I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands from which I join you, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I also extend my respect and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where you are all based as well. 

I’m Christina Chiam, Creative Partnerships State Manager for New South Wales and ACT, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to Creative Partnerships’ third instalment of the Knowledge Series webinars. Over the next eight weeks, the series will present insights and tools to build your arts fundraising expertise. 

In two weeks, we’ll hear from Amy Barrett-Lennard, the former Director of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, who will share her experience and tips for growing a successful philanthropic program at a company with limited resources, as I’m sure everyone on here can identify with. This will be followed by another Tammy Zonker Zinger. This time, Tammy examines how we can create a case for support that will turn your doubters into donors. She’ll be joined by another US-based fundraising guru, Tom Ahern. The series concludes with some data fun, where we’ll examine the value of fundraising using culture segments, a powerful psychographic profiling system. That session will be conducted by UK-based consultancy Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. 

As always, bookings for any of those sessions can be made on the Creative Partnerships website. Today is a workshop-style webinar. I encourage you to remain on mute during the main presentations, but please come off mute and have your cameras on for the breakout sessions. That’s a great chance for you to brainstorm and meet with some of your fellow attendees. As well as small group discussions, our wonderful team will be using a virtual polling program, so please have your mobile phones ready. I’m sure you’re familiar with how that works, but the team will explain. 

There’ll be time for questions at the end. Type your questions in the chat box as we go and then we’ll get to them as we can. For any technical issues, please direct message my colleagues at the Creative Partnerships Zoom box. We’re still novices apparently. A reminder that we are recording today’s presentation component, but not the breakout sessions. They’ll be offline. 

Down to business. We’re thrilled to be joined once again by the fabulous team at Stellar Partnerships, Linda Garnett and Sharon Dann. Stellar Partnerships, for those of you who don’t know, is a specialist consultancy building sustainable and profitable partnerships between corporates and nonprofits. Their experience encompasses senior leadership, strategic management, major gifts, and trusts and foundations, both in Australia and abroad. 

We first met Linda and Sharon with the inaugural Knowledge Series, where they shared current partnership trends and set the scene for a successful partnerships program model. We’re building on that foundation today by delving deeper into a key aspect of successful partnerships: understanding business needs for a solutions-based approach. I encourage anyone who didn’t participate in the first webinar to watch that recording another time, as these two sessions will complement each other. 

With over 30 years’ experience between them, I know we’re in very good hands. Please join me in welcoming Sharon and Linda. Over to you. 

It’s a delight to be with you here on this slightly rainy Melbourne day on Bunurong Country of the Kulin Nation. Thank you so much for joining us. If you are able to put your video on, that’s great because we love seeing your faces, and we’ll be asking you to put hands up and engage. Please have your mobile phones to hand because we will use them as well. 

Put them on mute for a little while, but we’ll give you a cue and you’ll be able to use them later. 

During this session, as Christina said, we’ll talk about emerging trends. So much has changed in a short space of time. Can I have a show of hands? Has your life changed over the last three years? Has something significant happened to you, either personally or professionally? Has life involved a lot of change over the last couple of years? I think for everyone it has, and it’s certainly the case for corporate partnerships. This is a great opportunity for us to talk to you about what’s emerging now and about moving away from an old-style sponsorship model towards solutions that are going to make you really successful. 

Over this session, we will have opportunities for breakout groups and discussions, so you can share your learnings and challenges and hopefully come to some great ideas and insights together. First, I wanted to give you a perspective on what’s in the heads of corporates at the moment and what’s happening on the other side. 

You’ve probably heard a range of terms about what is going on in social responsibility. It becomes a bit of an alphabet or acronym soup. You would have heard about CSR, shared value, shared purpose and ESG, but what are they, how do they fit together, and why are they relevant to you? 

I wanted to spend a minute giving you the background of what’s happening in corporate land so you can prepare yourself and be more literate about the latest situation. Corporate philanthropy is something you’ll all be familiar with. It’s very much around corporates making profits and making donations. You might possibly have applied for grants or sponsorship gifts as well. That’s still part of the mix. It’s a useful part of the mix. It’s where corporate social responsibility started. 

CSR evolved into more of a sense of moral obligation from a corporate that is making substantial profits and feels like it should give something back to the community. Then, about a couple of decades ago, Michael Porter and his research crew came up with the term shared value. Shared value refers to a win-win. A corporate offers support, whether financial or otherwise. You exchange value. You provide things that are valuable to them. Everyone does win, but it is almost a transaction, an exchange of value, and possibly less about relationship. 

