Corporate-NGO Alliances: Guidelines for practice

 Sven Koster, thesis, Ghana

The rise of corporate social responsibility and NGOs who are facing difficulties with their traditional funding methods is resulting in a rise of corporate-NGO alliances. Current literature describes what a corporate-NGO alliance should look like and furnishes challenges and success factors for those corporate-NGO alliances. This research combines those insights with the insights coming from alignment in partnerships and strategic niche management, to offer propositions to NGOs how they can successfully establish a corporate-NGO alliance. Eight research-based design propositions derived from literature and eight practice-based design propositions derived from empirical evidence resulted in a final set of ten design propositions. The empirical evidence came from 17 NGOs who are operating in Ghana. Interviews have been held with those NGOs and the data that came from those interviews was analyzed to develop those practice-based design propositions. The practice and research-based design propositions are then transformed into a framework which give practitioners of NGOs guidelines for the different phases when setting-up a corporate-NGO alliance and the requirements which are necessary in each phase to successfully establish a corporate-NGO alliance. It is shown that establishing and sharing expectations, finding the win-win situation and getting potential corporations first in your network before you contact them are necessary to establish a corporate-NGO alliance.