Public-private sector partnerships offer an important way to deliver commercial and community benefit.

Too often, such partnerships underperform because of lack of alignment. We believe the way to achieve sustainable, scalable partnerships is to ensure they reflect a company’s core values and P&L, enabling them to project and protect their brands, earning the loyalty of customers and employees alike.

Corporations often lament the cultural differences between private sector businesses and NGOs, from simple but indispensable considerations such as budget cycles to more existential misunderstandings regarding motivations and methods. CLS knows the subcultures of NGOs and corporations, how each can be insular, and each can value information from their own “tribe” rather than “outsiders”, and how to communicate in the language that each sector understands.

We believe NGOs could improve their understanding of how the private sector really works, understanding everything from a company’s budget cycle to how best to leverage the vast technical expertise a company brings.

Similarly, NGOs often do not fully appreciate how much competition exists within companies. Far from monolithic, large companies have rivalries among divisions and product or service lines that greatly influence company direction and must be understood to know how, when, and where to engage a company. CLS has salvaged important PPP just by knowing a company’s internal dynamics, and who could serve as an internal champion … and who could not.

At Coopersmith Law + Strategy, we design and implement public-private sector partnerships for companies and NGOs.