Revisiting Collaborations Between Nonprofits and Businesses

Abstract

Collaborations between nonprofits and businesses (CBNB) are a developing field of action. Much of the research deals with the business’s perspective. Usage of third sector and nonprofit management methods is a relatively new field of research. This article presents a qualitative case study of a three year collaboration between a nonprofit organization (NPO) and a pharmaceutical company that focuses on the NPO’s unique perceptions and points of view about the partnership. The findings reveal that the most crucial element affecting the success or failure of a collaboration is the added value that the business partner brings to the relationship. Furthermore, power relations suggest that weak positioning might benefit the NPO. We introduce the Fields of Action Typology of collaborations between nonprofits and businesses that adds a content layer to current classifications of CBNB and is helpful for defining and examining the benefits NPOs can derive from CBNB.

Keywords

collaboration nonprofit organizations cross-sector partnerships corporate volunteering social alliances

Collaborations between nonprofits and businesses (CBNB) are a developing field of action serving both the social goals of the nonprofit organization (NPO) and the commercial goals of the business. Through collaboration, NPOs strive to augment their resources, increase their exposure and networks and acquire new skills and practices. Businesses strive to enhance their reputation, enlarge their client base and enable employees to be active members of the community (Bennett, Mousley, & Ali-Choudhury, 2008; Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006; Harris, 2007; Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007).

Much of the CBNB literature deals with the business side, including gains the business derives from collaboration such as profitability, competitive edge and reputation (Porter & Kramer, 2002). The business-oriented literature is often derived from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) point of view (Carroll, 1999; Garriga & Mele, 2004; Porter & Kramer, 2002; Seitanidi & Crane, 2009; Van Huijstee & Glasbergen, 2010). CBNB research that uses third sector and nonprofit management research is a relatively new field (Harris, 2007, 2010) that includes both aspects of collaboration, such as motives and collaboration enablers (Austin, 2000), and the NPO’s angle, such as the effects of collaboration on the organization’s aims and goals (Schmid & Meinhard, 2000).

The aim of this article is to enhance the knowledge about CBNB that focuses on the NPO’s side and experience of the collaboration. It presents the findings of a qualitative case study that focused on a three year collaboration between an NPO and a pharmaceutical company that was the NPO’s first major attempt at integrative collaboration with a business and was intended to serve as the touchstone for future similar projects. The research focuses on the NPO’s unique perceptions and points of view about the relationship. The research questions dealt with motives to collaborate, types of collaborations, the effects of collaboration on the NPO and the power relationships between the partners.

We begin by reviewing the existing literature on CBNB. Next we present the research methodology, introduce the organization studied, Yad Sarah, give a short overview of its array of collaborations with businesses and present the collaboration with the pharmaceutical company. Using Austin’s (2000) collaboration continuum, we examine the benefits reaped and the difficulties that Yad Sarah experienced in the collaboration. We question the effectiveness of the integrative relationship, and find that it is more worthwhile for the organization to conduct traditional philanthropic and transactional collaborations of donations, sponsorships, cause-related marketing and discounts.

We then continue by presenting added value and power relations as major issues that affected the collaboration, and introduce a Fields of Action Typology of CBNB which adds a content layer to current classifications of CBNB. Finally, in the discussion section, we reiterate the value of using an NPO-centric view and suggest directions for further research.

Literature Review

CBNB are part of the broader fields of cross-sector collaboration (Selsky & Parker, 2005) and corporate social responsibility (Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007). Research that deals specifically with CBNC includes motives and barriers (Austin, 2000; Harris, 2007; Schmid & Meinhard, 2000; Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007; Weisbrod, 1997, 1998), selection of partners (London & Rondinelli, 2003; Liu & Ko, 2011; Seitanidi & Crane, 2009), and corporate volunteering (Liu & Ko, 2011; Peloza & Hassay, 2006).

Additional research deals with classifying types of collaboration (Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006; Seitanidi & Ryan 2007; Wymer & Samu, 2003). Harris (2007) defines four types of relationships between businesses and NPOs. The first three, philanthropy, citizenship, and investment describe the relationship from the business’s viewpoint. Harris suggests changing this viewpoint and viewing the relationship as a cross-sector relationship, thus adding the fourth type which is an exchange relationship. The exchange relationship is based on working together to achieve mutual goals and benefits as opposed to altruism and dependence.

Austin’s (2000) analytical framework of CBNB consists of four components: The collaboration continuum; the collaboration value construct; and alliance drivers, and enablers. The collaboration continuum comprises three stages of relationships between nonprofits and business: In the philanthropic stage there is a relationship of charitable donor and recipient, in the transactional stage there are resource exchanges such as sponsorship of events and cause-related marketing. The integrative stage approximates a joint venture and there is more collective action and merging of the partners’ missions, people and activity. The collaboration value construct has four dimensions: Value definition that is determined before the alliance begins and value creation, balance, and renewal during the collaboration. The value relates both to the competencies and strengths that each partner brings to the table and to the benefits that are produced from collaboration. Austin relates to value in terms of both partners and differentiates between generic resource transfer where the organizations provide each other with benefits that are common to many similar organizations and core competency exchange where the benefits are generated by utilizing competencies that are distinctive to each partner.

