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Title: Common Interest, Common Good: Creating Value Through Business and Social Sector Partnerships by Shirley Sagawa, Eli Segal, Rosabeth Moss Kanter ISBN: 0-87584-848-6 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great book from a business perspective
Comment: This is a great book for businesses looking for unique opportunities to both make a difference and raise their community standing. It is comprised of real, powerful examples of how these partnerships can and do work. This book should be read along with Bill Shore's, "The Cathedral Within."
Rating: 5
Summary: Creating Great Value for Companies and Communities
Comment: Every company I know is interested in getting and providing a great deal. Every nonprofit I know is committed to the greater welfare of the society. But almost no companies and nonprofits know how to link together to multiply their effectiveness in achieving their purposes.
This book provides outstanding examples and a superb template for creating partnerships of great value for all involved: companies, their employees, nonprofits, and the communities that everyone serves. Based on the examples in this book, it looks like the benefits can easily be 20 to 1 in the near term from the time and money invested. That kind of return is hard to find in business, philanthropy, or social entrepreneurship. The reason it happens is that the company can add value that the nonprofit cannot, and vice versa. The strategic partnership is not unlike the strategic alliances that companies create all the time with comapnies that offer unique strategic capabilities.
The reason these benefit are so large (and growing) is because customers and employees are ever more responsive to promoting a social cause, companies are getting better at partnering with outside organizations, and the expertise of nonprofits is growing.
Businesses can gain by getting low-cost recognition from customers that will increase sales, obtaining low-cost resources, making work more meaningful to employees (helping to retain them), attracting employees more easily, and learning how cause-based leadership can transform an organization. When you look at it from a dollar and cents point of view, these partnerships would pass any accounting test you want to use. Not to seek out these partnerships is to waste potential for growth and profits in your company. Corporate boards should be asking company CEOs to develop these partnerships!
Nonprofits can gain by learning how to increase outcomes they care about, gaining access to resources that would otherwise be unavailable, getting more exposure, and finding improved ways of meeting their missions.
Communities will gain by getting more resources, expertise, and attention from social entrepreneurs in companies and nonprofits.
So this is a win-win-win world, but somebody has to get it going. Chapter ten is excellent on that subject: It proposes a 5 step model for the nonprofit -- self assess, identify a partner, connect to that partner, test the relationship idea, and grow the relationship.
Although the initiative can come from the company, it usually won't. The executives already have other agendas, are receiving hundreds of requests for assistance, and don't know what many nonprofits can do for them. You can add some corporate executives to your nonprofit board who will understand companies to help you make these connections. The biggest hurdle will be the lack of corporate experience of your nonprofit's staff. Nonprofits are used to looking for a check, not a partnership. But that reliance on gifts alone is stalled thinking that will hold back the development of the public good.
The case histories include Home Depot and KaBOOM! (building playgrounds), Microsoft and the American Library Association (adding computers and Internet services to libraries in low-income areas), Denny's and Save the Children (raising money for poor children), BankBoston and City Year (sponsoring volunteers in community work), Ridgeview, Inc. and Newton-Conover Public Schools (creating better public schools and better parent involvement from employees with children), and Boeing and Pioneer Human Services (creating airplane parts by employing those with disadvantaged backgrounds). I found all of them to be interesting and well analyzed. Each one gave me ideas for how to pursue opportunties like these for the nonprofit on whose board I serve.
I especially recommend this book to company leaders, human resource executives, purchasing managers, and marketing planners. On the nonprofit side, this book will be a revelation to staffs and board members.
After you have read this book, please join the board of a nonprofit (if you are not already on one). Then, please use the processes in this book to create a strategic partnership with your company or another one in your community. You will gain strategic partnering skills and a sense of a job well done. The others will gain the benefits described above. If we each did this, our communities would soon be far more wonderful places to live and work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful thinking
Comment: Common Interest, Common Good represents powerful thinking that has already withstood many challenges and overcome many barriers. Corporate executives will benefit greatly from the book's clear and cogent lessons on the benefits of corporate/social sector partnership. This book is proof that goodness can endure.
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