Cooperations between profit and non-profit enterprises has significantly increased in number and form in the last years. The background to this is the realization that the complex social challenges of our time cannot be mastered alone – new ways of thinking and changed practices are required. Together with a prominent German welfare organization, concern has developed a comprehensive and proven concept for initiating successful cooperation.

Initial situation

Successful cooperations between profit and non-profit enterprises need competent partners who know why, how, and where they can get involved together. Also, they need to know how to approach each other and how to work together sustainably with benefits for all involved. However, working together is not always easy, and in reality, the actors often move in different spheres. A lack of understanding for the respective individual needs, attitudes, and structures, missing points of contact, or lack of time are frequent hurdles that have to be overcome.

Objective

As experts in mediation between business and the community, it was our task to assist non-profit actors to develop cooperation ideas for collaboration with profit companies, to actively identify suitable partners, to address them in a targeted manner and to act as an equal, professional cooperation partner.

Result

The result is a concept that is designed to conduct a workshop according to proven methods of the Design Thinking approach. Just one workshop day can be sufficient to develop useful cooperation ideas and to stimulate their implementation. The developed workshop has been tested with actors from different fields of work (elderly care, child and youth care, and disability care) to guarantee universal applicability.