Much of the CBNB literature deals with the benefits that can be reaped from CBNB. In addition to the funding and diversification of the donor base that are a mainstay of philanthropic relationships and the marketing and monetary benefits of transitional collaboration, integrative collaboration offers a wide array of benefits. These include name recognition; diversification of resources such as volunteers and board members; marketing and branding; access to expertise; and new perspectives (Austin, 2000; Guo & Acar, 2005; Harris, 2007). The businesses’ motives include improving public relations, employee retainment, (Austin 2000; Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006) and warding off bad publicity (Hoffman, 2009). Weisbrod (1997, 1998) claims that nonprofits and businesses collaborate because collaboration yields substantial financial gains.

Despite lucrative benefits, integrative collaborations demand the allocation of substantial resources and entail a lot of work. In order to find the right fit and reap the benefits in the long run, organizations must be prepared to invest time to identify the value that each partner offers; define the benefits that each partner expects; establish relationships and communication; and plan suitable channels of activity (Austin, 2000; Berger, Cunningham, & Drumwright, 2004; Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006; Huxham, 2003; Huxham & Vangen, 2005).

Power relations and the extent of control of each of the partner organizations in a collaboration are a central issue of collaboration management. Losing control over decision making is a major concern among NPOs that collaborate with businesses (Selsky & Parker, 2005). The business partner tends to have more power (Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007) and therefore has more weight in decision making (Ashman, 2001). Ashman clarifies that the greater influence of the business partner is not necessarily intentional. It might stem from a behavior pattern of donor and recipient or from business conduct that tends to be less inclusive than work patterns in civil society. She found that in instances where the NPOs had less influence, there was less satisfaction, loss of resources that were invested in the project and loss of trust of the community.

It has also been found that collaborations that have well-defined mechanisms that support mutual control and mutual influence tend to be more successful (Ashman, 2001; Selsky & Parker, 2005). Saxton found that even when the partners are different in size, resource scope and expertise, the results of collaboration are more meaningful when there is shared decision making about the direction and management of the shared activities (Saxton, as cited in Selsky & Parker, 2005).

Method

Population and Data Collection

This study is a case study analysis that focuses on an Israeli NPO, Yad Sarah, which maintained a collaboration with a pharmaceutical company over a period of 3 years. A case study using one NPO enables the development of comprehensive insights into the activities and relationships between the organizations as the participants perceive them (Marshall & Rossman, 1995).

The study examined the development of the collaboration, its operation and outputs. Special emphasis was given to the relationships that evolved between the partners and their unique perceptions regarding the relationships and the operation of the collaboration. The reasons for choosing Yad Sarah were twofold. First, it is a veteran organization with a nation-wide scope of activity that has maintained a wide array of collaborations with businesses for many years. Second, one of the researchers had worked at Yad Sarah, and therefore was familiar with its activities and organizational culture, and had relatively easy access to the organization’s staff and documentation.

Data was collected from August 2008 to June 2009 through ten semistructured in-depth interviews, which were conducted with key employees of Yad Sarah, including members of the human resource department that were involved in the collaboration, members of the public relations department and the CEO. In addition, representatives of the pharmaceutical company and mediating organization were interviewed. The key figures were identified by consulting with key figures in the organization. We used an interview protocol which consisted of ten open-ended questions, relating to the activities of the organizations and their employees and the interactions between them. The interviews were conducted at the interviewees’ workplace and lasted between one and two hours. They were audio recorded and later transcribed. In addition to the formal interviews, there were also phone conversations and email exchanges to add details and clarify questions that arose during the findings’ analysis. Data was also collected through archival documentation, including internal documents and press releases.

Data Analysis

A qualitative design was used to explore the social meaning attributed to relationships between Yad Sarah and the pharmaceutical company. This approach is derived from the theoretical framework of social construction, which informed our analysis (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). This interpretive paradigm assumes that multiple realities are constructed by the different actors and institutions involved in collaborations. Thus, the interviews and documents portray a process in which beliefs and ideas are socially produced, and they reflect a specific social, cultural, and political context in which interactions and transactions take place. Against this background, we used qualitative thematic content analysis to explore the relationships between Yad Sarah and the business by identifying key issues and arguments as they were constructed in the interviews and documents. To ensure reliable results, the data was analyzed by both authors. To ensure the quality of the coding, each author independently coded the transcripts and searched for emerging categories relating to the aim of the study in the interviews (Ryan & Bernard, 2000). Afterward, the categories were discussed and identified. The content of each category was summarized and its boundaries were established. Negative evidence was searched for. Data that could not be classified was later analyzed to determine whether it represented new categories or subcategories. Data analysis was repeated several times, until all categories were agreed upon by the two authors. Comparison of the data assigned by each author confirmed that the application of categories was consistent. Finally, the fifteen categories were grouped into a smaller number of meaningful thematic clusters (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) according to recurrent themes identified across the texts. In addition, the content of the archival material was analyzed in a manner similar to the interviews’ analysis. The categories were grouped into three overarching themes: Added value as identified and described by the NPO; unequal power relations; and integrative versus philanthropic and transactional collaborations. The reliability of these themes was ensured through peer debriefing (Morse et al., 2002).

