Independent Sector | Mission & Market


Research Highlights

Partnering for Sustainability: Managing Nonprofit Organization-Corporate Environmental Alliances

In 2000, Rondinelli and London interviewed 16 nonprofit and corporate professionals to collect the experiences and lessons learned of partners involved in environmental management alliances. In their final research report, “Partnering for Sustainability: Managing Nonprofit Organization-Corporate Environmental Alliances,” Rondinelli and London examined overall corporate involvement in environmental activity, identified the characteristics that enabled nonprofits and corporations to be effective partners in addressing environmental issues, and made specific recommendations for crafting effective partnerships. Funded by the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund of the Aspen Institute, the report underlined the potential and risks presented by corporate-nonprofit alliances.

Adapted for Independent Sector, the following excerpt outlines the implications of corporate-nonprofit partnerships, and recommends steps for building and maintaining effective partnerships. (This section appears in Section 6, entitled “Implications: Managing NPO-Corporate Partnerships Effectively").

In order to understand better the types of highly intensive, internally oriented environmental management alliances corporations and nonprofit organizations are forming, the benefits to each party, and the factors that contribute to their successful implementation, we interviewed 16 participants from both corporations and nonprofits that have been involved in these types of collaborations and reviewed archival material on their operations. Representatives of DuPont, Starbucks, Bay Beyond, Norm Thompson, Westvaco, Collins Products, and Shell agreed to be interviewed as did those from World Resources Institute, Conservation International, the Center for Compatible Economic Development, The Nature Conservancy, The Natural Step, the Alliance for Environmental Innovation, Business for Social Responsibility, and SustainAbility (which is somewhat of a hybrid organization that operates as a think tank, an advocacy organization, and a for-profit consultancy). We asked them to discuss these issues with the assurance that confidential information would not be attributed to specific projects.

The responses to three sets of questions provided insights into how corporations and nonprofits can better manage the partnerships.

What corporate characteristics or conditions contribute to alliance success?

We asked both corporate and nonprofit personnel to identify what they thought were the most important characteristics of or conditions in corporations for successfully implementing environmental management alliances. Among the most important conditions identified were the following:

Having a specific project or objective for collaboration.
Assignment of responsibility for participation in the alliance to interested and committed managers who can serve as “champions” for recommended changes.
Selection of managers for the alliance who are able to develop, sustain, and nurture strong relationships with nonprofit participants.
Assignment of managers to the alliance that represent a cross-section of administrative and operational units within the company and that have impact at the highest levels in the organization.
Development and use of metrics for measuring environmental aspects of company operations and impacts or results of recommended changes.
Selection of managers for the team who are willing and able to follow up effectively on recommended changes.
Strong commitment of high-level executives to addressing environmental problems or threats and to cooperating with external groups in solving them.
Value-driven corporate leaders who see collaborative activity as part of the long-term vision for the corporation.
Company experience in dealing with nonprofit or community groups.
Willingness to make environmental performance improvements part of the remuneration/bonus package for managers.
Ability to get suppliers involved in making environmental improvements in inputs and materials.

What characteristics or conditions in nonprofits contribute to making alliances successful?

Similarly, we asked representatives of both corporations and nonprofits involved in environmental management alliances or collaborations to identify the most important characteristics of environmental nonprofits for implementing corporate partnerships successfully. They responded that the success of nonprofit-corporate alliances depends on the existence or development of a set of characteristics in nonprofits that include the following:

Credibility as a legitimate, serious, responsible, and knowledgeable environmental group.
Experience in dealing with private companies and in understanding how private enterprise works and the need for corporations to make profits if they are to survive.
Ability to provide experience with and commit jointly to identifying alternatives that will improve corporate environmental performance.
Capacity to maintain an appropriate balance between environmental advocacy and cooperative activity in order to make the partnership productive.
Ability to produce high-quality work that builds the nonprofit’s credibility and trustworthiness.
Willingness of the nonprofit to state clearly what it can and cannot do as part of a collaborative alliance.
Ability of the nonprofit to deliver real value to the company through realistic, cost-effective, and technically sound recommendations.
Capacity to understand the length of time it can take to bring about meaningful changes in large organizations.

What are the most important factors in managing corporate-nonprofit alliances?

We drew on both the interviews and archival material on nonprofit-corporate alliances to identify elements that are considered crucial in managing environmental partnerships successfully. The following table depicts a framework encompassing the most important stages for corporate management of nonprofit alliances.

Components of Managing Nonprofit-Corporate Environmental Alliances

1. Identify specific project for collaboration

Compare costs/benefits of collaboration with adversarial relationship
Identify interests and objectives
Determine criteria for partner selection
Mobilize internal support
Identify organizational “champions”
Select cross-functional teams

2. Select appropriate partner

Explore values and perspectives
Determine common interests and objectives

3. Develop procedures for collaboration

Negotiate written memo of agreement between partners
Decide on dispute settlement procedures
Decide on ways of selecting mediators and technical experts

4. Define problems and explore feasible solutions

Develop transparent procedures for problem assessment
Create metrics for problem assessment and environmental performance
Specify rigorous outcomes and results
Develop mechanisms for information sharing

5. Focus on manageable sets of tasks

Assess and select feasible potential solutions
Test potential solutions in pilot or demonstration projects

6. Formulate action plan

Set time horizons for accomplishments
Focus first on actions with most potential success

7. Execute implementation plan

Measure and assess results
Integrate solutions into operational and administrative procedures

8. Protect confidentiality and issue joint nonprofit-corporate public report

Protect confidential business information
Agree on joint report on process and results

Dennis A. Rondinelli is Glaxo Distinguished International Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Rondinelli has done research on corporate environmental management, international competitiveness issues, economic reform and market transition policies, decentralization and privatization programs, regional development strategy, and private enterprise development in emerging market economies. He has carried out research in Asia, Central Europe, Latin America, and Africa. He has authored or edited 16 books and published more than 200 book chapters and articles in scholarly and professional journals.

Prior to joining the University of North Carolina, Rondinelli was principal research scientist and senior policy analyst in the Office of International Programs at the Research Triangle Institute. He was also a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and has held faculty positions at the Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University and at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He also served as a Senior Fellow at the Technology and Development Institute of the East-West Center in Honolulu. Rondinelli received his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Ted London is in the Ph.D. Program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. London has served as the executive director of the Loudoun County Small Business Development Center in Virginia, as director enterprise development for the Asia/Pacific Region at Conservation International, as general manager of P.T. Sumatra Tropical Spices in West Sumatra, Indonesia, and as regional operations advisor to Malawian Traders Trust in Malawi. He received his MBA degree from the Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center at Claremont Graduate University, and his BA degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University.