support from good causes either as pure philanthropy or in the expectation of some positive PR. Increasingly, bigger and more go-ahead companies are looking at external relations as part of a more holistic analysis of the way they operate and do business. This is all about doing business in a more responsible way that seeks to minimise the negative effects of business operations and products and maximise the positive impacts. As we’ll see later this makes good business sense, which is why the trend is catching on.
What this means is that you are less likely to do well out of asking for one-off cash donations for a park-based project in return for a bit of publicity than you are seeking to build strategic long-term relationships with corporates that will deliver special benefits to both sides.
What are the business arguments for engaging with parks in a good, local initiative?
To help you angle your approach, here are a selection of issues that the switched-on company should be thinking about from a CSR perspective. If they are not, you can give them a helpful nudge.
- Maintaining a ‘licence to operate’: The literal meaning is about legal and technical compliance but the general meaning is about reputation with its stakeholders. All the things a company does affects this to a greater or lesser extent. The opposite, worse case scenario is a consumer boycott brought on by publicity about widely unacceptable business practices.
- Profile with well informed consumers: The spending power and market influence of people and organisations concerned about the social and environmental impacts of business is increasing markedly; meanwhile the need to reach existing and non-consumers with positive messages remains.
- Investor confidence: Investors exercise caution where there are issues that could damage reputation, profitability and strength of market position. They like good reputation.
- Market positioning: This includes the need for innovation to compete and stay ahead, and to understand and find new markets.
- Retaining and recruiting good staff, and maintaining motivation: In a post-industrial economy good staff are a key asset and high staff turnover a major drain on resources and profitability; helping staff to fulfil their potential and enthusing them about the company they work for all pays back big dividends.
- Its position in the area it operates: Having good neighbour relations, good links into local decision-making arenas (for example on urban regeneration) and helping to improve the image of the local area are all good for heading off operational problems and potentially creating new business opportunities including attracting good new recruits to the area.
Some useful arguments about green spaces in this context:
- Research shows that the public values the environment highly, so relationships with environmental projects should have good positive associations. In addition, parks are visible, recognisable and have an obvious direct relationship with local communities.
- They play a role in enhancing the health, image and hence prosperity of a local area, which is all good for businesses operating nearby.
- Green spaces support individuals’ health, well-being and social inclusion. These are all top political agendas of interest to consumers and other important stakeholders.
- Transformational green space projects bring a myriad of tangible improvements to the wellbeing of a local area, and good reputation enhancement for those strategically involved.
Employee volunteering opportunities on site and at events
For them: helps team building and related skills, improves staff loyalty, helps recruitment, raises their profile directly with green space users and, if managed well, through PR.
For you: if managed well, gives you free, motivated labour or additional staffing to extend your events programme; you can charge a per capita fee for arranging the experience; ideally they should bring non-branded equipment for each volunteer (as specified by you) and donate them to your general volunteer programme; they may donate cash to assist the purchase of materials for the project or in-kind assistance; association with well thought of companies can help your standing in other arenas, for example with other funders.
Staff development through secondments
For them: motivation and development for high fliers; lateral thinking about your project can contribute to helpful innovation, cultural shifts and new ideas back at base; better understanding of different sectors is good for marketing; new, strong relationships in the local operating area are good for local reputation building and understanding the local area
For you:Professional input into project planning and management, IT management, communications and design, both print and web-based, legal and financial help, fundraising strategies, and training and mentoring for you and your staff.
Playing a governance or advisory role to a green space trust or project
For them: Motivation for the individual; creating direct links to other sectors and businesses. This offers potential for new alliances and is a quiet reputation earner.
For you: Enables your charity or project to enjoy business perspectives and links for improved strategy and operations; enhances the trust’s/project’s reputation; fulfils your governance needs.
Once the relationship is going well your corporate partner may well wish to encourage other companies from their own business networks to be involved as a further positive contribution – and it helps to further their positive reputation.
Cash and in-kind donations such as materials or loan of equipment are still important but will bring far greater impact for both sides if they are associated with some or all of the above.
Getting started
Identify the opportunities, and associated corporate benefits, you have to offer that will also meet your needs. These are the win-wins.
Profile the potential involvement and targeting of corporates, for example site volunteering, professional advice and secondments, governance, contributing other resources. Think about whether this will be short-term or long-term.
Assess your capacity to manage a corporate relationship well, to meet their expectations and engender confidence. This is critical.
Identify likely targets in your area, for example companies with headquarters in your town, companies with strong local identity or lots of office-based staff, or involved in business related in some way to the public, for example retail, financial and professional services, house builders or local commercial radio.
Prepare a compelling outline case, while being clear about potential risks, and decide who will front the approach – someone senior, with credibility and a passion for the project or green space, and also, ideally, a committed community partner.
Find a way of getting in touch. This can be directly to a named individual, using good mutual contacts if you have them. Who you go to within the company depends on what you have in mind but generally start as high as you can to get someone influential referring your case down through the company hierarchy.
If you are considering employee volunteering, you may need to approach them through a broker, such as the Community Service Volunteers (CSV). Give your potential corporate partners an exclusive invitation to visit your project or site, and manage it well so they can see the potential for both sides for themselves.
Be prepared to have an open-minded discussion of possibilities. They may wish to dip only a toe in the water initially till they know more about you. Or they may come with bigger ideas than you were expecting.
Follow up and then follow up some more. Demonstrate your commitment and seriousness from the start.
How to source local corporate information
To find out who’s in town, what they do, how big they are and what their projected image is refer to:
- Your economic development department
- Your Local Strategic Partnership/ local regeneration partnerships
- Chamber of Commerce/ local business associations
- Business pages of local newspapers.
Some do's
- Business directories, for example Kompass
- Directory of Social Change: The Guide to UK Company Giving (this also gives policy background and further useful information on approaching companies successfully).
- Get companies involved in projects as early as you can, for example developing the objectives and contributing to innovation.
- Embrace their impetus, innovation and delivery culture.
- Manage the relationship actively; have an “account management” approach.
- Ensure you ring fence their input, and tell them so.
- Get feedback on their experience, and act on the findings.
- Undervalue the benefits you can offer to your corporate partner.
- Say yes to things that you can’t manage well.
- Compromise your neutral position and good name. Think about your reputation too: develop policies about who/what you will associate with and how and ensure they fit with your wider corporate approach.
- Make impersonal blanket approaches. Always do your homework and use it to your advantage.
- Confuse corporate partnerships or relationships with sponsorship; the latter is a strictly commercial deal that is another matter entirely. Partnerships have legal connotations too so the word ‘relationship’ may be preferred in early discussions.
Be creative, be open-minded and businesslike and see those new opportunities opening up for you!
FWA specialises in consultancy for sustainable regeneration – spanning strategy development, regeneration enterprise planning, stakeholder management, consultation and community engagement. Green space matters are a recurring theme in our work. For more information contact Frances Wells at frances@fwaconsulting.com or on 0114 253058 or see www.fwaconsulting.com