Nonprofit and for-profit organizations have been long considered uncomfortable bed-mates. Associations may actively seek corporate sponsorship dollars or otherwise offer corporations a means by which to participate financially in their activities even while being protective of the level of influence these companies may want to exercise over their program content. To corporations this sensitivity might look like associations are saying: “Your money is welcome; now please go away!”—and in many cases this is not far from the truth.

But keeping for profit corporations at arm’s length is proving increasingly difficult. Like it or not, traditional lines between for-profits and nonprofits are blurring. For one, corporations increasingly are seeing the value of “doing well by doing good.” It is common now to see corporations incorporating green technologies and social causes into their everyday business practices. But more than this, corporations are also taking interest in the profitability of certain work that used to be the exclusive domain of nonprofits—particularly in the fields of education, training, and credentialing…

So what are associations to do in such an environment? Some have found the answer lies in partnering. Partnering as defined in The Power of Partnership, ASAE and The Center’s newest book, is “a cooperative agreement between two or more organizations where involved parties share the profits and/or losses of the activities they undertake. The term partnership, therefore, implies that both parties can benefit if the relationship succeeds—and both partners may lose something should the relationship fail in some way. They share risks equally.”

This is may be a novel concept for associations that are more used to viewing for-profit companies as either arms-length sponsors or market rivals, but partnerships between the two are increasingly common. In fact according to The Power of Partnership, 73 percent of companies say that partnerships with nonprofits and other socially responsible organizations will be important in the next three years.

Usually—but not always—for-profit companies are motivated to partner with nonprofits to generate profits. The same, of course, could be said of the nonprofits’ motivation. Another motivating factor is public relations and marketing purposes: the nonprofit lends credibility to a program or event sponsored “for a good cause” by a for-profit company. Managed carefully, such partnerships can reap promotional value for both partners.

Similarly, for-profits and nonprofits may partner in the name of social responsibility—being a good corporate citizen. Some of these initiatives may flow from state and federal regulations, such as the Community Re-investment Act (CRA) that requires financial institutions to re-invest in their local communities. But increasingly, for-profit corporations recognize that in doing well by doing good they have a natural advantage in working with those nonprofit organizations that already have access to target audiences, a delivery structure in place, and credibility within the community.

Private interest and the public good need not be in conflict, and nowhere is this more evident than in the growing number of association-for-profit partnerships that have been and are being developed.