Over the last decade, there has been a trend towards social purpose. You’ll see on websites that corporates have their vision, mission and sense of who they are and what business they are in. Social purpose is now coming to the fore around building a narrative about the good they do in society, not just what they do. For example, they might provide financial products, insurance or banking, but social purpose is about the impact they want to have. Social purpose creates an opportunity for all of you to be part of informing that. 

Something that you may have tripped over, or may be starting to field questions about from your corporate partners, is ESG, which is environment, social and governance. This has evolved out of the investor community, including the big international fund managers that make investments in corporates across the world. 

Typically, if you’re an investment manager, you try to balance your risk. You’ll have some investments in one category balanced with others that might not be performing as well in another category. But when you get very big and have a broad range of investments, you can’t balance them out in the same way. The risk is not so much that one company or another fails, but that the whole system fails. The planet fails. ESG started with the investor community thinking about how to manage risk and ensure that the whole system doesn’t fall down. It is now starting to be built into metrics for the largest listed companies. 

It is also starting to filter down to the next level because if the big companies have a strong story about what they’re doing for the planet, the next level down needs to compete as well. The best way to think about more traditional CSR versus ESG is that CSR is about what an organisation does with its profits, and ESG is more about how it made those profits in the first place. Did it make them in a way that did not degrade the natural environment, exploit the community, exploit its staff, or result from poor governance or unethical practices? 

You’ll find this alphabet soup out there when you speak to corporates, and everyone is at a different part of the spectrum. That’s not a bad thing. It is important for you to understand where they are on that spectrum because there’s no sense trying to sell them a Ferrari when they are really at the scooter stage, or they’ve barely got their driving licence. 

Some corporates are still on the left of the spectrum, where they are driven by creating profit. They may be doing some corporate philanthropy or low-level sponsorship, but they are also fielding difficult questions from their customers, staff and community. They are starting to think about how to respond. They respond with what we call buying good. They buy goodwill with charity partnerships, sponsorships and staff volunteering. Often, these are fairly ad hoc. They do not get a lot of return on investment out of it, but it is a response to those awkward questions. 

That is where, for all of you, you can be gathering philanthropic partnerships and ad hoc donations. That is all useful, especially for smaller corporates that are not quite ready to save the world yet. 

Then a corporate comes under pressure from its customers to do more. The business also wants to expand. Corporates start to think, let’s not just buy good, let’s be good. Internally, they ask what changes they need to make. That might be around diversity, equity and inclusion, hiring practices, or making more thoughtful decisions about environmental impact or supply chain. They start on that and they need help. No one can do it by themselves. They need your expertise and your input. 

Then there is competitive pressure. What is everyone else in the sector doing? Are they doing better than us? Are they stretching the envelope a little bit more? Do they have a social purpose narrative? Do they have a story to tell? Ultimately, the best and more ambitious corporates respond to community pressure by creating high-value and entrenched partnerships. These are the relationships you would love to have. They become multi-year relationships and they are hard to shake. The transformational impact for both your community and the business is much greater. 

When you are having conversations with corporates, you need to figure out where they are on this spectrum and tailor your solutions to them. It will not be one-size-fits-all. You need to ask the right questions to figure out where they are. 

Because ESG is so important right now, and so top of mind for companies, there is a big imperative for corporates to get it right. It saves them money, attracts investors, keeps regulators off their backs, creates a much stronger value proposition for employees, and helps deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are trying to set an agenda for a better planet and a better society for all of us. 

It does matter. What you need to figure out is where they are on that spectrum and how you can be part of the solution, because they do need your help. 

To get you thinking about solutions, not just sponsorships or packages, let’s talk about some of the problems corporates have. If you are going to think about solutions to their problems, you need to understand what those problems are. 

Our world has changed dramatically over the last few years. It has changed dramatically for corporates as well. With some of these things, they do not know the answers. They are still working through it. You may have heard of a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex. Just like we do not know all the answers, corporates do not know all the answers either. Here are some of the issues your corporates are facing. 

Economic uncertainty. Who knows whether we are going into a recession or not? We have been through the ups and downs of COVID and supply chain issues. Has anybody tried to buy a new car at the moment? You all remember how much an iceberg lettuce was a few months ago. There are massive supply chain issues for corporates at the moment. 

Carbon offsetting is another issue. Whether companies go carbon neutral or carbon zero, they are trying to figure that out before it is mandated. As Linda has already spoken about, they are also thinking about ESG, CSR and social purpose. Their competitors are doing something, so they feel they need to do something too. 

