Agenda & Post-Conference WorkShops

Chris and Brad will set the stage for the day!

Before we can reimagine partnership, we have to set the baseline. Chris Baylis and Brad Offman will set the stage for the day and answer the questions:

• What are we doing well?
• What are doing poorly?
• How are we measuring impact?
• What do the current trends say?

The world of consumerism, employee activism and citizen engagement are coming together. Companies are leaning into social and environmental impact like never before, treating it as a business strategy to drive financial and societal benefit. At the same time nonprofits are becoming increasingly enterprising, looking for new ways to sustain and scale their organizations. The problem is that change is happening too slowly and at the margins. Incremental thinking isn’t going to get us there. We all need to think bigger and bolder, tackling problems with 10X solutions. And that necessitates a new way for companies, non-profit and governments to work together, letting go of old thinking and embracing more agile and collaborative approaches.

If you are simply deploying money to support social sector priorities through your partnerships, you are missing a huge opportunity. Partnerships architected instead around your company’s core strengths and capabilities can have a force multiplier effect, drive maximum social change, and inspire and engage your stakeholders. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) has done just this with their innovative MLSE LaunchPad initiative.

In this session, Shelley Mayer, Founder of Ramp Communications, will host an engaging fireside chat with Mike Bartlett, VP of Community Affairs at MLSE along with two of their biggest MLSE LaunchPad partners, Sun Life, and Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities. Learn how these three organizations have worked together for epic collective impact to help youth facing barriers achieve their full potential.

Why have corporations become society’s most important agents of social change? What does this mean for charitable organizations who partner with corporations? In this session, you’ll hear how Impakt helps businesses benefit from solving social problems by co-creating partnerships with community-based organizations and people with lived experience.

Large companies regularly revisit their CSR strategies.  In this session, Catherine Brown of Aviva and Phil Haid of Public Inc. will explore Aviva’s journey from the Aviva Community Fund to its newly minted CSR focus.

Corporations are often accused of emphasizing profits over people. Over the last decade, many have built programs in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to counteract those claims.  The next evolution of CSR is on the way and its focus is on the global workforce and local communities.  Discover the future of CSR and the emerging shift to HSR human social responsibility.

As more and more businesses aim to change their practices and design more sustainable products, this session will highlight how industry and corporate leaders can join forces to help build a more circular economy. In dual keynote form, Stéphane and Jean-Luc will present a case study of how their teams worked together to develop a Keurig® coffee maker made with recycled plastic, and the circular practices, as well as the innovative collaboration model behind it.

Kristine Remedios will discuss how the Inclusion and Impact agendas are intertwined and embedded at the firm, and how KPMG has reframed its impact strategy to align around the Sustainable Development Goals and create high impact partnerships. Kristine will also present a case study on a sponsorship that led to significant employee engagement and deep social impact.

The Partnership Conference is proud to present the first annual Innovative Partnership Award to Brita and ME to WE for their partnership to provide clean water for over 55,400 people for a year.
Join us in recognizing this year’s Innovative Partnership Award winners and learn about their partnership and how they worked together to make it a success.

Join Accelerist CEO & Founder, Brittany Hill, for a riveting discussion on what metrics companies are requiring of their nonprofit partners to measure, report and communicate social, constituent and business impact today. Learn what you need to measure, how to communicate it, and how striking the right balance can not only retain corporate support, but exponentially expand overall revenue.

Startup norms have evolved rapidly through this century’s first couple of decades. In Silicon Valley, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam and other tech hotbeds, young entrepreneurs are building and behaving in ways that would have seemed unfathomable a generation ago. From commoditizing talent and starkly embracing rapid turnover to obsessively and almost exclusively chasing investors instead of clients, today’s young fast founders lead (and sometimes succeed) in ways that make 20th century entrepreneurs cringe and wonder.

This aging founder tried to swim against the clock by creating a much more wholesome tech startup. He built it on a rock of traditional non-unicorn stuff: real revenues, real clients, real long term love for (and among) employees.  It quickly grew into a national brand, a hot story and a unique talent magnet. And then, almost as quickly, it crashed and disappeared.

 The lessons in this story are stark, provocative and – for many – surprising. They fit into five neat and simple buckets: Revenue, clients, investors, employees and friends. And they come straight from the heart of a crushed, disillusioned, passionate and unfiltered founder from the last century.

Community Impact that Works:
How to build and refresh your strategy to create societal and business benefit

This workshop will provide participants with Public’s methodology, best in class examples and hands on activities to help build and refresh strategies that achieve social, environmental and business benefit. The workshop will cover: issue identification and focus, business alignment, developing a north star impact goal, partnership development, program activation, marketing your platform, building buy in with internal and external stakeholders and measurement and evaluation.  