Yad Sarah

Yad Sarah is a volunteer-based service organization that was founded in Israel in 1976, and strives to enhance the quality of life for sick, disabled, and elderly people and their families. Its foremost service is lending medical and rehabilitative equipment free of charge. The organization provides a wide range of additional services such as transportation for people with disabilities and geriatric dental care. In Israeli terms, Yad Sarah is considered to be a large organization. It runs 103 branches throughout Israel, and employs over 6,000 volunteers and about 230 paid employees. The organizational values of volunteering, charity, and mutual social responsibility are rooted in the religious beliefs of the organization’s founder, managers, and many of the volunteers and paid staff.

During the last decade, Yad Sarah maintained a broad array of collaborations with businesses. These include hundreds of philanthropic collaborations such as donations of money, services, and goods, and discounts from suppliers and service providers; and tens of transactional collaborations such as sponsorships and cause-related marketing every year. Corporate volunteering is a relatively new type of collaboration that Yad Sarah would like to expand. The organization had successfully implemented over a dozen short-term corporate volunteering projects (defined at Yad Sarah as episodic volunteering) and defined a strategic goal of developing integrative long-term collaborations with businesses based on corporate volunteering. A handful of attempts to establish integrative collaborations with large corporations did not come to fruition.

The Yad Sarah Pharmaceutical Company Collaboration

In 2006, Yad Sarah embarked on a large-scale collaboration with a pharmaceutical company. The project was their second major attempt at developing an integrative long-term collaboration that proceeded past the initial contact stage, and was intended to serve as the touchstone for future similar projects and for expanding corporate volunteering. The match with the pharmaceutical company was made by a mediating organization, ALEH -Business for the Community, which also facilitated the project, assisting in planning, launching and running the collaboration. The project was constructed according to ALEH’s work model. Two major principles of the model are identification and utilization of company strengths that are needed and applicable to the nonprofit partner, and definition of multifaceted volunteering opportunities. The strengths identified were knowledge of the medical field and access to the medical community; marketing expertise; and training experience. Yad Sarah only needed to utilize the marketing capabilities with the familiarity and access to the medical industry in order to meet the NPO’s marketing needs. The other strengths were not unique to the pharmaceutical company. However, the company and the mediating organization insisted on building a project that offered suitable volunteering opportunities for each and every employee, and therefore three volunteering channels were comprised: The medical channel utilized the pharmaceutical company’s position in the medical industry. Their sales representatives marketed Yad Sarah’s services during meetings with physicians and at conferences. The training channel utilized the staff’s marketing and training abilities. Corporate volunteers trained Yad Sarah’s staff in computer skills and marketing activities. The community channel was established for employees that wanted to work directly with Yad Sarah clients. Corporate volunteers served in regular volunteer positions, installing distress buttons and chronicling the life stories of Holocaust survivors. In addition to the three volunteering channels, the pharmaceutical company also took part in funding materials related to the project such as renting booths at medical conferences and producing a marketing brochure of Yad Sarah products.

We identified five distinct stages in the collaboration, from its inception in 2006 until the end of the research period in June 2009: Formation, initial activity, degeneration, inertia, and rejuvenation. In the formation stage, the contact between the partners was established; the project coordinators and channel leaders were chosen; and the volunteering channels were defined with the help of the mediating organization. In the initial activity stage, the project was officially launched with a festive visit of the corporate volunteers at Yad Sarah’s headquarters. The corporate volunteers and Yad Sarah staff started working together, and warm relationships were established among the channel leaders. Whereas the medical channel got off to a smooth start, with the pharmaceutical company running the channel on their own, the other two channels were plagued by scheduling difficulties and low output. The degeneration stage started when the Yad Sarah project coordinator left on an extended maternity leave and several channel leaders from each organization left. The stage was characterized by instability in the staffing of key positions; tense relationships and communication problems; reduced activity and unsatisfactory outputs; blurry definitions of responsibility; and power struggles. The collaboration then entered an inertia stage where outcomes continued to be unsatisfactory and each side blamed the other for not doing their share. The rejuvenation stage started when the leading positions were refilled. The matching expectations process was redone; personal relationships were rekindled; workflows and definitions of volunteer jobs were redefined in writing and the collaboration got back on track. New communication channels were established and there was a shift in power relations in which Yad Sarah started to be more assertive. During the first two stages the pharmaceutical company was the instigator and Yad Sarah lagged behind. During the degeneration and inertia period both partners lacked initiative. During the rejuvenation stage, Yad Sarah became more active.