The Modern Slavery Act has also come in, and they need to make sure they have a policy on that. In terms of marketing, brand loyalty and acquisition costs, cookies are about to go. How are they going to manage some of their digital online advertising? 

The cycle of distrust is another issue. Edelman produces a report each year about the state of the world. It is a comprehensive report. This year they called it the cycle of distrust because people do not believe what governments are saying or what the media is saying. Do people believe what a corporate is saying as well? 

There is also the war for attention. I do not even know how many pieces of advertising we see now, but how many emails have you had today? How does a company get a message through to you? 

Cancel culture is another issue. Some interesting examples came out of the war in Ukraine. Lots of companies pulled out of Russia immediately, but that was not the case for all of them. McDonald’s was one that was slow to react. On social media, people were immediately saying, “Let’s boycott Macca’s because they haven’t pulled out of Russia.” Cancel culture is very real for them. 

Then there are consumer expectations. We all want to make sure we are buying products that come from ethically sourced places, that are not destroying the planet, and that companies are not treating their employees badly. Consumers expect businesses to be doing the right thing. Otherwise, they will be found out. It only takes one whistleblower to go onto social media, and that can really damage the reputation of a business. 

Then we have the employee side of things. You’ve heard of the great resignation that was happening at the end of COVID and is probably still happening. I do not know if your LinkedIn feed is like this, but mine is full of people saying, “I’ve got a new job.” It is hard for a company to keep hold of its talent right now. They need to have strong employee engagement and a strong employee value proposition because otherwise they are not going to attract that talent. If they do not attract that talent, they are not able to innovate or keep up with their competitors. It is a real problem for businesses. 

Then there is diversity, equity and inclusion. If companies are working on ESG, or even if they are not, there is an expectation that there are women on boards and that they are supporting the LGBTQI community. There are a lot of pressures. It is hard to do business right now. When you are thinking about your partnerships, if you are going to sell a solution, you need to understand some of the issues that businesses are facing, because you may be a solution to these things. 

What we wanted to share with you for inspiration is how a couple of arts and cultural organisations have chosen to sell solutions. It may be badged as sponsorship, but they are the solution to someone’s problem. 

Full recognition to the team from Sydney Film Festival for their work with Mountain Goat Ale. Mountain Goat started in Victoria and had a particular challenge: how do we find a new audience and establish ourselves in a new location? Sydney was a valuable market, and the Sydney Film Festival team were smart and did their research because they were looking for a beer sponsor. Not any old beer sponsor. They wanted something that fitted and aligned with their values, and they alighted on Mountain Goat. 

The relationship with Mountain Goat solved a particular problem for Mountain Goat. They needed venues. They needed new audiences. They needed a physical place where they could demonstrate, sample and reach new customers. By aligning with Sydney Film Festival and having pop-ups at venues and a presence at screenings, it was a perfect fit for solving the problem of how to enter a new market when the audience did not know them and they did not know the audience. It was a great partnership. The operational challenges for Mountain Goat were exactly where Sydney Film Festival could be the solution. 

Another one that I think you’ll be inspired by is the Smartphone Flick Fest, which is hard to say, so they call it SF3. This is about inspiring the next generation of filmmakers using smartphones, which are accessible and popular, especially with young people. 

Dolby is a name you’ve probably heard if you are in the performing arts. They have a long engagement with arts and cultural events. You probably use them as a supplier in some way. Dolby had a particular challenge. It needed a younger audience. It had a very established, mature audience but did not have a youth audience. It also had a gap in its response to Indigenous issues, around diversity, inclusion and equity. They had a reconciliation action plan, but not much else. 

The partnership with SF3 was perfect because SF3 had an inaugural First Nations Filmmaker Award. Dolby came on board to support that, offer prizes, including a smartphone and a tablet, and offer mentorships and access for Indigenous filmmakers to other Indigenous media identities, including people like Stan Grant and Wayne Blair. The image shown here is from the winning film. The filmmaker created a film around the circumstances of the George Floyd incident called 8 Minutes 46 Seconds. 

You can see how SF3 played to the question of how to help solve problems in the business and be part of the solution while also getting value for themselves. As a small enterprise on a shoestring budget, they needed broad-based support for the festival. Again, they were selling solutions. 

Now we want you to think about this. It is time to get your smartphone out. We want you to think about which corporate problems you can help solve. If you have not done this before, put your smartphone up and scan the QR code. Click on the Menti link that it takes you to, and it will take you to a series of questions. What we want you to do is use the sliding scale to show where you are at. 

