Newsletter: Don’t "Storrow" Your Partnership Program 🚚 ; Your Best Content Creators May Not be Writers ✍️; Who Should Pay for Our Cultural Institutions? 🖼️
If you live in Boston, you know what “storrowing” means.
Storrow Drive is one of the main routes into and out of Boston. It’s also famous for its ridiculously low bridges, which is why trucks of a certain height aren’t allowed on Storrow. Of course, that doesn’t stop people from trying until...
WHAM.
The truck doesn’t fit under the bridge. Sometimes the roof gets peeled off like a sardine can.
Around here, we call that getting Storrowed.
And lately I’ve been thinking that partnership programs get Storrowed, too.
Say your nonprofit has one person dedicated to corporate partnerships. That’s fantastic! Most nonprofits don’t even have that.
But here’s the problem: one person is still one person.
I’ve worked with organizations that have a dozen or more people working on partnerships. So expecting your one-person shop to prospect, pitch, close, activate, steward, renew, measure, create case studies, engage employees, run events—and somehow double partnership revenue—is like trying to drive a 12-foot truck under a 10-foot bridge.
It doesn’t fit.
More and more, when I work with fundraising teams, like I did last week at the New Strategies Program at Georgetown University, I find myself talking less about how to build partnerships and more about how to manage expectations around them.
Because sometimes the problem isn’t strategy. It’s capacity.
Before you set another ambitious partnership goal, ask a very simple question:
👉🏻 Do we actually have the people, time, budget, and systems to do this well?
If the answer is no, you have three choices: add resources, narrow the goal, or stop doing some things so you can do the important things better.
What you can’t do is pretend the clearance sign doesn’t exist and hit the gas.
That’s how you get Storrowed.
And take it from a Bostonian: when you run into something hard, permanent, and immovable, you’re going to lose.
✍️ Partnership Notes
A partnership insight that matters.
📊 B2B buyers are getting more skeptical. Are you giving them enough proof?
What’s the biggest external challenge facing B2B marketers? According to new research from Walker Sands, it’s rising buyer skepticism and the growing demand for proof—things like ROI, security, and compliance. Buyers are also doing more anonymous, self-directed research, while the committees involved in purchasing decisions are becoming larger and more complicated.
Joe’s Take: Corporate partnership prospects are B2B buyers too. I think nonprofits sometimes forget that. We expect companies to be persuaded by our mission, our reach, and a good pitch. But today’s buyers increasingly want evidence before they decide. What happened when another company partnered with you? What did they get from it? What results can you demonstrate? What would one of your current partners say about working with you? That’s why case studies, testimonials, metrics, and partner stories matter. Alignment may get you considered. Proof helps you get chosen.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
One move you should steal.
🎤 Your best content creators may not be writers.
Your organization is probably filled with people who know things your audience would find fascinating. The problem is that we usually ask them to do the wrong job: “Could you write something for the blog?” The Content Marketing Institute suggests a better approach. Interview your subject-matter experts. Ask what people misunderstand about their work, what they’ve changed their minds about, what questions they hear repeatedly, and what they’ve learned from years of experience. Record the conversation and let your marketing team turn that expertise into content.
Joe’s Take: This gets even more useful with AI. Don’t ask ChatGPT to write a generic article about your cause. Give it an interview with the person at your organization who knows the cause better than almost anyone. Let AI help you find the stories, ideas, quotes, and lessons buried in that conversation. Your experts supply what AI can’t: experience. AI helps you turn that experience into something other people can learn from. Don’t ask AI to manufacture expertise. Use it to unlock the expertise you already have.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
Find your next adventure.
🤝 Officer, Business Partnerships, City Harvest, Brooklyn, NY
🤝 Director, National Partnerships, Girl Scouts of the USA, NYC
🤝 National Director, Corporate Partnerships & Cause Marketing, American Diabetes Association, Remote
🧠🍌 Brain Food
One thing that is feeding my thinking.
🏛️ Who should pay for our cultural institutions?
When the Bayeux Tapestry goes on display at the British Museum, the name getting top billing won’t be William the Conqueror. It will be Igor Tulchinsky, an investment manager who reportedly contributed £5 million to the exhibition. The Economist reports that British museums and galleries are increasingly turning to wealthy individual patrons as government support declines and corporate sponsorship becomes more complicated. In 2024–25, 15 national museums raised £1.2 billion through fundraising—three times the previous year’s total.
🔒 A paywall may stop you from reading this article. Just reply to this email, and I'll send you a copy.
Joe’s Take: There’s an obvious upside to finding people willing to write enormous checks for museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions. But this article raises a harder question: What happens when you change who pays the bills? Governments have agendas. Corporations have agendas. And wealthy individuals have agendas too. That doesn't mean their money shouldn’t be accepted. But funding is rarely just funding—it can affect priorities, programs, and sometimes who gets heard. As more institutions depend on private philanthropy, figuring out how to take the money without surrendering the mission may become just as important as figuring out how to raise it.
