Partnering Non-Profits with Corporate Sponsors

Relative to other marketing tools (e.g., advertising, promotions, personal selling) corporate sponsorship is seldom discussed in the marketing literature. This is unfortunate because corporate sponsor relationships can be advantageous to both nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and profit seeking corporations (Hernandez-Murillo and Martinek 2009). NPOs are organizations that strive to provide goods and services to society without pursuing profits. Although NPOs are permitted to generate surplus revenues, they must be retained by the organization and used for the purpose of self-preservation or expansion of services. As such, NPOs use revenues generated by operations to achieve their goals and have little discretionary revenues that can be used for promotional efforts. Corporations are profit seeking enterprises that seek to attract consumers by providing products that the marketplace perceives as being of value. To enhance long-term success corporations strive to develop effective relationships with consumers in the marketplace. Profit seeking corporations and NPOs can both benefit by partnering together. NPOs can better address social causes by gaining higher visibility and financial backing with the help of corporations. Especially in recent years, corporations are increasingly concerned with social responsibility and therefore open to partnering with NPOs in the form of a sponsorship relationship (Siegel and Vitaliano 2007). This paper examines the use of sponsorship to enhance attitudes towards nonprofit organizations and sponsoring corporations