Businesses and campaign groups are rising above the risks to work together towards common goals

Strategically driven business-type partnerships between companies and non-governmental organisations are on the rise. Recent research from C&E Advisory, a sustainability consultancy, found an increase of 10% in such partnerships over the preceding 12 months, while other types of partnerships declined.

Business-type partnerships are defined as NGOs and companies working together to improve corporate practices, or for social business development – partnerships for greater corporate responsibility, in other words. They contrast with other partnerships, such as cause-related marketing, simple endorsement or sponsorships.

Two recent examples illustrate the trend. First, American NGO ForestEthics has worked with banana giant Chiquita to eliminate from its vast transportation fleet fuel derived from Canadian tar sands. Tar sands produce “the dirtiest oil on Earth”, the campaigners say, and it was pushing Chiquita to join other companies pledging to steer clear of it. The company has now put in place a policy to work with ForestEthics to trace its fuel supplies back to source, and sever links with tar sands crude refineries.

Second, Greenpeace and Facebook have agreed to collaborate on a project to switch the social network’s data centres to renewable energy. The agreement comes in the wake of a two-year campaign to persuade Facebook to “unfriend coal”, during which Greenpeace mobilised 700,000 supporters to message, poke and generally pressurise Facebook into changing its ways.

The campaigns both focused on single, high-profile companies with emblematic value. ForestEthics director Aaron Sanger says that creating such examples can motivate other companies. “It is important for all companies to follow leadership examples, especially if the leader and the follower are in the same sector. This helps competitors keep pace,” he says.

Now for the big boys

ForestEthics now has Wal-Mart and US supermarket giant Safeway in its sights. Both “burn an enormous amount of gasoline and diesel to move their products in huge trucks all over North America,” Sanger says. Persuading them to change their ways could have a real impact on demand for tar-sands-derived fuel. “Because of the corporate sector’s public influence and buying power, when large brands take action on environmental or social problems in their footprint, they can help to bring about practical solutions,” Sanger adds.

Mauricio Lazala, deputy director of NGO the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, says such partnerships are “not necessarily a natural collaboration”. He says such initiatives “require extra efforts on behalf of both the NGOs and the companies” because of their different cultures and objectives. There are also risks. Some NGOs might “consider that a partnership would undermine the credibility of any subsequent campaigning they undertake in relation to that company or sector”, and due diligence is necessary.

But companies and NGOs recognise that each has assets that can produce benefits when combined in partnership, and ultimately both have the same objective, which is to operate effectively within sustainable constraints.

Business-type partnerships can be “win-win”, Sanger says. ForestEthics wants companies to “adopt a model of continuous improvement” in ethical terms. “As long as the company continues to make adequate progress, we will support that progress; and as long as the company insists on continuing destructive activities, we will work to change them.”