As long as you can scan this with Menti, it is anonymous. We do not know which answers you put in, so do not worry. Answer as truthfully as you can, because we do not get to see who puts in which answer. I will share the results as they come through. 

Do you want to stop sharing, Linda? I’ll share the results. You can see the results coming through. We have some strong results here. We have five who have done it. Now we have 10, 11. 

Some of these may be stronger for you than others, and that will come naturally to your organisation. We have 20 results now. You can see where the average of these answers sits. Can you help with the employee value proposition? You can. Can you help with brand awareness and loyalty? You may be a small organisation and think they have huge budgets, but your content will be incredible. It will be content they do not have access to, which will help them with awareness and loyalty. The same goes for acquisition and engagement. 

Can you help them with CSR and ESG? That is a strong answer from most of you. Diversity, equity and inclusion. I am glad to see that is strong, because it is definitely one of the strengths. Then there is making a positive impact on the community. These are the things corporates are looking for from arts organisations. 

We want you to think about these things because my answer to all of them is that you are the solution. Every single one of you is the solution to the questions we have put there. Sharon, if you want to stop sharing the Menti screen, we’ll come back to that a little bit later and I’ll go back to sharing mine. 

We want to encourage you to think about how you are leveraging all the things you do really well and all the assets you have. You are in industries that are creative, inspiring and thoughtful. You have a lot to offer across areas like diversity, equity and inclusion. 

I was speaking in the last session with a lovely organisation called Sensorium Theatre in WA that is quite unique. It creates shows for young audiences with disability, and they were exploring how they could get corporates and corporate audiences involved and experience it in a different way as well. 

In terms of people engagement, values, content and geography, there is a lovely organisation in Sydney based just outside the west called Milk Crate Theatre. It is run on a shoestring and has an interesting partnership with its local Commonwealth Bank. 

Just before COVID, Commonwealth Bank built beautiful, pristine new offices and retail space, only for it to close down about a month later. They have been struggling for an incentive to get people physically back into the building. For Milk Crate Theatre, the staff engagement and participation activities they can offer are incentivising people back into the office and working face to face in teams again. Again, that is a great solution to a particular problem. 

We want you to think about how to leverage your strengths, what you do really well, what you do naturally even without thinking, and the assets you have. Think about how you might create solutions and what you might offer to a corporate that is attractive to them in the areas of marketing, operations and people. 

Welcome back. I hope you had some good conversations in your rooms. I really appreciate you spending the time and getting to know a few new friends. I’d love to hear from you about the solutions you came up with, the areas where you felt more confident in providing solutions, and maybe others where you think that is a struggle or maybe not right for your organisation. 

I would love to spend a few minutes hearing from you. Please feel free to put this in the chat box if you prefer, but I would love it if you wanted to unmute and share some of the discussions you were having in your breakout group about solutions. Do not be shy. I think some of you are having technical problems, so thank you for persevering if you have sound or connection issues. 

What about the conversations you were having in your room as well? Who else would like to unmute? I think Anthony has just commented. Anthony, tell us about that. Unmute and tell us. 

I was just sharing where I work with Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative to re-establish Black Books, an Aboriginal publishing arm and literary development service. The aim is to share stories, amplify voices and tell the truth of Aboriginal people, particularly with a strong focus as we emerge in New South Wales, but also nationally. 

We identify in our workplace the growing level of interest we see in acknowledgements of Country, on websites, and in people having reconciliation plans. What is really important is the relationships. It is not a box to tick. It is a commitment to change at a very personal level, but also at a structural level, whether that is the corporate structure, the social structure or the community structures that come with it. 

As an organisation, we are recognised as the oldest continuously operating Aboriginal organisation in the country, set up in 1957 and celebrating 65 years this year. That is 10 years before the referendum that acknowledged Aboriginal people in this country. 

Tranby has a strong education focus and delivers cultural programs. Part of our offering is for people to meet Aboriginal people, share stories and hear stories. We feel we are in a good place. Like all of us coming out of COVID and all the changes we need to identify, we also need to embrace the opportunities. 

We are shifting forward and starting to identify what our offering is, whether to philanthropy or corporates. We are also learning to say no to some corporates. We get approached by a lot of corporates who want to come out for an afternoon, bring 25 people and volunteer for four hours. That can be a drain on our organisation. Our wonderful CEO does not like saying no because it might lead to something. I am saying, let’s cost it out on the chance that it might go somewhere. We are having a shift in our thinking and practice around that as well. 

