From beggar to partner: Nonprofit-business collaboration as a strategic option for nonprofit organizations

Purpose: Nonprofit-Business collaboration (NBC) is widely regarded as a value creation mechanism for society and business. Research, however, has typically overlooked NBC from the perspective of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The focus of this thesis concerns the means (a guiding framework) to help NPOs engage in NBC. Through being strategically proactive rather than reactive to what businesses might offer, it is argued that NPOs can increase the scale of their cross-sector collaborations and thus enhance their sustainability. This is a timely issue given the fact that NPOs are typically struggling to maintain their viability in the current economic climate. Theory and methodology: The research has been carried out in two phases. The first concerns the conceptualization of a theoretical framework, being underpinned by stakeholder theory, cross-sector collaboration and the nonprofit literature. In the second phase, the framework has been assessed using primary and secondary qualitative data obtained from 26 ‘active in collaboration’ NPOs. In doing so, three data collection techniques have been utilized, namely: semi-structured interviews (n=38), website content analysis of the 26 NPOs, and document reviews. Key contributions: The thesis contributes to the understanding of the NBC phenomenon by developing and initially validating a framework that captures the complexity of considering NBC as a strategy from the viewpoint of NPOs. The framework integrates the factors that are critical in the development of NBC strategy and the interaction between them. Overall, the evidence obtained indicates that the framework is relevant to NPOs, and corroborates the argument that being proactive and strategic are important ways for NPOs to yield successful collaborations with the business sectors.