Why ngo partnership

Trade, investment and finance Business and Development Civil society. External authors Bhaskar Chakravorti. Related to this publication. Programmes European external affairs African institutions and regional dynamics Migration Security and resilience Trade, investment and finance Private sector engagement Sustainable food systems.

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This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. The interest in partnerships that are more strategic or even systemic in nature see graph , is immense. However, both NGOs and companies alike struggle with the how. These challenges have two root causes: The two objectives underlying inclusive business partnerships, combining social impact with a business case, are not easy to combine.

Partly because NGOs and companies are, in fact, very different from one another. Often NGOs and businesses speak a different language and operate under different performance indicators and timeframes.

They need to effectively manage the risks involved, rather than have them stand in the way. Based on a peer learning event with 10 international NGOs, Endeva, a Berlin-based international thought leader and ecosystem facilitator in inclusive business, took the initiative to develop a guide on this topic.

The guide is built around five chapters that represent and show the key building blocks of inclusive business partnerships. In addition it offers deep-dives into four specific cases, an overview of practical tools from self-assessments to partnership MoUs and documents for further reading. Here I present insights from the chapters. The guide primarily offers practical guidance to NGOs, but is also relevant to companies. In this interview, Franck Renaudin goes back over the potentialities, the key success factors and the possible risks associated with these new forms of partnership.

Since its creation in , the French NGO Entrepreneurs du Monde has been working with communities in developing countries. The organization enables thousands of women and men living in extremely difficult circumstances to improve their living conditions: it provides support for their own economic initiatives and helps them gain access to products offering significant health, economic and environmental benefits.

The organization is active in 11 countries, focusing on three main areas: social microfinance, access to energy, and support for the creation of micro-businesses. How do you explain this phenomenon? What, in your view, is at stake for businesses—both at head office and at local level? Nowadays, a company that has dubious practices is soon pointed out, becoming a target for the media, or for online petitions, with very serious consequences for its image.

The reputational risk is a very real one. The challenge for a company setting up in a developing country will be to integrate smoothly into the local social and economic fabric, avoiding conflict with communities, and so on. Funding a new football field for the local kids is a good start, but it takes more than that. Often, in the imagination and expectations of local populations, a Western company setting up in a new territory ought to offer better conditions than the market — the assumption being that, it has come to take advantage of cheap local labor.

There are some companies that worry about their social acceptability only because of this fear of reputational risk. And there are some that have understood that in a fast-changing world, business-as-usual is no longer an option, and that they have to revolutionize their way of acting by putting human and environmental issues at the heart of what they do. Businesses vary greatly in the sincerity of their engagement. Can they help to reinforce the social acceptability of businesses?

They are there to improve the living conditions of populations without access to vital goods and services. But in order to reach a large number of people quickly and much more effectively, partnerships with large companies often make sense, so long as the products and services distributed have a real impact on local populations.

At Entrepreneurs du Monde, for example, we obviously rule out working with companies that promote tobacco or alcohol. But they rarely know how to reach the poorest population groups. Conversely, NGOs know how to work with economically insecure groups and how to listen to their needs, but they often lack resources. Consequently, their actions are often limited. But so is the reputation of the NGO regarding its impact and effectiveness.

Additionally, charity partnerships help businesses gain insights into the needs of vulnerable consumers, said Janek Seevaratnam, senior corporate adviser at the UK's Charities Aid Foundation.

For example, a power company in the UK is now working on tweaking its offerings as it works with charity partners to help people who are dealing with fuel poverty. CSR activities also help businesses earn the licence to operate in hard-to-reach markets, Seevaratnam said. The partnership between footwear brand Bata and the charity CARE in rural Bangladesh that trained women as salespeople is an illustration of this, generating livelihoods while also building a customer base in a market with a weak distribution network.

Strategic partnerships with NGOs have also helped large businesses emerge with credibility when exposed to unethical practices along their supply chains, Seevaratnam said. In both of these instances it was the equity these businesses had built through their long-standing charity partnerships that greatly mitigated the reputational risk to which they were exposed, Seevaratnam said.

Once a business has identified a cause and is seeking a charity partner, NGOs may be evaluated on aspects such as expertise and impact, government and local connections in the target geographies, and scalability see the sidebar, "How to Find the Right Not-for-Profit Partner," below. This is accompanied by due-diligence checks on the financial health and reputation of organisations being considered. External consultants and auditors are often brought on board at this stage to work with in-house legal, compliance, and CSR teams.

While these are important hard measures, the deciding factor that leads a business to settle on a partner is often a shared value system. For Amazon's Patil, values are not up for compromise, and she doesn't move ahead if there are discrepancies in the partner's value process. For instance, when Amazon India was evaluating a pioneer not-for-profit in the area of STEM science, technology, engineering, and maths education for girls, it came across what it saw as unreasonable fee increases in schools they ran and certain other beliefs that did not sit well.

Consequently, Amazon India decided to look at other charity partners. In addition, major, recognised NGOs may seem to be relatively risk-free choices that bring greater credibility to an initiative. However, businesses should also carefully consider smaller, lesser- known charities that are doing innovative work, often in niche causes, Wilson said.

Microsoft Xbox's partnership with UK-based NGO SpecialEffect to create adaptive video game equipment for people with physical disabilities is one such example. The most successful corporate-NGO partnerships leverage the strengths of both parties to create unique value.

Businesses are adept at developing the quantitative parameters that hold together a good collaboration. Beyond this, other criteria that define a fruitful cross-sector partnership include shared values, mutual respect, effective communication, and continuous learning.

Because corporates and charities have different operating purposes, they often have different priorities. It follows that a successful partnership is most likely to occur when clear guidelines are laid down at the very start.