Don’t you just love that? “I’ve got 80 people who are going to land on your desk at 9.00 tomorrow morning. Have you got something?” That is a common problem. Thank you so much for sharing that. What an amazing amount of expertise, credibility and authority you have built up over such a long time. I can see so many opportunities for you to be the solution for a corporate, not only the ones trying to do the right thing. Maybe they have gone to the trouble of a reconciliation action plan, but they are a bit stuck about what to do next. 

Internally, they want to do the right thing. Externally, they want to communicate in a way that is authentic and respectful, and they are terrified of getting it wrong. I can see so many ways in which you are the solution, both for internal staff development and staff value proposition, and outwardly with marketing and customers. Whether it is fee-for-service or a partnership, there are lots of great opportunities. Hopefully, a Voice in the Constitution would be another feather in your cap as well. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is a great example. 

Would anyone else like to share an example that they discussed within their breakout room? 

We have had some people share their thoughts in the chat box about their strengths and how they may be a solution to some of those corporate issues. Ally and Alan both shared their strengths. Ally, alignment with a youth audience is a terrific one. I do not know if you want to unmute and say a little bit more, but that is such a hard audience for most corporates to reach. They really struggle with that because young people consume messages across so many different platforms. Unlike an old crusty like me who still reads newspapers and watches free-to-air TV, young people are not doing any of that. 

For our organisation, we are pretty new, but we are focused on our region because there is not a lot going on in the cultural sector here. There are no resources or infrastructure. The way we see it is that we can partner with people to engage audiences. We are very opportunistic in the way we consume arts and culture. Our events will be tailored as experiences that engage audiences by pairing disciplines and partnering with youth organisations. We are in a very diverse region. 

To do that, we are looking at ways to align with our audience. There are many youth audiences in this region. They have organisations that do a lot of partnering. I am going blank. 

I do not want to put you on the spot. I think you have a unique opportunity to connect to a youth audience. You already have a youth audience, and you also have something that is engaging for a youth audience. A lot of corporate content is boring and dull, and much as they try to make it more interesting, you are the sizzle. You are the interest and the inspiration as well. 

If you are in a particular area, rural or regional, or a particular location, you have a deep connection to the community. That is valuable because you have credibility and trust with them. Thank you so much for being brave enough to share that. 

Alan from Umbrella Studio also mentioned social connection for employees. We have all been so locked down over recent years. We do crave seeing each other and having those connections. Do you want to add to that, Alan? 

I think social connection is important. Someone from our group also mentioned that there might be organisations or companies now that are totally working from home and do not have a chance to get together because they may not have an office. That would be even more important for them. I also noted that sometimes we have important people coming to our exhibition openings. We are a gallery here, and corporates might want access to them. 

Access to your key people and key supporters is important. Thank you, Alan. That is a great idea. 

I know Marisa also said that you have a youth audience and content that you can build on. 

We do. We are a youth circus based in Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales. We do have some content and are building that profile now. We just had a big circus festival. I wanted to ask, other than online content opportunities, and there are some issues around that because our young people are a bit younger, predominantly under 16, and other than corporates coming in and doing a day in the circus catching each other, I wanted to hear any other ideas people have around connecting with that youth audience in a more sustainable and meaningful way. 

For corporates to engage with that audience, it is often best to engage with the audience where they are. That might be community activations, schools or specific events. It can be face to face as well as online, so it will probably be a mix given the world we are in at the moment. It could be online or live forums, like town hall-style Q&As. I’m happy to chat to you offline if you want to talk about other ideas, but it is great that you have that audience and have started to build out some ideas. 

One of the things we noticed in our group was that the solutions participants brought came from two places. Some came from the external offering of the art, the experience, the platform and what you do as an organisation. The other side was how you do it: how you operate as a business and how that could benefit another organisation on the same trajectory as you. 

How do you build an inclusivity plan together or a RAP plan together? How do you execute it together? What about the people you employ? Think about the external and internal offerings of your company. Do not ignore how you operate as a business and what value and benefit that could provide to partners as well. 

That is a great insight, because what we hear from corporates all the time is that they need expertise. They need your expertise because it is stuff they do not know. You can tell them how to do it in a way that is meaningful, respectful and engaging. I encourage everyone not just to think about what you do, but how you do it and the expertise that sits behind how you do it. 