The collaboration required the investment of more resources than were originally expected by Yad Sarah and yielded mixed results. The mediating organization and pharmaceutical company insisted on tailoring a project in which each and every employee would be able to find a volunteering position to suit their wishes and needs. Thus, instead of building a targeted transactional collaboration that utilized the company’s connections in the medical industry as Yad Sarah wanted, the wide-scale integrative collaboration was defined. The volunteer jobs in the training and community channels needed to be specially defined to suit the corporate volunteers’ limitations and schedules and ended up wasting extensive manpower at Yad Sarah without yielding satisfactory results. The project was characterized by a medley of benefits with no donation of money; a complex and long-term range of activities with ongoing interaction between the two organizations; and a relationship based on partnership that was not well defined and was perceived differently by each organization. In comparison, the tried and true philanthropic and transactional collaborations of donations, sponsorships, cause-related marketing and discounts with other businesses are characterized by clear definitions of the benefits to Yad Sarah (mostly money and medical equipment, and also less tangible benefits such as marketing and advertising) and explicit relationships of donor and recipient. Thus, despite the growing popularity of integrative CBNB (Austin, 2000; Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006; Harris, 2007; Liu & Ko, 2011) our findings indicate that the benefits Yad Sarah received from the collaboration with the pharmaceutical company did not justify the vast resources that were required to sustain and maintain it. At Yad Sarah, opinions vary regarding the effectiveness of the collaboration.

An NPO-Centric View and Typology of Collaborations Between Nonprofits and Businesses

Some of the trials and tribulations with the pharmaceutical company stemmed from collaboration difficulties that are well documented in the CBNB literature. Collaborations are complex and difficult to manage and are highly sustainable to changes in personnel (Berger et al., 2004; Huxham & Vangen, 2005; London & Rondinelli, 2003). They require vast resources and often much work and mutual probing are required in order to reap collaborative synergy (Austin, 2000; Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006; Huxham, 2003). Differences in communication, expectations, and management practices make it hard to work together and the value and benefits that each partner seeks to derive from the collaboration do not necessarily match (Ashman, 2001; Liu & Ko, 2011).

We now present two major issues that affected the collaboration and unfolded in ways that are different from that described in the literature: added value and power relations. First we present Yad Sarah’s view of added value as identified and described by the NPO, and place it in the context of Austin’s (2000) collaboration value construct as a major factor in the success or failure of collaboration. We then find that the value imbalance in the collaboration was indicative of the underlying power imbalance in the relationship, but reach a surprising conclusion that responsive conduct and positioning as the weaker partner was the NPO’s chosen strategy in dealing with the business partner.

Added Value: What Does the Business Partner Bring to the Table?

An important issue raised in the interviews was the added value of the collaboration for the NPO. Yad Sarah defines added value as strengths of the business partner that are needed and can be implemented at Yad Sarah, and views them as a crucial element of successful collaboration. In Austin’s (2000) collaboration value construct, value relates to the competencies and strengths that each partner brings to the table and to the social benefits that the collaboration generates for its stakeholders and society and the specific benefits that each partner reaps. Austin emphasizes that value definition before collaboration begins and value creation, balance and renewal during the collaboration are essential. Yad Sarah’s definition of added value is closest to Austin’s (2000) core competencies exchange which relates to distinctive capabilities that each partner brings to the table. But, to reiterate, Yad Sarah’s definition of added value refers solely to the capabilities that the business partner brings to the table. It does not include the capabilities that Yad Sarah can offer the business partner and does not refer to benefits that are an output of the collaborative work. The project coordinator from Yad Sarah explains the organization’s view of added value

The trend today, in every business [that volunteers], is to focus and see where there is added value. Anyone can paint walls. So why should I come to an NPO and volunteer to paint walls? Where can I contribute the added value? What does my company know how to do better than Intel, Comverse or any other company? And in our case, [with the pharmaceutical company] the added value was in working with our staff. Things that we as an NPO do not have and they as a business do have.

Yad Sarah views added value as one of the most important motives for establishing and maintaining integrative collaborations with businesses and pinpoints it as the most important factor of a collaboration’s failure or success. The head of the training channel clearly articulated this: “Wherever there was added valued, that is where we succeeded.”

Yad Sarah defines three distinct types of added value: Added value of a field, added value of skills and added value of a group.

Added value of a field

Added value of a field is the value that the business partner brings to the table by virtue of its field of work or industry. This type of added value was central to the medical channel where the company’s representatives marketed Yad Sarah’s services at medical conferences and during meetings with physicians. The medical channel utilized the company’s ongoing activities and contacts in the medical industry and was a natural connection between Yad Sarah’s needs and the pharmaceutical company’s daily activity. Yad Sarah’s project coordinator explains:

When is a collaboration worthwhile? When it has added value . . . [The company] has access to doctors, because they are a pharmaceutical marketing company. If they advertise our services to doctors, they reach places that we do not know how to reach. And that is added value . . . I do not have access to those doctors. I don’t know them. They won’t open the door for me. I don’t have a common language with them. Why do they have a common language with them? That is the field of medical sales reps. Because doctors talk to them, because they fund their trips abroad, because, because, because . . . . In other words, I am hitching a ride on their general work method. That is where I have the added value. That is where it helps us.

From the start, the medical channel was the most beneficial of the three channels because it utilized the clear added value of a field that the pharmaceutical company brought to the table.

Added value of skills

Added value of skills refers to skills that the business partner has that are either lacking in the NPO or complement the NPO staff’s skill set. The training channel was established to take advantage of the corporate volunteers’ marketing and computer skills. At the onset, corporate volunteers helped Yad Sarah staff prepare presentations and improve their computer skills. Yad Sarah perceived these activities as unsuccessful since these tasks were also performed by other volunteers in the organization that were just as capable and more available. In other words, there was no added value of skills. Therefore, the leaders of the training channel worked together to identify other expertise and points of benefit and synergy that they had not considered beforehand.

