While it might seem that charities and corporations are unlikely collaborators due to different operating styles and goals, these organisations can help each other thrive through strategic partnerships.
Through these partnerships, charities can receive funds for programmes (which can be more than individual donors can feasibly contribute), increase awareness of their work, or even gain volunteer support. For businesses, supporting charities can pay off significantly through improved brand reputation and employee engagement.
These partnerships can look different based on each organisation’s needs and capacities. As a charity professional, providing unique, straightforward, and mutually beneficial ideas when approaching potential corporate sponsors is essential for success. This is where corporate gifting comes into play.
In this guide, we’ll review what corporate gifting is, why your charity should pitch it to potential sponsors, and how to craft an enticing proposal.
1. Understand how corporate gifting programmes work.
Build a solid and actionable foundation for your strategy by understanding the essential aspects of corporate gifting. Here is a quick overview of corporate gifting from a business perspective:
- What it is: According to Unwrapit, corporate gifting is “a way of recognizing employees, clients, and other stakeholders by gifting them items, experiences, and more.” Employee or volunteer gifting will likely be the most relevant use case for your charity’s purposes.
- Why it’s effective: For employees of traditional businesses, corporate gifting can incentivise adherence to company values, high performance, and loyalty, cultivating a positive workplace culture and better business results. Similarly, it can win clients and keep them invested in the business long-term.
- How corporate gifting programmes work: The company provides gifts for certain occasions, such as an annual holiday gift or a prize for winning employee of the month. Then, the company offers the gift and tracks the acceptance rate. If they’re working with a corporate gifting company, they might allow recipients to choose a custom gift via a branded portal (more on that later).
- How much corporate gifting programmes cost: It depends on the items offered and the criteria for distributing gifts. Companies looking for an official, standard gifting programme can predict cost by setting a budget before deciding on specific gifts.
- Examples of corporate gifts: Experiences, physical items, gift cards, extra time off, and donations to charities.
A creative way for businesses to support your charity is by offering a donation to your cause as a corporate gift idea. This opportunity provides both exposure and funding to support your cause, while also benefiting the sponsor and allowing recipients to enact social change effortlessly—it’s a win-win-win!
2. Ask current partners about corporate gifting approaches.
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the basics of corporate gifting, you can begin researching potential prospects. A great place to start is with your existing corporate connections—they’re already acquainted with your team and cause, meaning you won’t need to spend as much time building a relationship. Consider asking the following questions to gauge their knowledge of and affinity for corporate gifting:
- What does your team currently know about corporate gifting?
- Do you plan to incorporate corporate gifting into your operations?
- Which gifts are you planning to offer, and why?
- What gaps do you currently observe in your corporate gifting structure?
- How do you measure the success of your corporate gifting programme?
- Do you manage your programme with the help of a corporate gifting company?
- Do you currently integrate donations to charities in your corporate gifting?
Once you’ve asked these questions and understood their goals and approach towards corporate gifting, you can use this information to inform your proposal. You might also ask questions unrelated to corporate gifting but that can still improve your approach, such as if they want ideas of novel ways to support charities and their budget for donating.
3. Craft a custom proposal.
Now, you can combine all this information to make a winning, customised proposal. Follow these tips to get started:
- Don’t make the ask right away. Whether your prospect is a new or existing connection, you should take the time to get to know your charity’s potential sponsor. Consider hosting a casual coffee chat as your first touchpoint to learn about their goals, experience with charities, and even personal interests. You can use this information to personalize your proposal, making it more resonant.
- Research relevant statistics. Look into current facts and figures regarding corporate social responsibility and corporate gifting to support your case (i.e., the 10 largest corporations have donated $2 billion collectively to charitable causes each year). Also, research data specifically related to your prospect’s competitors to clearly demonstrate the strategic benefits of working with your charity.
- Provide ideas for streamlining corporate gifting. Ultimately, your proposal should be as easy to implement as possible. Offer tips for streamlining corporate gifting programmes so you both see a return on investment quickly. For example, you might suggest they work with a corporate gifting company, a service provider that manages the gifting process from top to bottom. A corporate gifting company might source gifts for you, provide a digital gift-claiming portal to make the programme more convenient, and track metrics so you understand exactly how well your efforts perform.
Remember that the collaboration process requires more than just sending the initial draft. After all, in the best collaborations, everyone feels valued and respected. You’ll likely experience some back-and-forth as you hone the proposal and make compromises. No matter where you are in the proposal stage, keep the flow of communication open and ask your prospects for feedback regularly—they’ll feel appreciated, fulfilled, and committed to your program’s success.
Next Steps
While this guide’s main focus is leveling up your charity’s relationships with corporate sponsors, consider working with a corporate gifting company to cover all of your bases. By being featured as a donation option in a corporate gifting company’s platform, you can get more traction and support than you would if working with just one company. Reach out to corporate gifting companies and formally request to be added to their platform so you can reap the benefits of additional exposure.
If you’re after more top content like this to power-up your partnerships, check out our Corporate Partnerships Conference 2025 coming up on March 20th.
