According to a 2018 For Momentum Study, most companies are now participating in partnerships with nonprofits at a local and national level. For Momentum also found that individuals also want to work for a company that supports its local community.
- 89% of companies are engaging in local partnership with nonprofits
- 82% of companies are engaging in national partnerships with nonprofits
- 62% of companies are participating in employee based (peer-to-peer) cause campaigns
- 74% of employees say they are more satisfied and fulfilled at their job when provided opportunities to give back to their communities
I interviewed Chris Perry, Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, to hear what he has to say about how leveraging corporate partnerships to run workplace giving campaigns, pioneering an innovative way for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals to build donor relationships and generate explosive new revenue.
Children's Miracle Network Hospitals build national programs with local impact
Joseph: Why do you think it is important for nonprofits to work with corporate partners and their employees?
Chris: I see corporate partner workplace giving as a revenue stream that has been relatively untapped for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits like Children’s Miracle Network Hospital’s (CMNH) rely heavily on corporate partnership revenue. The current employee giving model leaves nonprofits reliant on companies to build & outsource repository solutions, allowing employees to choose from lists of charities to potentially support. To innovate this process, CMNH began looking for a solution that would allow us to leverage our corporate partner strength to deploy targeted employee campaigns, truly engaging teams with our impact. This is something that charities have had to hack together for their corporate partners until now.
Joseph: In your experience, was it easy to find companies that wanted to engage the large audience of their employee base?
Chris: We began validating with corporate partners in late 2016. Our goal was to see if they had interest in running a campaign with their employees to support us for 30-90 days. We validated large interest from our partners to engage their employees in a co-branded campaign to support CMNH. With partner interest high, their excitement consistently turned into “what do you have for us to launch?”
This was the inflection point where I realized that nonprofit corporate teams currently have no solutions to quickly and flexibly spin up technology that fits our varying corporate partner needs. We needed to meet each opportunity with flexibility and speed, while we had their attention.
Children's Miracle Network hospitals have raised $6.9 billion since 1983
Joseph: How did you solve for this?
Chris: I started to research the market and found that there are fragmented solutions that contribute to this issue. I found these current markets options:
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- Corporations typically invest in and outsource “one size fits all” solutions to deploy credit card & payroll giving built for companies, not nonprofits. We receive checks from all over the place (which is great for passive income!) but it didn't mobilize my team to drive a conversation with our strong corporate relationships. I needed a solution to empower a sustainable revenue stream that I can forecast on.
- The digital fundraising solutions that nonprofits like CMNH do invest in are geared for major marquee events and digital one-time/recurring credit card giving. These solutions offer no option for corporate combinations of credit card giving, employee incentives, payroll giving, National office competitions or flexibility unique to each partners workplace giving needs.
- Nonprofit corporate teams sometimes lean on our development departments, who work with the digital fundraising vendor. Nonprofit development teams are focused on major marquee event needs, but sometimes help us power “halfway there” corporate solutions, when they can fit it in. This isn’t always scalable and only partially delivers what our partners are looking for.
We needed a solution that empowers our corporate partner workplace giving interests quickly. I found FrontStream as they had recently created a new market solution to service this pain. This new solution mobilizes our workplace giving initiatives by giving us the flexibility to work with each corporate partner’s interests, while taking the work of launching a workplace giving campaign off their plate.
CMNH and Panda Restaurant Group partner for the "Panda Cares" program
Joseph: Have you had success building new corporate partner revenue since you began leveraging FrontStream’s solution?
Chris: Massively. Our corporate teams now initiate new corporate partner support by listening to their innovative workplace giving ideas to ignite employee engagement and participation. We work with our FrontStream NPO Workplace team to customize campaigns that highly engage employees because we now have the technology to deliver on. CMNH also obtains new donor data powering long-term revenue while strengthening our partnerships with companies. It truly is a win-win-win.
Adjacent to new revenue, but less tangible, is the appreciation from our corporate partners. We are bringing value to each of our partners that are interested in giving their employees a truly engaging, impact-driven experience. We can confidently articulate to our partners that we care about bringing proven value back to them. That is validated by our investment into a solution that allows us not only to ask for their support but proves fruitful to their bottom line as well.
Joseph: What type of flexibility are you leveraging for employee giving campaigns with your corporate partners' workplace giving?
Chris:
We have deployed a ton of unique employee campaigns. Through our solution, we are empowering campaigns that drive;
- National office location competitions
- Credit card giving, digital giving incentives
- White labeled & co-branded partnership giving sites
- Payroll giving, department & CEO competitions, custom employee email communication, suggested employee giving intelligence
- Campaign reporting
- Live (during campaign) digital editing
- Direct donate
- Employee program specific giving competitions
- Digital cause videos
- Digital employee videos
- Google analytics campaign data
- Fundraising thermometers
- Employee giving badges
- Employee leaderboards
- National office leaderboards
