Giving Compass' Take:

• Ben Bisbee, writing for Medium, believes that there are four truths which add to nonprofit and corporate partnership hardships.

• What are the central tensions in these partnerships? How can both entities productively address power dynamics?

• Read more about how nonprofits can use strategies to promote corporate social responsibility.

We have got to stop applying and then reapplying all these incredulous stereotypes into the lexicon that corporations (and their employees) are the embodiment of form and order with a deep, often “misguided” need to express their mechanical humanity while making the nonprofit out to be passionate lost lambs who are so driven by their activism they can’t see there “might be a better way” given some form, order and just the right relationship.

Because the real truth — where these relationships don’t work or fail to be successful — is not a story made for Hollywood. It's not romantic. And frankly might better make an HBO or Netflix series where things can properly be explored. Because in some ways it’s often simple but depressing and in other ways its extremely complicated.

Let’s address what I think are the 4 real truths that often contribute to struggling partnerships.

  1.  We’re all painfully busy.
  2. We want transaction, not transformation (no matter how much we lie about it).
  3.  We don’t have “mutual goals”, we have “associated objectives with non-contrasting, but disparate outcomes”
  4. Everyone wants to be the teacher, no one wants to be the student.

Read the full article about nonprofit and corporate partnerships by Ben Bisbee at Medium.