Community partnerships are a good way to help position your business and reinforce your brand in the minds of consumers. The marketplace is full of many wonderful charitable and community groups looking to forge relationships with businesses like yours. Before investing in any community partnership, it’s important to keep in mind that the relationship should be based on mutual deliverables and goals. If you are not strategic in developing your partnerships you could be missing opportunities to promote your business, while incurring unnecessary expenses and creating more work for yourself at the same time.

Do you regularly review your community partnerships and if so, how often? Here’s a checklist that can be used to help you evaluate both your existing community partnerships as well as any new relationships.

1. What is your strategic plan for community involvement?

All community partnerships should reinforce a predetermined community platform that is consistent with your brand values. If you have declared your support for education, then you shouldn’t be supporting your local hospital foundation.

2. Have you clearly communicated your community involvement to your customers?

You want your community involvement to resonate with your customers – it may be a determining factor in a customer’s decision to do business with you. For example, TELUS not only uses animals in their ads, but they also actively support wildlife and animal organizations that ensure their well being.

3. Have you fully leveraged the partnership?

The more touch points you create for your community partnerships, the greater the likelihood that your customers will recognize your charitable involvement. If you support Big Brothers/Big Sisters, then every opportunity you have to work with this charity should be explored. For example, your charity gift wrap should support Big Brothers, your volunteers for special events should come from Big Brothers, your employees should be members of their school mentoring program, and your sponsored newspaper ads should tell customers about your partnership.

4. Does the charity promote your relationship?

If you are investing in a partnership, then you should expect the same in return from the charity with which you are involved. Recognition and acknowledgement from a third party provides credibility and further positions your business as a genuine contributor in the community.

5. Is volume your key success factor?

You will not build awareness or recognition for your community contributions if you are everything to everybody. Choose charities that are the right fit and ensure that you’re able to do something meaningful with them. That might mean paring down the number of charities you partner with so that you can focus on a few bigger relationships that can really have an impact for both your business and the charity.

6. Does the partnership end when the cheque is cut?

While corporate dollars of support are wonderful, the best community partnerships are about more than that. A holistic approach of corporate dollars, employee volunteerism, promotional support, and gifts in kind will make your partnership much richer than just throwing a few dollars their way.

7. Have you taken a temperature check lately?

Continue to evaluate and access your community partnerships. Are they working? Are you seeing a return on your investment? Your community involvement should always help to further your business objectives whether directly or indirectly.

8. Do your relationships have a lifespan?

Set a timeline for the relationship. Your store lease and promotional activities all have defined time periods, so your community partnerships should as well. Refocus, revisit, and revitalize your community involvement efforts on an ongoing basis.

Community partnerships that are clearly defined, regularly reviewed and continuously grown are another great way to ensure that your brand is well positioned in the marketplace. At the end of the day, you want to be able to translate your community partnerships into sales, increase the profile of your business as a good corporate citizen, and ensure that you are providing a vehicle to help the charities you are involved with increase their fundraising efforts.