Submitted by Jose Torres
Board of Directors, Association of Nonprofit Specialists
While corporations give a total of 4% of all charitable giving in the US, the contributions made by corporations are often significant and impactful for nonprofit organizations. This 4% equates to approximately $16.88 billion in 2020, according to CCS’s Philanthropic Landscape 10th Edition.
How can you maximize prospecting and outreach efforts to new potential corporate partners? Here are some tips and tricks to make the most of your prospecting.
- Find mission alignment – Most corporations state their corporate social responsibility (CSR) priorities on their website. Search for corporations whose CSR align with your nonprofits mission and values.
- Research past giving – Many corporations have separate foundation entities in which they give to, those foundations must disclose their charitable giving on their 990 form that is publicly available. Researching corporations who have given to nonprofits with a similar cause or mission as yours can also reveal some potential prospects.
- Targeted outreach – Once you find corporations that align and/or may have given to similar nonprofit organizations, it’s important your outreach is effective. Here are some tips on how to do so:
- Reach out to best point of contact – If possible you should reach out to individuals at your target prospects that would be most likely to have interest or reply to your outreach. Depending on the corporation, this could be individuals in marketing, PR, operations, community engagement, etc.
- State your nonprofits value – Your outreach should call out the mission alignment and connect those dots for your target prospect. You should also state why it would be of benefit to them to partner with you.
- Keep it succinct – Your outreach communication should be short and to the point to make the communication clear and easy to read.
- Be personable when you can – Templates for outreach are suggested, but try to be personable in your outreach as well. Some ways to do this include:
- State something recent the corporation or individual you are reaching out to has done that is relevant or that you find interesting and have a personal interest in.
- If in your research you find commonalities, include that in your outreach – for example if you are reaching to a point of contact from the same alma matter as yourself, from the same city, etc.
- Invest in tools to access more information – There are many tools such as Foundation Directory Online, Apollo, and Relationship Science, that nonprofits can invest in to find more information about corporations and identify points of contacts to reach out to.
Prospecting is an art, there is no science to it, but methods and tools can be applied to increase the chances of increasing engagement with corporate prospects.
