Events

Purpose and Partnerships webinar with Disney & Make-a-Wish UK

Past
August 21, 2022

Delighted that such a great panel of speakers from Walt Disney Company, Make-a-Wish UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Mental Health UK and the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Cass Business School joined us to share great insights at our recent webinar.

What are the most crucial things to get right if you’re a not-for-profit or business looking to partner in this every-changing and uncertain world?  Our webinar was packed full of sound advice, lived experience and thoughts of how the best partnerships work.

We were thrilled to welcome over 80 attendees who heard from experts from both sectors, as well as Alex Skailes, Director at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at the Cass Business School.  Alex kicked us off with her take on where we are now – and what to look out for to create a perfect partnership.

Moving beyond the transactional

‘We’ve moved beyond traditional CSR, from tactical to strategic contributions, moving beyond the transactional and traditional to initiatives that are longer term, core value creations’. Alex warned that in a recession, corporates traditionally cut back on CSR-type projects, and charities drift away from their strategic mission to short-term goals.  The new partnership model should counteract that.  She stressed the importance of measurement. ‘This is no longer about measuring just big numbers, but looking at what each partner can offer, and what that is worth in terms of social change, statistics and stories.  We need to bring narratives to the changes being created, and a proportionate and balanced measurement for both partners that leads to collective impact’.  

Honest and genuine partnership

It was fantastic to then hear of a successful partnership that had done just this – Katie Legg from Mental Health UK and Matt Norton of Lloyds Banking Group described how an initial two-year partnership is now into it’s fifth, thanks to intrinsic synergies between the two organisations and strong collaborative work. Katie described how the initial approach to Lloyds was based around the link between mental health and money problems, one that was recognised and supported by Lloyds Bank’s senior leadership team. Matt told us ‘this became a very honest and genuine partnership and leadership support was hugely important – our Chief Executive opened up about his own mental health, which made the partnership feel honest and genuine’.  He added how important it was that there was a recognition of the bigger issues around mental health – ‘it’s a fundamental societal issue that impacts both our colleagues and customers. This became about so much more than fundraising; it was about advocacy and supporting colleagues and customers alongside Mental Health UK, being a better organisation and supporting the people we have a responsibility for. We soon realised that colleagues wanted to do more than just raise money – you need to think, what is the ask that isn’t just about that?’.  

In the case of this partnership, Katie talked about how the initial target was to raise £2 million – one they successfully smashed – but also how they used the charity’s expertise and Lloyd’s Banking skills carefully and correctly, within both organisation’s capacity, to launch a mental health and money advice service.  It’s since supported over 3,000 people  with complex cases, and around 800,000 through their website, helping with £7.5 – 8 million of financial gain through examples such as benefit claims and reducing debt.  And it’s this kind of success and measurement that means that the partnership is now extending into 2021.  Katie stressed how it was also ‘simple and coherent marketing and messaging that helped drive change.’ For Matt, it was easier to keep things aligned because of Lloyds Banking’s clear core purpose, ‘Helping Britain Prosper’.   ‘Every decision takes this into account’, he told us. ‘The charities we work with need to fit within these themes.  The work we’re doing with Mental Health UK goes beyond anything we’ve ever done before and has been extraordinary both for us and for others – but there’s so much more do to. We’ve formed a bond now, and that’s also due to being open and transparent with each other.  You want to please partners all the time, but you also need to discuss limitations and capabilities to ensure sustainability to deliver’.

Value exploration to find common ground

Mental Health UK were a young, new company when they first approached Lloyds Banking Group. In contrast, Make-A-Wish, which creates life changing wishes for children with critical illness, has been working with the Walt Disney Company for over 40 years.  Disney wishes are the most popular choice for the children Make-A-Wish supports, and the concept is based on good, solid philanthropic principles around providing wishes for children – but Make-A-Wish UK CEO Jason Suckley explained how, more recently, they’ve begun to think more about how what they offer really positively impacts children in terms of their emotional resilience. Research around this impact, as well as other determining factors such as happiness has given the charity a far clearer idea of the role emotional resilience plays in helping children who are critically ill.  Something that also helps Disney, as its Director of Charity Programmes, EMEA Sara Hanson explained; ‘Understanding the life-changing impact these wishes can have demonstrated to us the huge responsibility of wish-granting.  Looking at the impact versus output helped our social purpose.  It shows us why we work together as a partnership, the common ground and currency, away from just the more superficial area of money.  That value exploration has given Disney a toolkit and model, and has even formed the foundation of our presentations.  Explaining why wishes build emotional resilience by creating moments that matter, we can demonstrate clear health and emotional benefits.  It’s about measuring the impact and not just outcomes and numbers, and being together with your partners in foundational, share values’.

Jason added that, once you know your shared purpose, if a crisis happens you know where you need to get to and what you need to do differently.  So, the partnership becomes more sustainable. ‘We didn’t want to continue in a transactional manner’, he told us. ‘we needed to innovate together. So when 2,000 children’s wishes were put on hold because of the COVID crisis, we were able to work together to confidently find ways to support them right now, for example by providing free Disney + subscriptions.   We wanted to innovate because it’s at times like this that everybody just wants to do their best.’  He finishes by stressing that ‘none of us have all the answers. But trust and honesty are really important’.

Strategic and narrative-led approach

Alex Skailes stressed how both our partnerships showed the importance of measurement, and taking time to build trust and become more than a purely transactional relationship.  Their shared values and common currency mean they avoided the potential pitfalls of not for profits being on the back foot in terms of power, and their strategic and narrative-led approach to their work has meant that they have moved beyond benevolent CSR-style relationships to one of shared values and an equal partnership.

She stressed how it’s also possible for organisations to have multiple partners, and that charities shouldn’t be put off approaching businesses as long as their values align : ‘It’s no longer about having just one visible partner, or a charity being the sole owner of a business relationship.  This is about a cross-sector of parties coming together to create value and lead to systemic change’.

Top tips from our speakers:

  • Move your partnerships from tactical to strategic, so they are more than simply transactional relationships in the old CSR model.
  • Find stories and narratives that get to the heart of your purpose and business model to demonstrate your work, engage stakeholders and create sustainable value.
  • Be authentic and transparent to build that relationship, and set boundaries and capacity at the start.  Also talk about the exit – it’s important to have those more difficult conversations from the beginning.
  • Ensure you set measurement and know how you can measure what the partnership is worth.  Be clear about on your targets, and ensure they go beyond transactional aims.
  • Ensure yours is a purpose mission partnership, with clearly aligned, authentic  values between you both.  Make sure decisions take into account your core purpose and work fits within its themes.
  • Don’t be put off if an organisation already has a partner – there’s opportunity for cross partner relationships to create value.
  • Get buy in from your senior leadership team, and give your employees opportunities to get involved beyond fundraising, using their work-related expertise.  Engage them in decision making.
  • You’ll want to do the best for your partnership, but it’s important to also be transparent about capacity and limitations.  This honesty will also help form a bond between you that creates a solid working relationship and builds trust, through shared values.
  • Do your homework if you’re looking for partnerships; don’t be put off by size or existing partnerships already in place.  The most important thing is that your values align and you can innovate together within a core purpose mission.

Huge thanks to all our speakers and attendees for their contributions and questions. 

We’re delighted to finish with a special request from Jason Suckley, CEO of Make a Wish UK:

‘Our mission at Make-A-Wish is to change the lives of children with critical illnesses. We do this through granting their wish. The basis for our successful partnership with Disney over the past 40 years has been our sense of shared purpose. We would love to talk to other potential partners, particularly those with a focus on children and/or the engagement of local communities, about exploring purpose-led opportunities’

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