Nonprofit Partnerships
Businesses need new customers, nonprofits need new revenue. I play matchmaker, architecting brand partnerships that deliver dynamic value.
If experiences help you connect, strategic partnerships help cast a wider net. It’s been said “businesses need to think more like nonprofits, and nonprofits need to think more like businesses”. The answer is business nonprofit partnerships.
Identify
There’s power in pairs, and effective business nonprofit partnerships begin with identifying a strategic match for your business or nonprofit. Having built a successful business, nonprofit, and strategic partnerships division of an industry-leading organization, we see the unseen synergies and connectivity that brings the partnership to life for both parties.
Identify
There’s power in pairs, and effective business nonprofit partnerships begin with identifying a strategic match for your business or nonprofit. Having built a successful business, nonprofit, and strategic partnerships division of an industry-leading organization, we see the unseen synergies and connectivity that brings the partnership to life for both parties.
Architect
Knowing where business nonprofit intersections exist and collide, we design a strategic partnerships architecture that yields a dynamic, impactful partnership between both parties. Helping you reach unreachable customers, deliver new revenue verticals, create exciting new product lines, and build loyal brand advocates, it is a strategy that grows brands with passionate fans. This extends beyond cause marketing and traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR). This dives deeper and reaches further, and discovers a common currency that solves problems and betters lives and communities.
Architect
Knowing where business nonprofit intersections exist and collide, we design a strategic partnerships architecture that yields a dynamic, impactful partnership between both parties. Helping you reach unreachable customers, deliver new revenue verticals, create exciting new product lines, and build loyal brand advocates, it is a strategy that grows brands with passionate fans. This extends beyond cause marketing and traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR). This dives deeper and reaches further, and discovers a common currency that solves problems and betters lives and communities.
Execute
Once the match is made and plan in place, it’s time to build the bridge that brings it all together. With the Art of Impact as your guide, we construct and implement the plan with experiential platforms that maximize engagement amongst Gen Z and millennial audiences, yielding new customers and revenue verticals. Combining ROI with AOI, successful business nonprofit partnerships share equally in each others common currency, and the result is dynamic, exponential value that you will find additive to your brand and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) plan.
Execute
Once the match is made and plan in place, it’s time to build the bridge that brings it all together. With the Art of Impact as your guide, we construct and implement the plan with experiential platforms that maximize engagement amongst Gen Z and millennial audiences, yielding new customers and revenue verticals. Combining ROI with AOI, successful business nonprofit partnerships share equally in each others common currency, and the result is dynamic, exponential value that you will find additive to your brand and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) plan.
Case Studies
Successful business nonprofit brand partnerships are about designing an enduring relationship that delivers dynamic, exponential value to both parties. With the business nonprofit partnerships below, we focus on delivering a short-term campaign with a lasting framework to helps each party reach new customers and achieve new revenue verticals.
Spirits
Bourbon Cares
Mission:
Introduce 30,000 new customers to Kentucky Bourbon Trail brands, while providing a new revenue vertical for the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust to protect critical Kentucky wildlands.
Strategy:
Design an engaging brand activation that combines bourbon brands with national touring bands inside the Forecastle Festival. Design a “turn-of-the-century rickhouse meets prohibition-era speakeasy” and invite bands to sample single-barrel selections from their favorite bourbon brands. Pair Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Old Forester, Heaven Hill and Wild Turkey with artists like Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Spoon, and more, with proceeds going to purchase critical watersheds and old-growth forests in Eastern Kentucky.
Results:
The participating brands received a powerful PR and marketing alignment with popular national artists, new customers and retail sales (at no cost, other than allocating a single-barrel to the program, which the concessionaire paid for). Kentucky Natural Lands Trust raises thousands to protect critical watersheds and wildlands corridors. For the festival, an impactful experiential marketing activation is born, which grows from 900 to 15,000 square ft, and is hailed as “Bourbon’s Most Important Festival” by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Fred Minnick.
Bourbon Cares
Spirits
Bourbon Cares
Mission:
Introduce 30,000 new customers to Kentucky Bourbon Trail brands, while providing a new revenue vertical for the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust to protect critical Kentucky wildlands.
Strategy:
Design an engaging brand activation that combines bourbon brands with national touring bands inside the Forecastle Festival. Design a “turn-of-the-century rickhouse meets prohibition-era speakeasy” and invite bands to sample single-barrel selections from their favorite bourbon brands. Pair Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Old Forester, Heaven Hill and Wild Turkey with artists like Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Spoon, and more, with proceeds going to purchase critical watersheds and old-growth forests in Eastern Kentucky.
Results:
The participating brands received a powerful PR and marketing alignment with popular national artists, new customers and retail sales (at no cost, other than allocating a single-barrel to the program, which the concessionaire paid for). Kentucky Natural Lands Trust raises thousands to protect critical watersheds and wildlands corridors. For the festival, an impactful experiential marketing activation is born, which grows from 900 to 15,000 square ft, and is hailed as “Bourbon’s Most Important Festival” by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Fred Minnick.
Bourbon Cares
Beer
Sierra Nevada
Mission:
Inspired by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, craft a new product line that protects the world’s most breathtaking environments.
