Newsletter: I’ve Been Defining Partnerships Too Narrowly 🤏🏻 ; Case Studies Belong at the Top of the Funnel 🔝 ; Why Regional Brands Are Partnership Powerhouses 💥

This image captures how I’ve been thinking about partnerships for a long time.

For years, I've been defining partnerships too narrowly.

When I heard the word 'partnership', I immediately thought of sponsorships and cause marketing. Logos on banners. A checkout donation. Maybe an annual event with a presenting sponsor. That framing shaped how I talked about partnerships, how I advised nonprofits, and—whether I realized it or not—who I assumed was “ready” to pursue them.

Those models still matter—but they’re no longer the whole story. And for a growing number of nonprofits, they’re not even the right place to start.

Here’s how I define partnerships inside the ​Partnership Proof System (PPS)​:

A partnership is ideally a recurring collaboration where a business commits resources and a nonprofit delivers partner-defined value—charitable, business-driven, or both.

That one sentence changes everything—and nothing.

It changes everything by expanding how partnerships are defined within PPS. We start with value—what a business actually wants to accomplish and what a nonprofit can genuinely deliver—rather than with formats like sponsorships or cause marketing.

But it also changes nothing. My expertise remains rooted in sponsorships and cause marketing, and this will continue to be the focus of this newsletter. Those models still matter. They’re just no longer the only place partnerships can begin.

Because the moment you stop defining partnerships by format and start defining them by value exchange, those walls start to expand.

A partnership can mean a company lending its people—not just its money—through skills-based volunteering or leadership development. It can mean helping a business reach a community it can’t authentically access on its own. It can mean co-creating content, insights, or research that boosts credibility. It can be a pilot program, a workforce pipeline, a product test, or a community education effort.

Notice what’s missing from that list: logos, gala tables, and register fundraisers.

And that’s the point.

Too many nonprofits talk themselves out of partnerships before they ever start. They assume they’re “not ready” because they don’t have a sponsorship deck or a fancy cause marketing idea. But they do have expertise. They do have trust, access, data, stories, and lived experience that businesses can’t fake—and can’t buy off the shelf.

That’s where PPS comes in.

The goal isn’t to shoehorn every organization into a sponsorship or a point-of-sale campaign.

The goal is to identify one partnership—of any type—that you can execute well, measure clearly, and turn into proof.

Proof that you can deliver value.

Proof that partnerships work for your organization.

Proof you can build on.

Once you have that proof, everything changes. Conversations get easier. Options multiply. Confidence replaces guesswork.

If sponsorships and cause marketing never felt like the right starting point, trust that instinct.

It turns out the instinct was right. Partnerships were never about format anyway.

✍️ Partnership Notes

Three partnership insights that matter.

🧪 ​What an unlikely partnership gets right—because it’s grounded in proof​.
This isn’t a cause-related, but I’m including it ’cause it’s a masterclass in how insight-led collaborations are built. A Valentine’s Day collaboration between Red Lobster and Vaseline looks absurd on the surface—but it works because it’s rooted in consumer research, not vibes. The campaign was built around real behavioral insights (winter dryness + dining + kissing), which made the pairing feel oddly logical rather than random. The partnership lesson: strong collaborations don’t start with brand adjacency—they start with evidence about how people actually behave. For nonprofits, the quiet challenge is this: what data do you already have that could unlock a smarter, braver partnership?

🍕 ​Why regional brands can be partnership powerhouses​.
This profile of Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria’s partnership with local Make-A-Wish chapters highlights how the brand continues to grow by leaning into regional density rather than chasing national sameness. With a strong footprint across the Midwest and Southwest, Lou Malnati’s shows how local concentration builds loyalty, visibility, and repeat engagement. The partnership lesson for nonprofits is simple: stop chasing logos and start chasing density. Regionally concentrated brands often deliver stronger proof, faster decisions, and deeper community credibility than national brands spread thin. Local strength scales better than you think.

🚗 ​You don’t need a Super Bowl budget to apply this partnership lesson—just a substitution mindset​.
When Hyundai Motor America redirected Super Bowl ad dollars into pediatric cancer research through Hyundai Hope On Wheels, the real insight wasn’t the size of the spend—it was the choice to substitute, not add. That’s the takeaway for partnership pros working locally or regionally. You don’t need a brand to “do more”—you need to help them do something different with money they already spend. Picture a regional grocery chain redirecting festival sponsorship dollars into mobile food pantries at those same events, or a local bank shifting event marketing spend into community-based financial coaching. No new budget. No national spotlight. Just a clear trade that’s easier to justify internally—and more meaningful externally.

🤑 Marketing Your Cause

Two moves nonprofits should steal.

🏈 ​Why even the biggest nonprofits can’t stop growing their audience​.
A recent Chief Marketer piece explains why St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital returned to the Super Bowl—not to raise immediate dollars, but to reach new audiences where they already are. The strategy is a reminder that brand recognition isn’t static, and neither is attention. For nonprofits of any size, the takeaway is clear: you can’t rely on past awareness to carry future impact. Growth requires showing up in new channels, new moments, and new cultural conversations—on purpose.

🪪 ​Case studies weren’t supposed to live at the top of the funnel. They do now​.
This article argues that the middle of the funnel is collapsing as buyers self-educate earlier and faster. That creates a problem for partnership pros, as we were taught (including by me, though I've since ​adjusted my position​) to save case studies for the middle so we can interpret and contextualize them. But today, no one waits to be walked through your story. Prospects scan case studies at the awareness stage to answer one question: Is this real and low-risk? The shift isn’t about moving assets. It’s about accepting that proof now replaces persuasion, long before a conversation ever begins.

😎 Cool Jobs in Cause

Find your next adventure.

🤝 Partnerships & Engagement Director, ​Peaceful Family Oklahoma​, Edmond, OK

🤝 Senior Alliances Manager, ​Michael J. Fox Foundation​, Remote

🤝 Corporate Partnerships Officer, ​Boston Medical Center​, Boston

🤝 Director, Corporate Philanthropy, ​Year Up United​, US Locations

🧠🍌 Brain Food

One thing that’s feeding my thinking.

​📊 When pressure rises, generosity doesn’t disappear—it gets interrogated.​
This new survey shows companies taking a more cautious approach to corporate philanthropy amid political and economic uncertainty. That doesn’t mean giving is collapsing (but, as I've written, it is ​small, restricted, and limited​), but it does mean every dollar now needs a clearer justification. In moments like this, standalone philanthropy is easier to pause, while partnerships that create visible, defensible value are easier to protect. The takeaway is that pressure doesn’t kill generosity—it rewards giving that can prove its worth.