Where is the win-win in charity business partnerships?

Bruce McCombie
17 March 2015

There is nothing new about corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate citizenship or community affairs. CSR was first used in the 1950s to describe a business ‘doing good’. For a long time charities have looked at businesses as a potential source of income. With the ever-increasing competition for business partnerships, charities have had to think more creatively about how to engage with corporates to form meaningful partnerships, which transcend a cash donation.

Speak to any CSR or charity executive and they will probably talk about building partnerships that enable both organisations to achieve their goals. More often than not, partnerships these days offer charities an increased profile, gifts in kind, access to staff expertise and a stronger network. You might think that list is weighted in the charity partners’ favour, as well it should. But other than the positive association to a good cause, what does the business get? Where is the win-win or should there even be one? If we’re talking about sustainable partnerships, then I think that ‘win-win’ is becoming more important, and skilled volunteering is one way to achieving it.

By the early 2000s CSR was elevated to being of strategic importance to a business; charity and business partnerships offer the potential to ‘support a good cause’ and get employees more engaged in their communities.

Today, skills volunteering is an ever-increasing ingredient to businesses’ approach to charity partnerships and often blurs the lines between CSR and HR/Talent/Leadership development departments. Ensuring a genuine win-win for both business and charity isn’t easy but the rewards can be high for those who succeed. 

One example of this is Morgan Stanley’s Strategy Challenge: an annual pro-bono initiative to ‘give back’ by using the skills and expertise of top-performing employees to help improve charities’ reach and impact. First launched in the USA in 2009, Morgan Stanley expanded the programme to the UK in 2014 and approached Pilotlight to help deliver it. Today sees the launch of the second UK Strategy Challenge with Action for Children, Career AcademiesRays of Sunshine, ThinkForward and Whizz-Kidz taking part and eager to benefit from the professional expertise and skills-set of their Morgan Stanley teams.

Last year’s winners, Community Links, say they were delighted to take part. Geraldine Blake, Chief Executive, added:

“The Morgan Stanley team was a pleasure to work with, so committed.  It was without a doubt the biggest single contribution of pro bono consulting we have had, on top of which it was extremely high quality thinking. It's shaped our direction ever since.”  

So what makes it such a success for the charities taking part?

Over the next eight weeks the five teams of five employees will aim to solve a real strategic issue for their charity client, each employee giving about 100 hours of their time in the process. Their work is presented to the charity CEO and then, finally, to a panel of judges who select a winning team. Yet, trite as it may sound, each charity taking part is a winner: the amount of time and caliber of employee skills means the charities receive seriously impressive work from the teams. This is not a cosmetic exercise; the Strategy Challenge has real substance to it. Teams’ recommendations may lead to expansion of a charity’s services, improved business models or even clarification of the charity’s impact and services.

But is it a win-win? How do the employees gain from taking part?

For the employees there is definitely an element of wanting to ‘give back’ and a desire to engage with a charity through their skills, as well as their time. Many see the Strategy Challenge as a way of honing their skills out of their comfort zone; they learn as much from working with a charity client as they do from working with a range of employees from across the bank.

The success of the Challenge is also down to the fact it has buy-in right across Morgan Stanley, attracting and engaging the most senior executives in the bank. It is therefore a platform to give back, develop their skills and showcase their talents to senior colleagues.