From beggar to partner: nonprofit-business collaboration as a strategic choice for the nonprofits

Nonprofit-Business collaboration (NBC) has been widely investigated, being regarded as a value creation mechanism for society (by providing better solutions to address complex social issues) and business (by delivering economic gains as part of social responsibility programs). NBC from the perspective of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), however, has been overlooked, in particular how they plan strategically to attract prospective business partners. In this paper, we propose a framework to facilitate NPOs’ strategy development and assess its relevance with data obtained from 15 NPOs. In general, findings indicate that the framework captures the foundations of effective strategy in terms of the number and quality of collaborations. The paper provides recommendations for practice and new research directions.