For example, Sensorium Theatre has expertise in how it works with young audiences with disability, and how to be inclusive. You have all come up with some strong organisational strengths. Every business is different, just as every organisation is different, and each business will be on a different trajectory. 

The easiest thing you can do is work out whether they have a problem that your solution can help with. You find out about that problem by asking strong questions. On the screen there is a gap analysis. The easiest way to think about a gap analysis is to think about your KPI. Your KPI for the year is your need. It is where you want to get to. Where you are right now is your current state. What you need is what you must do to achieve that KPI. 

A company is no different. It will have ambitions it wants to achieve and issues it needs to overcome. When you are asking questions, think about two things. First, what are the pain points in the business? What things are going wrong? How are they trying to fix those problems at the moment? Where are they at in fixing those problems? How else are they trying to fix those problems? 

Second, think about their ambition. What are their ambitions? What are their strategic plans? Where are they right now in achieving those plans? Are they on track or behind? How else are they trying to achieve those ambitions? If you can think about pain points and ambitions when you are asking questions in that meeting, that will help you identify where you can add value. 

Pain points are great because if something is an urgent problem in a business, they generally have a little more money to put towards it. If an ambition is something the CEO is driving and everyone is focused on it, they will also have money to put towards that. Think about pain points and ambitions. 

I want you all to grab a piece of paper and a pen, because I am going to give you a structure for uncovering those pain points and ambitions, and for asking strong questions in your meetings so you can find out what their issues are and how you can help solve them. 

This is what we call our discovery questions. Down the side of your paper, write DISCOVERY. I am going to go through each of these points with you, so that next time you are in a meeting, I would love you to write DISCOVERY in the back of your notebook. That way, you can remember what each letter stands for and make sure you do not leave the meeting thinking, “I forgot to ask that question.” 

D is for decision maker. You need to know if you are speaking to the right person. You need to qualify them and understand how much money they have, or whether a decision needs to go to a board. You do not want to ask someone straight out, “Can you make a decision on this? Are you powerful enough? Are you influential enough?” 

The way I like to ask that question is, “What is the decision-making process within your organisation?” That helps you find out whether they have sign-off rights, whether it needs to go up the chain, or whether it needs to go to a board. The other question, especially if you have a multifaceted partnership, is, “Who else should we involve in these conversations?” 

You may be speaking to a marketing manager, but if you have talked about disengaged employees or employee engagement, you may also want someone from the employee team, such as the HR person, involved. 

I is for important. You need to ask and find out what is important to that business right now. What are their main priorities? What are the business drivers? What is the business focusing on? This is where I want you to think about pain points and ambitions. 

You might ask, “How is the team going?” “How is the business going?” “What goals have you got for the year?” “How are you going towards achieving those plans?” “I saw your latest campaign. How did that go?” “What has the feedback been?” That helps you find out what is going well in the business and what is not going well. Most importantly, it helps you understand what is important to that business right now and what its priority is. 

S is for squeaky wheel. You may have heard the expression, “It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.” Every organisation will have a squeaky wheel. Think about your own organisations now. A squeaky wheel will often be something that is not written on paper. You will not find it in a strategic plan, but it is a real bugbear. 

Simply ask, “What is the squeaky wheel within your organisation at the moment?” “What is getting the attention of your executive?” You will be amazed by what people will tell you. It is a wonderful question. It helps you find out the biggest challenges within that business and how you may be a solution to some of those challenges. 

C is for capacity. Who likes asking about money? We can all get a little gun-shy about asking for money, but you do not want to get three or four meetings in and find out they do not have a budget, and they just want to volunteer. You do not want to end up in that situation. 

A gentle way to bring up budget is to ask, “What financial year do you operate on?” That opens up the conversation about budgets. You can then ask, “Is this something you are looking at in this financial year, or is it in the next financial year?” 

The other thing around capacity is finding out how much they are spending on other partnerships or sponsorships they are already doing, especially if you have found one of those problems or ambitions. You might ask, “What is your budget around partnerships?” “I noticed you have a partnership with X, Y or Zed. What is the value of that?” “How much is that returning to your organisation?” 

Another useful question, if you find a real issue, is, “How much is that costing your business?” In our breakout room, we were talking about a company that had made a cartoon. I guarantee making a cartoon is not very cheap. That helps you understand what kind of budget they may have to put behind something. 

O is for other partners. You want to find out if they have other partners or sponsorships. This is where you can get them to share useful detail. Ask them, “What are the other partnerships?” “What do you enjoy about those sponsorships?” “What are they doing really well?” “What are they not doing well?” That helps you think about how you may be the solution over some of their existing partnerships and sponsorships. 