They decided to utilize the corporate volunteers’ unique skills in marketing, conveying messages and measurement to help with Yad Sarah’s new marketing leverage project. The project aimed to increase the volume of services rendered and items loaned by offering clients additional Yad Sarah services when they came to borrow equipment. In the training channel, the differentiation between skills that were unique to the corporate volunteers and skills that other volunteers already provided was an important factor in the channel’s development.

Added value of a group

The benefits of the added value of a group have to do with the large number of potential volunteers and their efficient management. Yad Sarah’s project coordinator explains:

I think the added value of corporate volunteering or group volunteering is that you work with a group. In other words, [our coordinator] does not have to place one hundred advertisements in fifteen different local newspapers and deal with one hundred and fifty phone calls. She places one phone call and recruits one hundred and fifty volunteers.

Two years into the project, additional benefits started to be noticed and understood. The added value of a group of corporate volunteers also includes the corporation’s premises and their communication, technology and transportation infrastructures. Whereas the individual corporate volunteer does not provide added value in comparison to a regular volunteer for installing distress buttons, the group of pharmaceutical company volunteers does have added value. When a Yad Sarah client in their service area needs to install a distress button, Yad Sarah puts in one call to the pharmaceutical company and is thus finished taking care of the installation. Their representative then sends a text message to all the volunteers, and whoever is available accepts the call and performs the installation.

The added value of a group provides a strong motive for Yad Sarah to develop collaborations with additional businesses. The organization is thinking of new and efficient ways to reap additional benefits from collaboration such as having a business run transportation services for people with physical disabilities or even opening a Yad Sarah branch in a business’s office building and having the corporate volunteers run the branch.

Lack of added value

Just as added value is a motive and success factor for collaboration, there is another side of the coin. One of our prominent findings is that lack of added value was a major obstacle to the success of the collaboration. It was not worthwhile for Yad Sarah to invest time, effort and resources in corporate volunteers that were doing the same jobs as regular volunteers but providing less output. The community channel was set up in order to provide meaningful volunteering experiences for company employees that wanted direct contact with Yad Sarah clients and it was clear to the partners and to the mediating organization that the channel did not provide Yad Sarah with added value. The Yad Sarah coordinator explains:

In the community channel almost nothing worked properly. There are people to blame at [the pharmaceutical company]. There are also people to blame here. But there was a discrepancy that took time to put on the table, and I think it was not put on the table because no one noticed it. A discrepancy in expectations. When the head of life stories at Yad Sarah was asked what the corporate volunteers need to do, she said: “They need to do A, B, C.” When the corporate volunteers were asked, they wanted to do D, E, F. There was a very large discrepancy between their aspirations and what we wanted them to do. This caused a communication gap, and because of this gap nothing worked properly.

Thus the community channel not only lacked added value, it was perceived as a burden that caused a great deal of wasted time and resources.

Value creation, renewal, and balance

Yad Sarah views added value as the most crucial element in the success or failure of collaboration. The marketing channel was based on clear added value. The life stories project in the community channel did not have added value. The training channel and the distress button installations in the community channel did not initially have added value. In the pharmaceutical company collaboration added value and the lack of it are closely linked to value balance. Austin (2000, p. 80) states that value balance “seems to be attained where each partner is actively seeking ways to advance the other’s agenda and where they have learned deeply about the other’s business.” Yad Sarah felt that it was advancing the business’s social agenda by allowing them to help out but did not fully understand the range of benefits that the company had to offer. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical company sought to advance Yad Sarah’s agenda, but did it in the way that they thought was best, based on their own organizational culture and point of view. As in many marketing-related CBNB, the marketing activities were conducive to this kind of arrangement in which the corporate volunteers were the experts and did most of the work (Bennett, Mousley, & Ali-Choudhury, 2008). In the other channels, being true to the organization’s inclusive culture, Yad Sarah was willing to work together to find new kinds of added value, or in other words, create value and renew value according to Austin’s terminology. Thus the activities in the training channel evolved into the marketing leverage project and the installation of distress buttons became more efficient by utilizing the value of the group of corporate volunteers and the company’s communication infrastructure. But Yad Sarah was not willing to insist on canceling the problematic life stories project in the community channel. The course of the community channel’s life stories project illustrates the value imbalance that was inherent to the relationship.

Power Relations Imbalance

The relationship’s value imbalance indicates an underlying power relations imbalance. Yad Sarah positioned itself as the inferior partner in the relationship and acted in a responsive manner. This finding indicates an incongruence between the NPO’s size and social and political position and its conduct with its business partner. Yad Sarah is a large well-known organization that also has political clout since its founder served as the mayor of Jerusalem. It employs over 6,000 volunteers and paid staff, whereas the pharmaceutical company has a staff of 120. Even so, and despite the pharmaceutical company’s belief that there was an equal partnership, feelings of inferiority prevailed at Yad Sarah. The head of human resources portrays these feelings:

I think that we treat [pharmaceutical company] employees that are coming to volunteer here as someone who we need to look good for. It is not like a regular volunteer that wants to come and be part of the staff . . . . We have an image of these beautiful people that we need to prepare for and look attractive when they come.

