Contrary to popular belief, the most valuable corporate partner to a nonprofit is not necessarily the one with the biggest checkbook. Don’t get me wrong, nonprofit leaders are not turning away funding. However, grants that go hand-in-hand with unique programming such as skill-building and mentoring opportunities, as well as exposure to different career pathways, can have an outsized impact that goes far beyond the size of a check.
The nonprofit Girls Write Now is a great case study in this. The award-winning organization is devoted to harnessing the power of storytelling to empower those who are disempowered. Girls Write Now has an excellent record of developing corporate partnerships that do all the above and more. I recently sat down with its founder and executive director, Maya Nussbaum, to get her perspective on the ingredients of successful partnerships.
“When we’re talking with potential partners,” Maya says, “our ideal is to establish a long-term, mutually beneficial, and sustainable partnership.” According to Maya, the best corporate partners tend to be involved in a few different ways: employee engagement, networking opportunities, passion projects, and publicity and outreach.
Share career advice
Employee engagement can be as simple as convening the members of Girls Write Now with industry professionals—opening their eyes and minds to the enormous range of career possibilities. This has taken place at companies such as The Estée Lauder Companies, which hosted a Day of Service with its IT department to help mentees explore the intersection of language and technology, and the Royal Bank of Canada, where the young mentees recently had the chance to connect with finance professionals and receive guidance—experiences they would otherwise not have access to.
By “passion projects,” Maya is referring to projects capitalizing on company employees’ expertise. For example, Penguin Random House’s Dutton imprint has helped produce Girls Write Now’s annual print anthology for nearly a decade; HarperCollins collaborated with them to publish a book celebrating the nonprofit’s 25th anniversary. Girls Write Now On the Art of the Craft: A Guidebook to Collaborative Storytelling was conceived of and written by the young people involved in the organization, but would never have materialized without the dozens of HarperCollins publishing professionals who worked alongside them every step of the way, not just helping with editorial, but throwing its marketing, publicity, and distribution expertise behind the project. “It was a wonderful collaboration about the magic of collaboration,” Maya says, “made possible by the tremendous engagement from HarperCollins employees at every level, from its president, Judith Curr, on down.”
Lean into your strengths
At NBCUniversal, we use our storytelling expertise to help nonprofits with critical marketing needs by providing them with quality public service announcements. We helped provide a video for Girls Write Now which was featured across NBCUniversal and Comcast platforms. “This promotional video was immensely valuable in raising awareness for our organization and helped put us on a broader national stage,” says Maya.
Maya was also featured in NBCUniversal’s “The More You Know” national PSA campaign, where she chatted with TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager about the importance of reading and writing—a subject they both champion.
Of course, not all companies are able to offer nonprofits media attention, but many have leaders across a variety of disciplines—from HR to finance to legal to marketing—whose advice and strategic guidance are immensely valuable. These leaders can be effective nonprofit board members. At NBCUniversal, we have developed a nonprofit board service training program that includes board placement on our partner organizations’ boards, including Girls Write Now.
Yes, this approach takes time, thought, and commitment. But your employees will be gratified that their talents are making a difference in ways that they wouldn’t have imagined.
As Maya says, “employees really feel the difference between a company just checking off a box and really investing in a nonprofit, which ends up being a long-term investment in not just organizations like mine, but our industry and culture at large.”
Hilary Smith is EVP, corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal.
