Inspiring charity and business partnerships

Working in partnership with a business has a whole range of benefits. Yes, it can bring in donations and new fundraisers. But it can also help to expose your brand to diverse audiences, raise awareness of your cause, recruit teams of volunteers, and access expertise and skills.

Below we look at four charity-corporate partnerships that we’ve spotted doing great things.

Raising awareness of dangerous housing: Shelter and IKEA

At least 271,000 people are currently homeless in the UK – around one in every 208 people.

That includes 250,000 people staying in temporary accommodation – like emergency hostels, B&Bs, bedsits, or flats. Many are families with young children and too often the accommodation they are provided with is cramped, filthy, and dangerous.

To raise awareness of this homeless crisis, IKEA and Shelter worked together to create ‘Real Life Roomsets’. As well as highlighting the immense scale of the problem, these roomsets show the grim reality of temporary accommodation.

The sets were launched in four IKEA stores across the country: London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol. These are cities with the worst levels of homelessness in the country.

Each set was based on the real life story of someone who lives close to that particular store. The power of the campaign is the impact of walking from the clean, bright IKEA showroom straight into the dingy, mouldy temporary accommodation.

Read more about the campaign.

Connecting people with opportunities: Girls Who Code and Harman

In the UK, women make up 50% of the workforce but less than 15% of STEM jobs. Girls who Code are on a mission to close that gender gap in tech.

They’re on track to achieve gender parity in new entry-level tech jobs by 2030. And a part of that success is down to corporate partnerships. In February 2022, Girls who Code started working with Harman, a subsidiary of Samsung, to open up new opportunities for women within the STEM workforce.

As the Girls Who Code’s CEO, Tarika Barrett, puts it: “It’s not enough to foster a passion for computer science among girls and young women. We also need to build pathways to ensure that they are given equal access to opportunities that turn their interest into lucrative and exciting careers.”

From Harman’s perspective, the partnership sits within their Harman Inspired programme, which works to inspire young people with diverse STEM opportunities.

It goes to show how successful charity-corporate partnerships are based on shared ideals and interests.

Reaching new audiences: The Cybersmile Foundation and ITV

It can be easy for someone to make a comment on social media that they wouldn’t say face-to-face. In fact, 93% of adults agree that people say things online that they wouldn’t say in real life.

That finding formed the basis of a campaign from The Cybersmile Foundation and ITV. The Cybersmile Foundation works to end online abuse. It promotes kindness, diversity, and inclusion to build a safer, more positive digital community. And with one third of UK adults having received some form of negative comments online, it’s an important mission.

It worked with ITV to create three adverts. Each shows the reaction of a social media user reading a negative comment, and challenges the viewer to think twice about what they post. They sign off with: “If you wouldn’t say it, don’t send it.”

Short and simple, the adverts are hoping to target people known as ‘casual critics’ who usually don’t believe they cause any harm to the people they post about. They act as a reminder that comments and words shared online are powerful, and to be mindful of their impact.

The partnership opens the charity’s behaviour change campaign up to ITV’s audience, which reaches 34.2m viewers a week.

Driving sustainability in a win-win partnership: The Big Issue and Citroën

Many cities are becoming Clean Air Zones, with charges being introduced for older vehicles to reduce pollution. That’s great for the planet. But posed a challenge for The Big Issue whose fleet transports more than two million magazines to 3,300 vendors across the UK, every year.

A new partnership with Citroën was well timed, with Citroën providing The Big Issue with a fleet of 16 electric vans. These new vehicles are exempt from most congestion and low-emission zone charges – saving The Big Issue money and making the delivery process more sustainable.

But Citroën also benefitted from the partnership by gaining exclusive sponsorship rights of a Future of Transport supplement and a Top 100 Changemakers feature.

This is an example of how a productive partnership can have benefits for both parties.  

Inspired? If you want to get new corporate partners on board, read through our tips on how to engage corporate partners and how to find the right corporate partners for your charity.