The Importance of Listening to Nonprofits
Nonprofit partnerships is a common way for companies to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and give back to their communities. These partnerships can take on many forms such as event sponsorships, corporate volunteering, and monetary donations. While well-intentioned, sometimes companies approach nonprofit organizations without fully understanding their needs and capacity limits. As a result, these partnerships end up being one-way ‘acts of service’ rather than mutually-beneficial relationships.
We talked to three nonprofit organizations to get better insights on the needs and challenges of nonprofits, and what companies can do to help enhance their community impact. These organizations include:
- Avalon Recovery Society The Avalon Recovery Society provides support to women seeking freedom from addiction and empowers them to thrive through recovery and support centres. The society receives over 7000 calls and 4000 visits a year.
- HomeStart Foundation The HomeStart Foundation helps those with limited resources establish a warm home. Their services benefit women and children escaping domestic violence, people with mental and physical disabilities, refugees, and more. They have helped furnish over 5000 homes since 2003.
- Burnaby Neighbourhood House The Burnaby Neighbourhood House offers a wide range of community services and programs that are accessible and affordable. Their goal is to enable people to enhance their lives and strengthen their community.
3 Things Companies Should Do To Help
Provide more exposure to nonprofits with continuous social engagement
Both the Avalon Recovery Society and the HomeStart Foundation stated that companies can help nonprofit organizations by providing more exposure to their initiatives and events.
Needless to say, there is a lot of content on social media and users are constantly being exposed to different messages and promotions. Nonprofits, especially those with a smaller social following, have trouble reaching individuals and their messages can be buried in the clutter of the platforms.
Companies usually have a larger social media presence than nonprofit organizations and are able to reach a larger audience. They can leverage their social accounts to help increase the visibility of nonprofits and provide more exposure to their events and fundraisers.
“Having companies to help make more meaningful conversations on social [media] is really helpful.” - Avalon Recovery Society
Although any social sharing is much appreciated, continuous interaction is key to increasing reach and engagement.
“Companies usually do reshare but sometimes they forget or they only share once - also helpful to comment on each other’s posts more to build engagement.” - Avalon Recovery Society
Financial Support
In addition to providing more exposure, financial support is another thing that companies can do for nonprofit organizations. The reason why is clear: nonprofits and charities face financial and human resources challenges.
Over the last few years, there is a decreasing number of donors and donations in Canada. Less people are donating, and people are donating less.
This is coupled with the lack of government funding. According to CanadaHelps’ Giving Report, the majority of government funding goes to Health and Education charities, leaving thousands of charities with little or no support and dependent on monetary donations. Providing financial support would allow these nonprofit organizations continue to offer their services and programs to communities.
Corporate Volunteering
Corporate volunteer programs are very valuable to nonprofit organizations, especially since 58% are fully run by volunteers.
Due to the lack of resources and funding, nonprofit employees have to wear many “hats” and may need to take on roles that they are untrained and inexperienced for. By donating the expertise and time of your skilled employees, companies can help nonprofit organizations increase their impact in more effective and efficient ways.
For more guidance on the best practices for corporate-nonprofit partnerships, read the Canadian Code for Employer-supported Volunteering by Volunteer Canada.
Did you like this blog post? Sign-up for our newsletter and we'll send you more posts like this every two weeks.