This week, I had an opportunity to lead the Hospital Corporate Development Summit along with Maureen Carlson of Caliber Sales & Marketing and Joe Waters of Boston Medical Center. The first of its kind, the Summit brought together an incredible group of hospital corporate development leaders to exchange ideas and share insights in the areas of corporate alliance development and cause marketing.

The Summit served as the launch of the Hospital Corporate Development Council – a mission-driven company dedicated to helping local and regional medical institutions build successful business alliances. The Council is a part of the Cause Marketing Forum and provides a place for hospital executives to go for the targeted training and guidance they need to build strong corporate relations.

From the feedback we received, this will be the first of many opportunities for hospital corporate development professionals to collaborate and enjoy strategic, insightful exchange that can lead to real breakthroughs in the hospital corporate alliance space.

We’ll continue to post updates on the progress of the Council and share insights that can benefit hospital and health-related nonprofit professionals.

We’ve watched with interest the recent comments and coverage regarding the cause marketing partnership between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and KFC. Whether you are for, against or just don’t care about the partnership, it’s a reminder to us all of the importance of a strong vetting process for nonprofits to utilize when selecting corporate partners.

Most nonprofits have established “guidelines” for corporate interaction, a checklist of criteria for partnerships. But the flaw in most guidelines is that they are limited by defining only “do’s” and “don’ts” of partnerships and are less focused on proper alignment of the company’s business model with their own.

When working with our clients, we focus less on the traditional checklist of criteria and more on helping them define what we deem as Guiding Principles for Corporate Interaction.  Why the distinction? Criteria serve an organization’s business model. Guiding Principles protect its credibility. And we would argue that any organization is only as powerful as its reputation.

For example, a traditional corporate partnership criteria might be defined as, “the organization will not participate in the promotion of controversial products.” While this is obviously an appropriate guideline for most organizations, it falls short of describing how the potential program would affect the organization. Ultimately, it’s this grey area of criteria that becomes the detriment to most organizations faced with making partnership decisions. In our model, the decision is based on how the program aligns with the principles of the organization. “The organization will not partner with companies whose business model, marketing or sales tactics are potentially harmful or come at the detriment to its constituents.” A more defined approach through principles provides a solid foundation for decision-making when it comes to corporate partnership development.

The Guiding Principles model is not easy. In fact it’s a process that, at the end of the day, must involve constituents from all disciplines of the organization in healthy debate. But the payoff is well worth it when these guidelines are utilized to create long-term, mission-focused partnerships with corporations. And life becomes much easier for those responsible for determining what right-fit truly means when it comes to cultivating corporate alliances.



This week, I had the opportunity to present on cultivating corporate alliances at the 2010 AFP International Conference in Baltimore. You can check out the slides here and feel free to contact us if you have questions, comments or need more info.