The power relations portrayed in the interviews were far from being equal, even though the mediating organization’s work model supported collaborative decision making and included mechanisms for supporting mutual control such as joint meetings for planning. The channels that were seemingly established with mutual agreement, satisfied the business partner’s desires but were not all suitable for Yad Sarah’s needs. Yad Sarah was willing to put up with this value imbalance because it viewed the collaboration as a package deal: In order to benefit from the suitable core activity (marketing Yad Sarah’s services), they had to put up with the rest. Perhaps if the power relations had been truly equal, Yad Sarah would not have agreed to the package deal at the onset, or at least would have insisted on better value balance later on.

In the literature, there is often inequality in power relations in favor of business partners, and a pattern of recipient behavior is characteristic to the nonprofit partner in CBNB (Berger et al., 2004; Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007). However, these approaches do not provide a satisfactory answer to the question: “Why should a leading national NPO act submissively toward a medium sized pharmaceutical company?” An additional partial explanation might have to do with the people involved in the project (Huxham & Vangen, 2005) and the mediating organization that contributed towards stronger positioning of the pharmaceutical company. Although the interviewees from Yad Sarah thought highly of ALEH’s matchmaking capabilities, they felt that the ALEH coordinator served more as the pharmaceutical company’s agent and not as a neutral mediator.

It appears from the interviews and documented materials that the key to understanding these issues lies within Yad Sarah’s character and organizational culture: The way the organization perceives itself; its conduct and work methods; and the organizational ethos and culture of charity and mutual social responsibility. The organization does not plan thoroughly or define clear policies, and acts in a responsive and versatile manner. Yad Sarah makes a point of welcoming and facilitating many different kinds of donors and volunteers. This requires great flexibility and therefore the NPO adopts work patterns of adaptability and acquiescence.

The Fields of Action Typology of Collaborations Between Nonprofits and Businesses

As we found in our study, Yad Sarah rushed into an integrative collaboration without a clear understanding of the different areas the collaboration would serve and the vast resources it would require. The collaboration seemed to be attractive, because the business partner was able to address a real need that the NPO had in marketing its services to the medical community. But ultimately, in addition to the fruitful medical channel, Yad Sarah was saddled with the learning channel and the community channel that required vast resources without yielding substantial benefits or answering an unserved need. Indeed, NPOs need to cautiously assess which collaborations will answer their needs and whether the business partner can deliver the added value they define as crucial for the organization. Integrative collaborations require special attention since they often entail a large commitment of resources. The Fields of Action Typology of collaborations between nonprofits and businesses we developed in this study, adds a content layer to Austin’s (2000) seminal analytical framework of CBNB. The typology, which was developed on the basis of Yad Sarah’s experience in the collaboration, is unique in that it deals solely with the NPO’s needs and not with the desires, goals and limitations of the business partner. The typology is helpful for defining these needs and examining the areas in which the NPO seeks to derive benefits from CBNB, and is organized according to fields of action that are common to NPOs. This emphasis on the content of the collaboration is different than other classifications of CBNB that either place the relationship between the partners at center stage (Austin, 2000; Harris, 2007); define the type of interaction) Seitanidi & Ryan, 2007); or deal with benefits that both partners can reap from collaboration (Galaskiewicz & Colman, 2006).

The impetus for defining the typology arose from the analysis of the three volunteering channels in the pharmaceutical company collaboration, and was then expanded according to Yad Sarah’s wide array of collaborations with businesses. These included hundreds of philanthropic collaborations and tens of transactional collaborations that were part of a larger study of Yad Sarah’s portfolio of collaborations. The three channels of the pharmaceutical company collaboration portrayed three distinctive fields of action: the medical channel was a marketing collaboration, the training channel was a learning collaboration and the community channel included volunteering opportunities that directly served Yad Sarah’s mission-related services for the elderly. Each field required different work processes, skills and staff members; involved different types of relationships between the NPO and business staff running the channel; yielded different results and utilized specific types of outcome measurement and evaluation processes. One of the clearest statements of the interviewees was that the collaboration did not serve the NPO’s mission-related activities, and therefore the question arises: “Which fields do collaborations serve well?” The Fields of Action Typology serves as an analytical framework that helps answer this question and can be used to assist in defining organizational policies and examining strategic questions. In addition to its theoretical contribution of adding a content layer to Austin’s (2000) analytical framework of CBNB, nonprofit and businesses partners and their mediating organizations will find it useful as a tool to assist in choosing collaboration partners and defining effective projects that will provide specific value and serve the NPO’s needs.

The typology comprises six types of collaboration that were derived from the day-to-day needs and activities of Yad Sarah: Mission-related collaborations that have to do with the NPO’s core activities and serve its target audience; marketing collaborations that help to advertise and promote the NPO and its services, and build branding and reputation; learning collaborations that contribute to organizational learning and capacity building; infrastructure collaborations that assist in procuring, developing and maintaining infrastructures such as buildings, equipment, transportation, and computer and communication systems; political collaborations that promote and further the NPO’s political agenda; and marginal collaborations that are perceived by the NPO as not directly related to its core activities or achieving its mission.

