Newsletter: Tomorrow: Who Should You Call About Partnerships? ☎️ ; If You Are Not Top of Mind, You Don’t Grow 🧠 ; Why Your Outreach Needs to be More Weird 🤪
Tomorrow, Thursday, February 26, at 1 pm ET, I’m going live on LinkedIn with the legendary Larry Weil—The Sponsorship Guy—to dig into one deceptively simple question:
When reaching out about a partnership, who should you actually call?
👉🏻 Click "Attend" on the event page to get a reminder
We’ll cover:
• The titles that most often matter
• The ones that sound right—but usually aren’t
• How internal structure matters more than org charts
• And how to align your outreach with the way companies actually think
The conversation will run 20–25 minutes. That’s it.
Between now and then, I’d love your input.
👉 What job title has surprised you?
👉 Have you ever been blocked by the wrong decision-maker?
👉 What role actually controls partnership budgets in your experience?
Reply to this email or comment on LinkedIn—we’ll bring your insights into the conversation.
Because before you refine your pitch, you need proof you’re talking to the right person.
👉🏻 Click "Attend" on the event page to get a reminder
✍️ Partnership Notes
Two partnership insights that matter.
⚖️ The structure of your partnership may matter more than the story. My friend Karen Wu of Perlman & Perlman flagged a Bloomberg Tax analysis of how the new 1% corporate deduction floor in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) could reshape cause marketing payments. Companies may now need to rethink whether dollars are structured as charitable donations, marketing expenses, or a blend of both to preserve tax benefits. That’s not a legal footnote—it’s a partnership signal. As finance teams look more closely at classification and deductibility, the internal friction around deals could rise. The takeaway for partnership pros: understanding how corporate dollars are categorized isn’t back-office trivia. It can influence how much gets approved in the first place.
🏦 Some partnerships aren’t about the money—they’re about the proof. S&T Bank’s “Share a Smile Day” has raised over $14,000 since 2024 for the area's children's hospital. Not huge money. But this is exactly the kind of builder-level partnership nonprofits just getting started should pursue. It’s easy to pitch to community banks. It activates multiple branches. It engages employees. It generates photos, local press, and a clean results story. Most importantly, it gives you visible proof you can take to the next bank—and the next business. Sometimes the goal isn’t a blockbuster check. It’s earning the proof that unlocks the next opportunity.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
Two moves you should steal.
🧠 If you’re not top of mind, you don’t grow. I was reading Mark Phillips’ sharp take on what big brands understand about growth that charities often miss. The lesson for partnership teams is simple: growth doesn’t happen because you’re different. It happens because you’re remembered at the right moment. A CMO gets a new budget. A competitor launches a cause campaign. ESG season rolls around. If your nonprofit doesn’t come to mind then, well, you’re invisible. Partnership growth works more like a billboard than a sales call—you don’t act after seeing it once. You act after seeing it repeatedly. Case studies. Partnership pages. Newsletters. Industry events. Visible results. Stop relying on the big pitch. Build steady proof so you’re the obvious choice when timing opens the door.
💨 The 'general donor' is disappearing—and that changes partnerships. The VeraData 2026 Signals Report predicts that broad, catch-all donor audiences will continue to shrink, while smaller, values-aligned groups will grow stronger. The adage is true: the riches are in the niches. If big, generic audiences are less responsive, then partnerships built only on reach lose power. The smarter move isn’t chasing the biggest brand — it’s partnering with organizations whose communities already care about what you do. In today’s market, alignment beats amplification.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
Find your next adventure.
🤝 Dir., Institutional Philanthropy, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Chicago
🤝 Manager, Strategic Alliances, First Book, Washington, D.C.
🤝 Executive Director, Leveling the Playing Field, Washington, D.C.
🤝 Senior Corporate Partnership Director, Crisis Text Line, Remote
🧠🍌 Brain Food
One thing that's feeding my thinking.
🤪 In an over-optimized world, awkwardness stands out. A new TikTok trend built around intentionally awkward cold calls is taking off—not because it’s smooth, but because it’s real. The discomfort feels human. In a landscape saturated with polished decks, AI-crafted emails, and perfectly sequenced follow-ups, unscripted friction reads as authentic. That’s a useful reminder for partnership pros. As funnels collapse and buyers self-educate earlier, differentiation may not come from tighter scripting, but from signals of genuine engagement. The practical takeaway: leave a little room for humanity. You don't need to engineer every outreach. Sometimes a direct, imperfect conversation builds more trust than the perfect pitch.
