Everyone Is Telling NGOs To Develop Corporate Propositions, But What Does One Actually Look Like?
By Lucy Njue
Over the last couple of months, I’ve spent a lot of time working with international NGOs on corporate fundraising, including developing corporate partnership propositions.
It has been an interesting learning experience.
As fundraisers, we hear a lot about the need to diversify our funding, engage corporates and build strategic partnerships. I have given this advice myself.
But working through the actual process of developing propositions has reminded me of something important.
Knowing that we need to engage corporates is one thing. Knowing how to develop a proposition that gives a company a compelling reason to partner with us is another.
And I think this is a conversation we need to have more openly in our NGO community.
What I have been thinking about
Many of us have years of experience developing proposals for bilateral donors and charitable foundations. We understand how to articulate a problem, design a programme, develop a theory of change, prepare a budget and demonstrate impact.
But when we approach a company, is it enough to take that same proposal and present it to a different audience?
A company may care deeply about social impact. But it also has business priorities, customers, employees, markets, technology, sustainability commitments and other considerations that shape its decisions.
This means we have to think beyond the programme we want funded.
We have to ask ourselves:
What could this company and our organisation achieve together that would create meaningful value for both sides?
That is not always an easy question to answer. It requires us to understand the company, think creatively about what we can bring to the table, and identify where our respective interests and capabilities might meet.
It also requires humility. We cannot assume that because a programme is important to us, its relevance to a company is immediately obvious. We have to do the work of making that connection.
So, what does a good proposition need to contain?
As I have been working through these questions, I have found it helpful to break a proposition into eight essential elements:
1. The opportunity: What problem or opportunity are we addressing?
2. The partnership idea: What could we build, test or achieve together?
3. Why this company: Why does this opportunity make sense for this particular business?
4. What each partner brings: What will the NGO contribute? What might the company contribute? Are other partners needed?
5. Value for the company: Beyond a general CSR or ESG benefit, what could the company gain or achieve?
6. Social impact: What changes for the people and communities we serve?
7. Measures of success: How will we know whether the partnership is working?
8. Investment and scale: What are we asking for, what will it enable, and what could happen if the initial phase succeeds?
These are not magic ingredients, and putting them into a document does not automatically make a proposition compelling.
The real work is in the thinking behind them: understanding the opportunity, identifying the right partner, making a credible case for mutual value, and designing something that both sides can realistically deliver.
I wanted to make this practical.
One thing I appreciate in our NGO community is how much we can learn from one another when we share not just our successes, but also the tools and thinking behind our work.
So I put together something practical to share with fellow fundraisers, programme teams, and NGO leaders.
I have created a free Corporate Partnership Proposition Toolkit, drawing on the proposition-development work I have been doing and the questions I have been working through.
It contains three resources:
1. A Corporate Partnership Proposition Template
A step-by-step structure to help you and your team think through the opportunity, the proposed partnership, the value for the company, the expected impact and the investment required.
2. An illustrative corporate proposition
Accessible Learning for Every Child is a fictional example of how a children’s disability organisation and a technology company might work together to develop an inclusive digital learning solution.
3. A Corporate Partnership Proposition Quality Checklist
A practical tool to help you review your proposition, challenge your assumptions and identify gaps before approaching a potential corporate partner.
The example is fictional and illustrative. It does not reproduce a client proposition or confidential material.
I hope these resources give you a useful starting point for your own work. They are not a substitute for understanding a potential partner or doing the necessary research, but they can help structure the thinking and make the process more tangible.
A small contribution to our fundraising community
I know many NGOs are under pressure to diversify their income while navigating a difficult funding environment. And I know telling teams to engage corporates is much easier than helping them figure out exactly how.
I am still learning, testing ideas and refining my own approach to this work. But I believe we can make progress faster when we share practical resources and learn from one another.
So this is my small contribution to the community.
If you are exploring corporate partnerships, I hope you will find the toolkit useful.
Download the free Corporate Partnership Proposition Toolkit: editable template + illustrative example + quality checklist.
And if you use it, I would love to hear how you adapt it to your organisation’s work. What questions does it raise? What would you add? What have you learnt from developing corporate propositions yourself?
We can learn so much from one another.
(Lucy Njue is a Kenyan fundraising and sustainability strategist, and Founder and Executive Director of Realtime Insights)
