Finding your social impact match: from pitch to partnership
Edmund Page, CEO of Xavier Project explains how pitching your charity or social enterprise project can make young professionals feel part of the partnership process.
“BeyondMe is a fantastic initiative and I would whole-heartedly recommend any UK-based or international non-profit organisations to submit ideas for potential BeyondMe teams.”
Now working in their second partnership with a BeyondMe team, Xavier Project work to ensure child refugees in Kenya and Uganda attend school and they run vocational training centres for young refugees in East Africa.
1. Pitch ideas that will immediately fit into your strategic plan
A relationship with a BeyondMe team will only work if both parties are engaged and gain from the partnership. Even if the project isn’t necessarily ‘mission critical’, young professionals in BeyondMe teams will still respond far better if they know you value their input.
So give a bit of context: why is this project important to you?
What inspired you to suggest the project? How will it help your organisation or your beneficiaries? Have you tried something similar before and if so, how can they add value this time?
2. Keep your appeal broad and flexible
Pitching is a process of discovery — for them and for you. The teams of young professionals you pitch to will approach projects differently, have a variety of skill-sets and maybe want competing things from the partnership.
Your pre-pitch phone call is an opportunity for you to get a better understanding of what they might find interesting or indicate specific skill-sets they can build and develop.
You’ll also get a better feel for how you can work together. Some may want to provide institutional support to your leadership team. Others may want one-on-one direct contact with your beneficiaries.
Providing flexible ideas will appeal to this diversity.
(Of course, a little LinkedIn stalking will help here too.)
3. Your partners are part of the process
If you are lucky and pitch well, you will be selected by one of the teams you’ve met. In your first ‘kick-off’ meeting, teams will be excited and have lots of ideas to design and implement your project.
To narrow down this list, they may ask, “what do you really need the most?”.
As long as it stays true to the ideas you used in your pitch, the answer is to go with the one that appeals to them the most. The partnership will be more effective if they are engaged and feel like they have creative input.
4. Keep your focus
The key point is that the team must not split up to work on multiple projects within one BeyondMe team. After offering a broad selection of ideas, make sure that one main idea is chosen. If they are working on one project at a time together, they will be accountable to each other and consolidate their targets without you having to be too hands-on.
5. Maintain a clear channel of communication
Ideally you would not have several channels of communication running with multiple members of the team. Having a point of contact with your team’s founder allows mutual accountability. On a practical note it should also mean that you only have to manage one relationship.
These insights should go alongside other common-sense suggestions, such as keeping regularly in touch and setting clear targets. And don’t be afraid to fully embrace some lingo that you might not be used to in the charity world — if you invest in some patience capital you may find you develop some added-value soft skills and build up a strong resource-bank of deliverables.