Table 1 presents the Fields of Action Typology.

Table 1.

The Fields of Action Typology of Collaborations Between Nonprofits and Businesses.

The fields of action typology
Mission-related collaborations
Marketing collaborations
Learning collaborations
Infrastructure collaborations
Political collaborations
Marginal collaborations

Table 2 presents the various activities that comprised the Yad Sarah pharmaceutical company collaboration according to the typology, detailing added value and stating whether or not the activity was deemed successful by the NPO.

Table 2.

The Yad Sarah and Pharmaceutical Company Collaboration—Activities Sorted by Fields of Action.

Type of collaboration by field of action	Activities performed by pharmaceutical company volunteers	Added value of skills/field/group or lack of added value	Was the activity successful?
Mission-related	Installing distress buttons in client’s homes	Initially none, later group	Initially no, later yes
Mission-related	Documenting Holocaust survivors’ life stories	None	No
Learning	Teaching computer skills to Yad Sarah volunteers	None^a	No
	Helping Yad Sarah staff prepare powerpoint presentations	None^a	No
	Teaching Yad Sarah volunteers at loaning centers how to market additional services to customers	Skills (marketing, conveying messages, measurement, training)	Yes
Marketing	Marketing Yad Sarah’s services during sales representatives’ meetings with physicians	Field and skills (marketing)	Yes
	Funding and manning Yad Sarah booth at medical conferences	Field and skills (marketing)	Yes
	Setting up a call center with information about Yad Sarah services	Skills (marketing and measurement)	Yes
	Preparing and printing brochure of Yad Sarah services	Skills (marketing)	Yes
	Preparing and printing brochure of Yad Sarah medical supplies	Skills (marketing)	Yes
	Preparing and placing radio jingle for Yad Sarah	Skills (marketing)	Not available
Infrastructure	None	—	—
Political	None	—	—
Marginal	Selling magnets made at Yad Sarah and donating proceeds to Yad Sarah	None	Yes

Note: ^aThe pharmaceutical company perceived these volunteers as having added value of skills, since they train as part of their job. However, Yad Sarah did not perceive these volunteers as having added value, since other volunteers with background in training also did these tasks.

Table 3 presents a wider picture by portraying Yad Sarah’s array of collaborations with businesses according to the Fields of Action Typology. Note that the second column portrays the type of collaboration according to Yad Sarah’s internal classification and specifies the stage of the collaboration according to Austin’s (2000) collaboration continuum.

Table 3.

Collaborations Between Yad Sarah and Businesses: Sorted by Fields of Action.

Type of collaboration by field of action	Type of collaboration by Yad Sarah definitions (collaboration stage)	Details	Examples
Mission-related	Donations (philanthropic)	Donations of money	Funds for buying wheelchairs
		Donations of goods	Donations of rehabilitative equipment
		Donations of services	Consulting—how to manage the fleet of wheelchair accessible vans
		Technology donations	Network software for the distress buttons call center
		Discounts	Maintenance of wheelchair accessible vans
	Sponsorship (transactional)	Events	Sponsoring annual senior health day
	Cause-related marketing (transactional)	Donations at point of sale or selling item with proceeds going to Yad Sarah	Donation at supermarket checkout, all proceeds for rehabilitative equipment
	Corporate volunteering (transactional)	Episodic volunteering	Intel volunteers upgrade distress button installations in client’s homes
	Corporate volunteering (integrative)	Pharmaceutical company collaboration	Documenting Holocaust survivors’ life stories
Learning	Donations (philanthropic)	Donations of services	Consulting—how to manage the fleet of wheelchair accessible vans
		Technology donations	Software training
	Sponsorship (transactional)	Events	Sponsoring annual volunteering management conference
	Corporate volunteering (integrative)	Pharmaceutical company collaboration	Teaching volunteers at loaning centers how to market additional services to customers
Marketing	Donations (philanthropic)	Donations of services	Free preparation of advertising materials
		Discounts	Discount on printing costs for the Yad Sarah magazine
	Sponsorship (transactional)	Events	Funding Yad Sarah’s 30th birthday event
		Calendar	Advertising on a month’s banner
		Yad Sarah magazine	Half page advertisement
	Cause-related marketing (transactional)	Donations at point of sale or selling item with proceeds going to Yad Sarah	Selling key chains designed like “Life Bracelets” at supermarkets to advertise the distress buttons service
	Corporate volunteering (transactional)	Episodic volunteering	Supermarket employees spend a day volunteering in the workshops, and film activities for advertising
	Corporate volunteering (integrative)	Pharmaceutical company collaboration	Funding and manning Yad Sarah booth at medical conferences
Infrastructure	Donations (philanthropic)	Donations of money	Funding for new buildings
		Donations of goods	Donations of computers
		Donations of services	Help in defining system specifications
		Technology donations	Network software for the distress buttons call center
		Discounts	Discounts on tires for fleet of wheelchair accessible vans
Marginal	Donations (philanthropic)	Donations of goods	Donation of electric kettles
Marginal	Corporate volunteering (transactional)	Episodic volunteering	Ben & Jerry’s bring ice cream cart to the rehabilitation center
Political	Not available	Not available	Not available