V is for values. Values are interesting because lots of companies have values, put them on the back of a business card, and then never do anything with them. Especially if they have values like inclusivity, ask them, “How are you demonstrating your company values?” You may be the solution. You may enable a way for them to authentically demonstrate how they follow those values. 

E is for external factors. You want to know what is going on in their world and what is going on externally as well. Are there things that may influence a partnership? What are competitors doing? What deadlines do you need to work towards? The question I would ask here is, “Is there anything on the horizon that I should be aware of?” You can also ask, “Are there any important dates that we need to work towards?” 

R is for risk management. You want to find out about their risk management as well as your own. Some of you may have quite edgy material, and one of the most valuable things a corporate may be able to do for you is share your content to increase your awareness, ticket sales or donations. You need to understand their risk management in relation to your work and whether anything may prevent a partnership with you. 

The question I would ask is, “What would stop a partnership like the one we have been discussing from going ahead?” You might also ask, “Is there anything I need to be aware of internally in the discussions you are having?” 

Y is for you, meaning the person you are meeting with. Do not forget to find out about them. Tread gently. You do not want to interrogate them or seem like you are stepping over the line, but you do want to find out about the person you are meeting with. What are their interests? What do they know about your organisation? What is their interest in your organisation? 

One valuable thing you can ask is how they like to be communicated with. I have had so many contacts who have hundreds of thousands of emails in their inboxes. You might be sending them proposals or asking whether they have read the proposal, and they may never see it because they are drowning in emails. But if you pick up the phone and call them, you may get an answer straight away. 

Ask them the best way to communicate. Do they prefer a text, a phone call or an email? Find out some of their interests if you can, so you can start building the relationship, because you are going to have multiple meetings with these people. 

Using DISCOVERY, I encourage you to write down the word and the key area for each letter. If you cover each one of those letters, you are less likely to walk away from the meeting thinking, “I forgot to ask.” You will get better at asking strong questions that uncover pain points and ambitions. Then you can go back and think about whether you are the solution to some of their issues, and what that would look like in a partnership or sponsorship with you. 

If you have existing partners and you have been with them for a while, do what we call a rediscovery meeting. Run through this again, because things may have changed or shifted, and organisations often forget to check in about the fundamentals. You might be talking about the logistics of a particular activation or event and get so deep into the detail that you forget to check whether the fundamentals have shifted or changed. 

This is a great format to use with fresh eyes for existing partners as well. The blank space on the right is for asking those questions in a style that works for you and in a way you are comfortable with. We do say play with it, adapt it and make it your own. 

We have shared a lot of information with you. Apologies if we have gone at it too fast, but we would love to see from you one thing that you will do differently tomorrow. What is that commitment? What is something you will go and think about or explore? Take out your phone and scan the code. You will be able to enter one thing that you will do differently tomorrow in free form. 

You should probably have it on the next question. If everyone is comfortable with that, I will stop sharing so you can share the results. We love to see the commitments and the different things you are going to do tomorrow. We have questions and rediscovery meetings coming through. 

Would you mind stopping sharing for just a minute so Rachel can scan it? I think she missed that. Rachel, you can go to the code at the top. I can put it in the chat box and then use this code. 

We have some great responses. I think there are going to be people asking a lot of strong questions with their partners and their prospects as well. I love seeing confidence coming through around how to inspire, the ideas you have, how to dig deeper into your strengths, and the expertise that Christina suggested, not just what you offer, but how you offer it and all the knowledge you have built up over years of doing what you do. It sounds like there will be some interesting conversations over coming months. 

I was just going to say about the questions as well that, to begin with, this may feel uncomfortable and you may feel like you are putting people under a spotlight. It may feel like, “You will answer my questions.” But once you start getting good at asking these questions, it will feel like a natural conversation and you can dig a bit deeper into the answers you are listening to. 

One of the most powerful questions is “Why?” On any answer they give, while you want to check the back of your note and look at DISCOVERY, you can also say, “That’s really interesting. Why is that?” 

We would love to open the floor to questions, and I might hand over to Christina to drive this. If you have further questions, if you want some help from us or just want some tips and to share where you are at the moment, please contact us. If you want regular communications from us on our blogs and insights, go to our website and sign up for the newsletter. We put something out every week that highlights new partnerships, fresh innovation and gives you blog tips on something topical. Stay in touch. We are at the end of the phone if you have some curly issues or want to talk to someone who gets it. 

