Corporate Relations & Engagement

A new app for streaming music service Spotify wants people to donate to charity in return for getting their favorite songs played during friends’ parties. The Guilty Pledgers app requires party hosts to sign in using Facebook, then open up a party playlist. Friends can then pledge to any of a range of charities — more than 13,000 available on the JustGiving website — in return for adding tracks of their choice to the playlist. It’s the first fundraising app to be launched on Spotify.

When Room to Read set itself the challenge of recruiting a younger supporter base, it knew it needed something really cool to inspire the younger generation to take on a fundraising challenge for the charity. Barclays’ MoonTrekker event has helped do just that. In the last three years, the event has raised more than $2 million Hong Kong Dollars for the charity, helping fund 26 projects across Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka.

Professional fundraisers who are looking to secure corporate donations must do more than traditional fundraising. They must learn how to position their organization’s mission to align with the corporation’s goal, their employees’ interests and the local community’s needs in order to successfully develop a long-lasting partnership.

If you are a fundraiser who wants to land corporate donations, here are four tips you can use to help develop a long-lasting partnership with a corporate donor.

The benefits of corporate donors extend beyond their monetary contributions. They give your organization a publicity boost, which can spark an increase in donations from individuals and other companies. If you are a fundraiser seeking corporate donations, here are four steps you can follow to align your nonprofit with a company’s brand, goals and mission and form an enduring alliance: 1. Know the company's background. 2. Focus on employees. 3. Keep it local. 4. Aim for ongoing collaboration.

Donor-advised funds have attracted an ever-larger chunk of American donations since the 1990s. Though legally public charities, they are more like holding tanks that let would-be philanthropists deposit money, collect the tax benefits up front and then decide later which causes they actually want to give to. Legally, there’s no limit to how long the money can sit there.

#GivingTuesday is Dec. 3. How will your organization celebrate? #GivingTuesday is a prime opportunity for nonprofits and companies (and individuals) to collaborate for the greater good. Here are four steps to ensure your partnership’s success: 1. Seek mission and values alignment. 2. Leverage complementary assets. 3. Design the right partnership architecture. 4. Measure and communicate accomplishments.

Amazon has launched AmazonSmile, a new program for customers to support their favorite charitable organizations every time they shop. Through AmazonSmile, Amazon will donate a portion of each purchase price to the customer's favorite charitable organization. There is no cap on the total donation amount, and customers can choose from nearly 1 million organizations around the country.

American demand for cause-related products is stronger than ever, according to 20 years of benchmarking data released by Cone Communications. Despite a marketplace saturated with cause-related programs and messages, the U.S. consumer appetite for corporate support of social and environmental issues appears insatiable, according to the 2013 Cone Communications Social Impact Study. However, high consumer demand comes with high expectations for impact — and the study reveals the majority of Americans are uncertain of the extent to which corporate and individual efforts result in meaningful change.

“How are we going to bring in more money? Let’s get creative, folks!” Employees at nonprofit organizations of varying shapes and sizes have heard this from upper management in one way or another. There are only so many sources of fundraising revenue, and traditional foundation grants, corporate grants and annual appeals can become stale very quickly. We wanted to show you that there are several ways to think outside the box and give you a few unconventional ideas that might spark a creative fundraiser for your organization!

One of the positive outcomes of greater corporate scrutiny is the rising importance of nonprofit partnerships. That said, one of the toughest hurdles every nonprofit faces is how to present the opportunity in a way that inspires interest and commitment from the corporation. Surprisingly, many nonprofits fail to secure valuable partnerships not because the companies are too busy or disinterested, but because they fail to frame the it in the right way.