Strategy:
Pair Sierra Nevada with The Forecastle Foundation. Under the guidance of Steve Grossman (brother of Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman) craft a limited-edition, community-centric expression with a powerful giveback arm. Prior to product launch, design a multi-tiered, on and off-premise PR, marketing and retail strategy to build anticipation for the corporate partnership. Following the campaign, debut the product before 400 media outlets and 70,000 fans at Forecastle Festival, its unique, collaborative story told at each serving location.
Results:
The experiential marketing campaign rewards Sierra Nevada and its key accounts with exclusive product, earned media, new customers, sales and on-site engagements with an audience it may not have reached otherwise. For the Foundation, the campaign raised thousands to protect critical wildlife habitats from Argentina to Indonesia, Belize to Florida.
Chantey Session IPA
Beer
Sierra Nevada
Mission:
Inspired by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, craft a new product line that protects the world’s most breathtaking environments.
Results:
The experiential marketing campaign rewards Sierra Nevada and its key accounts with exclusive product, earned media, new customers, sales and on-site engagements with an audience it may not have reached otherwise. For the Foundation, the campaign raised thousands to protect critical wildlife habitats from Argentina to Indonesia, Belize to Florida.
Strategy:
Pair Sierra Nevada with The Forecastle Foundation. Under the guidance of Steve Grossman (brother of Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman) craft a limited-edition, community-centric expression with a powerful giveback arm. Prior to product launch, design a multi-tiered, on and off-premise PR, marketing and retail strategy to build anticipation for the corporate partnership. Following the campaign, debut the product before 400 media outlets and 70,000 fans at Forecastle Festival, its unique, collaborative story told at each serving location.
Chantey IPA
Natural Products
Whole Foods & Heine Brothers
Mission:
Develop a new coffee blend that attracts new customers to Whole Foods and Heine Brothers, while supporting indigenous Central American communities while protecting highly-threatened, biodiversity habitats in Kentucky.
Strategy:
Pair national retailer Whole Foods with local retailer Heine Brothers on a unique, proprietary, nonprofit give back blend titled “Kentucky Dream.”. Leverage Heine Brother’s extensive grower relationships in Central America, while partnering with Whole Foods experiential marketing team to maximum awareness of the philanthropic corporate partnership. Launch a targeted PR & MKTG campaign across retail and non-profit channels to share the story and reach new customers in the hypercompetitive coffee and grocery segments.
Results:
Thousands of new customers patronize Whole Foods following a press conference announcing the corporate partnership and its local/global focus. For independent coffee purveyor Heine Brothers Coffee, a new level of customer engagement, reinforcing its longstanding commitment to the communities in which it operates, keeping its product line fresh and relevant, and loyal customers invigorated. For the Forecastle Foundation, a new revenue stream to protect Kentucky’s Green River and Pine Mountain Wildlands Corridor.
Kentucky Dreams
Natural Products
Whole Foods & Heine Brothers
Mission:
Develop a new coffee blend that attracts new customers to Whole Foods and Heine Brothers, while supporting indigenous Central American communities while protecting highly-threatened, biodiversity habitats in Kentucky.
Strategy:
Pair national retailer Whole Foods with local retailer Heine Brothers on a unique, proprietary, nonprofit give back blend titled “Kentucky Dream.”. Leverage Heine Brother’s extensive grower relationships in Central America, while partnering with Whole Foods experiential marketing team to maximum awareness of the philanthropic corporate partnership. Launch a targeted PR & MKTG campaign across retail and non-profit channels to share the story and reach new customers in the hypercompetitive coffee and grocery segments.
Results:
Thousands of new customers patronize Whole Foods following a press conference announcing the corporate partnership and its local/global focus. For independent coffee purveyor Heine Brothers Coffee, a new level of customer engagement, reinforcing its longstanding commitment to the communities in which it operates, keeping its product line fresh and relevant, and loyal customers invigorated. For the Forecastle Foundation, a new revenue stream to protect Kentucky’s Green River and Pine Mountain Wildlands Corridor.
Kentucky Dreams
Why it works:
Gen Z and Millennials
Research shows millennials and Gen Z are strongly motivated to support brands who are driven by purpose and live their purpose. This goes beyond thinking of successful corporate charity partnerships as one-dimensional, transactional check writing. This is about building an enduring, dynamic relationship that benefits both parties on multiple levels.
Bigger than Branding
Smile like you mean it. If you want customers to wear your brand like a badge, think past your brand. Solve a problem. Improve a life. Enhance a community. Successful corporate partnerships with nonprofits can accomplish this and so much more.
Experience Matters
For nearly twenty years, I designed corporate partnerships with nonprofits seeking an impactful integration into my homegrown Forecastle Festival. Strategically tied to priorities of each company, I know what it takes to artfully architect successful brand partnerships.
Build the Bridge
I can help you bridge the business nonprofit divide, learning to identify, design, and deploy impactful business nonprofit partnerships that extend beyond cause marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to create new revenue verticals, PR and MKTG value, new customer segments, broadened networks and deeper resources.
"JK's thoughtfulness in which he designs and combines brands with philanthropic interests allows for a deep, meaningful interaction. It serves as a brand building catalyst, a pathway to success. Once you engage with his ideas, you tend to get a lot of bang for the proverbial buck and ultimately, that is what helps brands grow."
:: Campbell Brown, President of Old Forester