NGOs + Corporations: Getting Smarter Together

Robin Deliso is an associate director in APCO’s corporate responsibility practice.

In a recent Guardian Sustainable Business Social Impact Forum post, FSG Managing Director Kyle Peterson wrote about the way NGOs are rethinking the way they engage with corporations in pursuit of their social change goals. As Peterson notes, the dialogue between companies and NGOs is now so much more than “donation or confrontation” now, and it often focuses on building partnerships that have staying power; one-off transactions are not the norm anymore. All too often, though, corporate engagement with nonprofits is still positioned as something driven by the business side, and Peterson highlights that the NGO community is getting savvier as shared value concepts take hold. It makes sense: both companies and nonprofits need to up their game if they’re going to reap mutual benefit from partnerships and – most importantly – create the social impact they set out to achieve.

On a related note, FSG recently released this report, Measuring Shared Value, that shows how business strategy and CSR (or “shared value” in this case) strategy integrate and drive business value. Measuring CSR/sustainability activities is so important inside companies for gaining buy-in and ensuring continued support over time, and this report leads the way in offering case studies from several major corporations including Nestle and Intel.