In this session Chris Baylis will take a case study approach to this behind the scenes look at exactly what was required to close over $10 million in sponsorship sales over the last two years.

You will see exactly what sponsors want… and what they don’t. You will learn the formula we used to negotiate each sponsorship deal along with a highly systematic approach that has been tested on the front lines of sponsorship sales.

It’s not sunny days, and citizens are becoming more disillusioned. With personal resources strapped over concerns of affordability and growing divisions across the country, there is an increased focus on how companies and their brands can prove their value.  No one can rest on their past performance in this rapidly changing environment.  New campaigns, communications, and strategies are thus the new norm in Cause Marketing, and expectations of companies and their social purpose have never been higher.  

This presentation provides thought starters into what’s working and not working, the importance of establishing an emotional connection with customers, and how to succeed with Cause Marketing in this evolving environment.

Audience Data: Why it Matters and How to Use it to Grow Your Corporate Partnership Program

Corporate partnerships should not be keeping you up at night. Understand how to build your pipeline and guide your team towards the right partnerships with the support of data.

We will cover:

• What is Audience Data and Brand Consumption data, and how does it apply to my charity
• How to get your database into a state allowing for maximum data
• Whether or not your team is maximizing corporate partnerships opportunities
• How to use data to support sponsorship program

How to maximize your database for revenue growth

Conducting an Internal Audit:
Asset Identification and Analysis

When we reach out to corporate partners, it is critical that we identify what we have to sell. Charities often think their cause is their most valuable asset, when it is actually their audience or their ability to engage employees. In this session, we will walk through the process of how an organization takes a holistic approach to identifying and prioritizing its assets.

The Hero’s Journey: How to Break Down Silos and Triumph over Adversity!

Getting your team on board is hard work! In this thought provoking and engaging session, Cristin will use the Hero’s Journey to describe the exact steps to overcome silos, create buy in, and ‘sell’ your best practice corporate fundraising to your internal team and leadership. This session will include tactics on how to shift internal mindset from resistance to acceptance, cultivate a culture of collaboration and communication and lead the journey into a new era of corporate partnerships for your organization.

So You’ve Got The Meeting, Now What?
The Lost Art of Discovery

Getting that meeting with your corporate prospect can be so exciting, then the fear sets in!

What do I say?

How do I present the base case for sponsorship?

How do I walk away with a next step that is the right next step?

It can be very easy to run down the philanthropy route and focus on cause, but you could be missing and opportunity to raise some serious (unrestricted) cash.

In this session, and using real examples, Mena will discuss how you can use discovery meetings to great effect to discover a company’s goals and how that can lead to real funding for your organization.

Mena will also discuss the difference between corporate philanthropy and true sponsorship, ensure that you are talking to the right people in the company for each, and how you can unlock the true potential of a corporate partnership.

Elevating Your Case for Support

Have you ever wondered if your audience truly understands the impact of your organization’s great work? Through this workshop, you’ll learn how to connect your audience through the outcomes they value. We’ll review an impact dashboard and discuss how to turn your data into a case for support that resonates with your supporters, sponsors, funders, and donors.

What you’ll learn:

• The importance of communicating your impact
• Gain a better understanding of your target audience
• Learn how to build an audience persona
• Better define your value proposition
• Identify the characteristics of a strong impact dashboard
• How to elevate your case for support

Made to Measure Partnerships

Two people walk into an office. Things are tense. Your corporate partner says, “We have to talk. This isn’t working for us.”

Are you prepared for this conversation? More importantly, why is this conversation taking place? If you could start over, what would you do differently? Do you have other partners who might be thinking the same thing?

Everyone wants “strategic partnerships” but Mark Hierlihy asserts that many people don’t know what they really are nor how to build them. He says Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations is building partnerships meet the business objectives of both sides. Such partnerships are a lot of work, but the impact and outcomes are so much greater – and they should include impact measurement and an impact story.

In his session, Mark will explore:

• what is strategic about strategic partnerships
• what the minimum standards are for 2020
• what companies need and what charities should expect.

In the end, it’s about establishing a partnership where everyone on both sides of the partnership “are fully” engaged top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, enterprise-wide and that there is an omnichannel experience that tells a story of impact, and which also leads to evidence of the lasting value created as the result of the partnership.

Great impact reporting is possible! A straight-forward and meaningful approach is within reach. This workshop will illustrate how to design a measurement approach that leads to engaging and compelling reporting.

Employee engagement best practices

It’s a new decade – time to brush off your programs to engage employees in the community! This session will blend data, with a group exercise, and debate to ensure delegates leave with new practices and priorities to ensure their employee engagement programs create value for cause AND business.