Newsletter: How to Stay Out of Partnership Hell 👹 ; Retail Repetition Beats One-Time Campaigns​ 🔄 ; Stop Calling The Wrong Person About Partnerships​ [REPLAY] ☎️

We’ve had a brutal winter here in Boston, so I’ve been re-reading Dante’s Inferno.

It fits, since the deepest parts of Dante’s Hell are ice-cold, not hot. Boston is just Hell with more snow. 🙄

Last week, Canto XI stopped me in my tracks. It stops Dante, too, because it’s the first time in his tour that he gets a whiff of what Hell really smells like.

At the edge of the Seventh Circle of Hell, the air turns foul. That's what happens when profit detaches from real work.

But it stopped me for a different reason.

In Canto XI, Dante's guide, Virgil, explains why usury—money making money—is condemned. The issue isn’t wealth. It’s disorder. It’s profit without productivity. Gain without effort.

👉🏻 And I realized I’ve seen the partnership version of that. It’s when benefit detaches from the work required to earn it.

Example #1: Lift Without Labor

A couple of months ago, I came across a large retail chain that had raised surprisingly little money through a point-of-sale fundraiser. How could such a proven concept underperform so badly at such a big chain?

A newsletter reader who had once overseen a multi-year partnership with the company shared the answer:

"They wanted us [the nonprofit] to do all the work. Instead of register technology to automatically display and give the option for round up easily for any customer, the customer had to mention they would like to donate or have an already printed voucher (distributed by the non-profit) to present on a special day or month...What we learned is that the company was more interested in driving traffic from its charity partners and less concerned and aligned with the charity’s mission. Looks great on paper, but results show the true intent."

That’s partnership usury—and it’s damnable.

❌ Visibility without investment.

❌ Brand lift without meaningful impact.

❌ Traffic without shared effort.

It looks fine in the press release. But structurally? It’s misaligned.

It’s when marketing benefits from the idea of doing good, but the real work is outsourced to the nonprofit.

That’s where the stink comes from.

To be clear, Dante isn’t angry about commerce. He’s angry about disconnects—between what something claims to produce and what it actually produces.

Example #2: Mobilization or Monetization?

Recently, a reader told me about a national restaurant chain running a month-long round-up campaign that could generate significant general support for her nonprofit.

This is great news, right?

But there was a condition: future sponsorship would depend on the level of engagement the nonprofit could drive during the campaign.

Umm...that’s more complicated.

It’s not automatically problematic. Companies are allowed to care about participation. They’re allowed to measure response. Heck, I encourage it!

The real question is this: Are you mobilizing your community in service of your mission—or monetizing your community to prove your value?

Those aren’t the same thing.

When effort is shared, and risk is mutual, that’s partnership. When audience power is extracted without real investment, that’s usury in partnership form.

The difference is structural.

That’s exactly where partnerships go sideways—when one side gets lift, and the other gets labor. Not fair, right?

❌ When the story outruns the substance.

❌ When visibility expands but investment doesn’t.

❌ When a nonprofit says yes because the check—even a small one—clears.

That’s disorder.

Authenticity isn’t a vibe. Its structure.

You build it by putting impact before promotion.

✅ By measuring what will actually change because of the partnership.

✅ By sharing effort—not outsourcing it.

✅ By saying no when alignment isn’t real.

Proof keeps profit connected to contribution. Proof keeps reputation tethered to reality. Proof keeps the stink off it.

And if Dante is right, it’s also a pretty good way to stay out of Hell—both in this life and maybe the next.

✍️ Partnership Notes

Two partnership insights that matter.

💦 ​Retail repetition beats one-time campaigns​. Club Car Wash raised $1.5 million in 2025 for the 27 hospitals it supports through Children's Miracle Network—and they didn’t do it with one splashy moment. They did it with rhythm. Three signature campaigns anchor the year: $14 Tuesday (every Tuesday, all year long), a May customer-ask campaign, and September air-freshener sales. That’s not a one-off activation. That’s institutionalized fundraising. The partnership lesson: durable retail programs win through repetition, habit, and operational simplicity. When giving becomes part of the business cadence—not an interruption—results compound!

☎️ ​Stop calling the wrong person about partnerships​. [REPLAY] I went live with Larry Weil—The Sponsorship Guy—last week to tackle one deceptively simple question: When you’re reaching out about a partnership opportunity, who should you actually call? The big takeaway? Companies don’t wake up thinking about “sponsorship.” They wake up thinking about revenue, growth, customers, and ROI. That means the right decision-maker often doesn’t have “sponsorship” anywhere in their title. If your outreach assumes there’s a neat little “sponsor” box on the org chart, you’re probably starting in the wrong place. Watch the replay and rethink who you’re dialing first.

👉 ​Read the full Action Summary (with checklist)​

🤑 Marketing Your Cause

One move you should steal.

🤔 ​Should you gate content on your partnership web page? Maybe​. A smart piece from Marketing Against the Grain explains how rethinking what they gated (and what they didn’t) increased daily leads by 79%. The takeaway for partnership teams: your website doesn’t have to choose between credibility and conversion. For example, publish enough of a case study to demonstrate results and build trust—but consider gating deeper assets (full PDFs, expanded metrics, strategic detail) behind a simple form. That balance—visible proof plus intentional capture—is exactly the kind of infrastructure I focus on in the ​Flywheel Stage​ of the Partnership Proof System. The goal isn’t to hide your proof; it’s to build momentum.

😎 Cool Jobs in Cause

Find your next adventure.

🤝 Senior Director of Institutional Giving, ​Boston Symphony Orchestra​, Boston

🤝 Manager, Corporate Alliances Storytelling, ​Make-A-Wish​, Remote

🤝 Dir., Corporate Partnerships, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Remote West

🧠🍌 Brain Food

One thing that's feeding my thinking.

📉 ​When corporate risk tolerance shrinks, partnerships feel it first​. In a recent LinkedIn post, social entrepreneur Sarah Evans pointed out something I hadn’t fully considered: tariff headlines are quietly affecting mid-sized companies—and, in turn, their cause partnerships. The issue isn’t just higher costs. It’s rising uncertainty. When margins tighten and volatility increases, companies don’t necessarily stop caring. They become more cautious. And discretionary investments, like cause partnerships, often lag behind core operations. The brain food: macro instability doesn’t just hit budgets—it reshapes risk tolerance. In uncertain environments, partnerships that feel beneficial, predictable, and defensible move forward. The rest stall.