Newsletter: What Proof Do Partners Need? ✔️ ; Corporate Giving is Up, but Here’s the Real Story 📈 ; What’s Your Bottleneck? 🚧
Last week, I wrote about why your best sponsorship salesperson may be another sponsor.
This Thursday, Larry Weil (The Sponsorship Guy) and I are going deeper.
We’ll be talking about social proof—the evidence that shows a prospective partner that other companies have worked with you, gotten results, and would recommend doing it again.
And, yes, we’ll spend plenty of time on my favorite form of social proof: case studies! 😊
But case studies are only part of the picture.
Larry and I will discuss:
What makes a sponsorship case study persuasive—and what most organizations get wrong.
Why the sponsor’s results should be the star of the story, not just your organization’s impact.
How testimonials, partner logos, metrics, and other proof can strengthen your case.
Where to use your social proof so prospective partners actually see it.
How to get started if your organization doesn’t have much proof yet.
Here’s the larger point:
Don’t make prospective sponsors take your word for it.
Show them what you’ve accomplished with other companies—and let those results do some of the selling for you.
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✍️ Partnership Notes
A partnership insight that matters.
📊 Corporate giving is up, but there’s more to the story
New CECP data highlighted by Candid shows that median corporate community investment increased 7% in 2025, from $21.5 million to $23.5 million. But dig a little deeper: among companies tracked in both years, 52% actually decreased their giving. And here’s the number that really caught my attention: eligible charitable contributions represented a median of just 0.39% of pretax profits. That’s significant because beginning in 2026, companies generally won’t be able to deduct charitable contributions until their giving exceeds 1% of taxable income. Read the Candid analysis.
Joe’s Take: Think about that 0.39% number. The typical company in this data gives at a level less than half of the new 1% floor. That could make traditional charitable giving less attractive and give companies another reason to explore sponsorships, qualified business expenses, and other ways of supporting nonprofits. That’s why corporate partnerships may become more important, not less. Companies will still spend money to engage customers, strengthen their brands, motivate employees, and achieve other business goals. The opportunity for nonprofits is to stop thinking only about what companies will give and start demonstrating why partnering with them is worth the investment.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
One move you should steal.
🧱 Your content needs to help buyers get to “yes.”
Most organizations create plenty of content designed to attract attention. But the Content Marketing Institute argues that marketers often neglect the content buyers need later, when they’re actually trying to make a decision. That matters because buying decisions increasingly involve multiple people—and your biggest supporter may have to convince everyone else without you in the room.
Joe’s Take: Think about what happens after a great meeting with a corporate prospect. Your contact loves the partnership. Great! Now they have to sell it to their boss, marketing, HR, finance, legal, and maybe a few other people you’ve never met. Your corporate contact isn’t just a prospect. They’re potentially your salesperson inside the company. So give them something worth selling: a strong case study, partner testimonial, impact data, or a simple one-pager showing what you’ve accomplished for other companies. Partnership proof isn’t just about convincing the person sitting across the table from you. It’s about helping that person convince everyone who isn’t.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
Find your next adventure.
🤝 Associate Director of Corporate Partnerships, Gift of Life Marrow Registry, Boca Raton, FL
🤝 Director, Corporate Partnerships, National MS Society, Charlotte, NC
🧠🍌 Brain Food
One thing that is feeding my thinking.
🚧 What’s your bottleneck?
Founder Nathan Barry has a useful way to think about growth: every system has a constraint that limits how much it can produce. And here’s the counterintuitive part: improving everything except the bottleneck may actually make things worse. Barry shares examples from Henry Ford and Spanx, along with one from Kit’s own sponsorship program.
Joe’s Take: We tend to assume progress means doing more. More prospects. More meetings. More content. More partners. But before you add anything, ask yourself: What’s actually holding us back? If your offer stinks, more prospecting won’t help. If you can’t deliver a great partnership, adding more partners may make things worse. If nobody knows about your successes, another unpublished success story won’t solve that problem either. Find the constraint that’s limiting your results and put your energy there. Fix the bottleneck—and then go looking for the next one.