Thank you, Linda and Sharon. I always learn so much from your sessions. I think this is a good test for everyone out there to think about a good question. Practise asking a question to Linda and Sharon right now. You have the opportunity. After your inspiring words on asking questions, I’d love to see if anyone would like to write one in the chat box or unmute. Is there anything you would like to dig into further? 

I have one. First of all, the DISCOVERY questions are so valuable. I think they will be an incredible tool, and it was great to see everyone’s reflections around what they will do tomorrow: being more deliberate and conscious with how they approach companies, being curious and finding out what they need, not just what we need. In those conversations, and this is practical, do you have any advice for proposing multiple solutions? Is it about going with one whizz-bang idea, or what do you think about having a few options? 

When we structure a partnership, you want to make sure you are addressing their main points, issues or ambitions first. You can go in with a lot of ideas and then funnel down to what works, what they agree to, what they think they will get the best value from, and where you think you can get the best value as well. 

This discovery meeting is really only the first meeting. That is when you are asking lots of questions. I would not be thinking about solutions in the meeting. I would be thinking about solutions afterwards and going back to test and refine. You might say, “Have I got the right understanding here? Is this what you are looking to achieve?” or “This is what we have done with other organisations. How does that sound to you?” It generally tends to take a few meetings, rather than simply saying, “Here is my brochure. Which one do you want?” There is a lot more value if you hit those pain points and ambitions, and there is likely to be more money in it for you. 

The key is not to go into that first meeting trying to sell anything other than yourself. Your objective is to gain as much information as possible. Then you can refine and start to propose solutions. Otherwise, you will be flinging things at a dartboard. If you spend time listening, you will get much more information and your proposal will be more compelling because they will feel heard. Often, you are feeding back what they have already told you, but they may not remember that. Do not go in with ready-made material. Have some options in the back of your mind and test the water. 

There is a great question here about ESG versus CSR. I do not have a set percentage. Where ESG is activating strongly is with bigger companies, listed companies and those that operate across borders with multinationals. It is starting with them, but it is filtering down to medium-sized and unlisted enterprises as well. I do not think CSR has gone away, but ESG is much more at the fore for bigger listed companies. 

In terms of which sectors are leading the way, fast-moving consumer goods are one because they have a lot of stakeholders, and mining and extractive industries are also going strongly on ESG. The big consulting firms, like Deloitte and PwC, are also going strongly because they are trying to offer solutions. They are offering their services as solutions. First, they need to get their ducks in a row internally so they can say, “We can help you solve this because we have it fixed,” whether they do or not is another question. 

Again, it tends to be the bigger companies, but medium-sized companies are having to step up and start having less of a conversation around risk management and investor profile, and more around social narrative and having to lift their game. Expect to see more of that. 

One interesting thing for this audience is that bigger corporates embedding KPIs around ESG in their business are increasingly asking their nonprofit partners, “What is your position? Are you doing anything internally around ESG? Have you got your processes and governance in place?” They are starting to ask pointy questions about whether you have thought about these issues. It is something to put your mind to. You do not have to respond to investors in the same way, but you probably need a stance on what you are doing for your staff, environment, community and so on. You may have a much stronger answer than they do at the moment, but you need to think about your story. 

That is incredibly true. We are seeing a lot in the media around some of those risks with arts partnerships and businesses where the alignment is not quite right from either side. It is important that we reflect on how we do our business and the kind of companies that match that, and that we can speak as confidently about our way of business as they can. 

I am conscious of time. Ally and Marisa, your questions are great. In terms of tips for getting that first meeting, talk to your state manager. All of you have a state manager from Creative Partnerships in your region. This is a great opportunity to have more in-depth one-on-one conversations with them about the specific challenges you are facing and the opportunities you are exploring in the corporate partnership space. 

Marisa, the same thing applies. We can talk about regional impact. I am not quite sure if you mean how you value it for them, or a contra exchange, so I would like to dig into that question with you further. Matthew and Philippa, in terms of how you explore and lead with prospective partners before engaging decision makers at your own company, let’s talk. I think it depends on how you operate as a company and at what point your decision makers need to be involved. That will be different for each company. 

Thank you everyone so much for joining. Linda and Sharon, thank you. Every time, you bring such inspiration and practical, logical application to this content. Thank you so much. Thank you all for participating warmly and enthusiastically. I know it is not always comfortable when we have to speak in front of people, but we have really enjoyed the session and we look forward to seeing you all next time. Thank you so much.