Discussion

This study aimed to examine collaborations between NPOs and businesses from the NPO’s point of view. While much of the CBNB literature examines these collaborations from the business’s side, we focused on the NPO’s unique perceptions and experiences. Our study reveals that when the view is diverted towards the NPO’s angle, a new set of issues related to the nonprofit’s needs, culture and character gain prominence. These issues are at the heart of collaboration and in many senses determine its development and outcomes. In this section, we commence by reiterating the difficulties of integrative collaborations in comparison to philanthropic and transactional collaborations, and continue by discussing the NPO-centric issues that arose in our research, namely added value as identified and described by the NPO; unequal power relations; and the need to base collaborations on the NPO’s fields of actions.

First, the findings of this study raise questions regarding the suitability and costs of integrative collaborations for NPOs. Seemingly, the integrative collaboration with the pharmaceutical company should have produced substantial collaborative advantage. The pharmaceutical company’s presence in the medical community, together with their employees’ marketing skills, answered a real need of Yad Sarah to help market the NPO’s services in the medical community. The pharmaceutical company was eager to spend considerable resources of time, energy, and money on the collaboration and the two organizations were counseled by a capacity building mediating organization. But ultimately, the project yielded intangible benefits, which for the most part did not answer Yad Sarah’s concrete needs. The vast amounts of effort, time and human resources that Yad Sarah invested in the collaboration during a time of an economic recession, did not justify the limited gains.

Integrative collaborations can yield substantial benefits but require honest, open and participatory dialogue based on trust, as well as patience and tolerance (Berger et al., 2004). These attributes were lacking in the collaboration, and perhaps different conduct by Yad Sarah would have resulted in improved outputs. Even so, we have found that the complex nature and character of integrative collaborations warrants careful consideration. NPOs need to cautiously assess whether integrative collaborations will answer their needs and whether the business partner can deliver the added value they define as crucial for the organization. Before rushing into such collaborations, NPOs must consider whether they are able and willing to devote the vast resources required for such an investment. The decision to launch collaborations should be based on a thorough examination of the NPOs needs and resources and should consider the broad array of different types of CBNB. Our Fields of Action Typology is designed to serve as a tool to support this process.

Second, this study emphasizes the importance of definitions given by the NPO for its added value. These definitions are key to understanding the relationships and the development of collaboration and will affect its outcomes. Hence, the NPO should articulate and communicate its definitions to all collaboration members and use them as a base for formulating policies and making decisions. The Fields of Action Typology of CBNB together with the NPO’s definitions of added value and other aspects it finds important can serve to make better and more informed decisions regarding collaborations.

In the context of the added value of a group, our research suggests that corporate volunteering might be able to offer additional benefits that have not yet been articulated. In addition to the benefits of working with groups of volunteers that have to do with volunteer recruitment, socialization, motivation, and retention (Haski-Leventhal & Cnaan, 2009), working with a group of corporate volunteers together with the utilization of the business’s infrastructure can provide unique benefits. Further research is suggested to explore ways in which infrastructure, such as buildings, technology, transportation and communication systems, can benefit the NPO partner.

Third, we found that Yad Sarah did not perceive its weak positioning in relation to the pharmaceutical company as a problem. On the contrary, it viewed it as strategically important. This is in contrast to the literature which views unequal power relations as an obstacle that diminishes the NPO’s position in the collaboration (Ashman, 2001). Being accommodating toward businesses’ wishes enables Yad Sarah to collaborate with a wide array of different partners, thus providing a large pool of potential business donors and collaborators. Exerting power is not congruent to the organization’s culture and would entail investing effort, time, and human resources in clearly setting down well-defined demands; and working in a more organized and efficient manner.

This finding should not imply that NPOs need to position themselves as weak partners in collaborations, but it points to the importance of an NPO-centric view of power relations. For some NPOs, weak positioning can be a strategic choice that fits the organizational culture and daily conduct.

In conclusion, we believe an NPO-centric perspective of CBNB is pertinent both from the practical and the research perspective. Focusing on the NPO reveals new ways to improve collaboration and uncover issues that are important to the organization. We offer the Fields of Action Typology as an NPO-centric tool that adds a content layer to Austin’s (2000) seminal analytical framework of CBNB and can serve as a useful tool when choosing collaboration partners and defining effective projects that serve the needs of the NPO and its stakeholders. Even though the Fields of Action Typology emerged from one case study, we believe that it is applicable to many CBNB. We hope that future studies will corroborate and refine the typology, by focusing on a larger number of cases and examining different types of collaborations and relationships that are emerging between NPOs and businesses in different countries.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors of this special issue, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: R.S.S. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Henry L. Zucker Fellowship Endowment Fund at the Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare for partial funding of this research.

Author Biographies

Ruth S. Schiller holds master’s degrees in nonprofit management and in business administration, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science, all from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working for many years in the high-tech industry, her interests lie at the interface and interrelations between businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Michal Almog-Bar, PhD, is a lecturer at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she teaches at the master program in management of nonprofit and community organizations.

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