CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS
Street Child is an impact-focused organization whose vision is every child safe, in school and learning. The majority of the world’s out-of-school children live in regions affected by extreme poverty, conflict or disaster, so we focus our programming on these locations, straddling the humanitarian / development divide to ensure that we meet communities’ basic needs as well as supporting them to lay down firm building blocks for their future.
Unrestricted funding, in-kind support and other pro bono assistance strongly contribute to our mission - unrestricted funding, for example, allows us to respond very quickly to a humanitarian disaster - and we are very fortunate to be partnered with a wide range of corporations across all our fundraising offices, including multi-nationals such as Liberty Global (our core corporate partner), Allen & Overy (2022-23 Charity of the Year), Infosys, NTT Data, Thomas Miller, Plume and Accenture.
HOW WE PARTNER WITH CORPORATES
As with our local NGO partners, we build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with corporate partners, driving your business and CSR goals in some unique and exciting ways. As a Street Child corporate partner, you will have the opportunity to:
Fund and build meaningful relationships with local-level NGOs - without the risk.
Receive training and support to establish your own internal humanitarian response infrastructure.
Participate in genuinely transformative ideation sessions for Street Child programs, in partnership with the programs team.
Advise on a range of topics on a pro bono basis.
Participate in jointly branded panel sessions at events such as the World Economic Forum and the UN General Assembly.
Network with peers at high-end events in money-can’t-buy spaces such as London’s Tower of London.
Participate in world class sporting events, such as Street Child’s unique Sierra Leone Marathon, where you can also visit our programs and meet beneficiaries, and the Big Ride - a corporate team cycling event.
YOUR OBJECTIVES - AND HOW WE CAN SUPPORT YOU TO ACHIEVE THEM
1 MAXIMIZING YOUR DOLLARS - low cost, high impact.
It is vital for true local sustainability that the interventions we put forward are affordable to local governments and communities after funding ends, so we we are relentless in our pursuit to identify ways to reach the largest number of children with the best intervention at the lowest cost. In 2019 we were endorsed for this approach by the Center for Global Development. Our focus on delivering exclusively with NGOs based in-country, who use local personnel, materials and supplies, contributes to keeping costs low but impact high. We are nimble and agile, operating without bureaucracy to get your money where it needs to go as quickly as possible.
2 THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT - your donation will have twice the impact.
Unrestricted donations have a magic quality - a multiplier effect. These donations unlock opportunities with new donors, enabling us to reach more children at scale, and often go towards topping up part-funding from larger institutional partners. This means your money will often end up in our biggest and most impactful projects.
3 LOCALIZATION - we can support you to achieve your localization goals.
We believe strongly that local NGOs have the best solutions to the challenges their beneficiaries face, as well as deep ties and trust with the communities they support; for this reason, we deliver exclusively through excellent local partners. In line with our commitment to the Grand Bargain, we build equitable, mutually respectful relationships with these organizations, learning from them, building their capacity, and supporting them to have a voice, locally and internationally, and access international funding.
In the year 2021-22, 75% of programmatic expenditure and 59% of total expenditure went directly to local organizations and we raised $5M for partners that did not touch our bank accounts at all.
If you wish to fund local NGOs to deliver humanitarian aid, education, livelihoods or child protection programs, but you are unable to fund them directly for legal, risk-related or other business reasons, we can help. We can absorb any ‘risk’ for you, while simultaneously creating direct and meaningful partnerships between you and those NGOs who are right on the front line.
We are globally acknowledged as a leader in this space. We are working in 10 live crisis contexts globally and work extensively with central humanitarian structures, particularly with the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) and the UN Education and Protection Coordination Clusters. We lead on localization for the latter, promoting the essential role of local actors. We are also currently in contract with USAID to ‘Elevate Local Leadership’ (ELLIE) in 35 countries across North and South America, North and sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. Read more about ELLIE.
4 HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE - we can support you to establish and launch your own internal humanitarian aid fund.
Mobilizing in the wake of a disaster can be challenging for corporations who wish to respond but who do not have the right structure in place. We know that today’s generation of employees is more vocal than ever about their desire for the companies they work for to show up in a crisis, so we can support and train you to build processes and internal capacity to respond. Our partnership will empower you to swiftly evaluate the need and gaps in response, raise funds, determine how to get funds in to the country and so on - so you can get this right, but without great expense or disruption.
To date we have responded to the following sudden-onset emergencies or protracted crises, funded by UNICEF, UBS Optimus Foundation, Education Cannot Wait, and a wide range of other corporate and foundation partners:
Protracted crises:
→ Northeast Nigeria, challenged by insurgency since 2002;
→ DR Congo - eastern region affected by conflict for the last 3 decades;
→ Cameroon - dealing with crisis on three fronts;
→ Somalia and Somaliland - conflict since the early 1990s;
→ South Sudan - conflict since the early 1990s;
→ Bangladesh - absorbed 1million Rohingya refugees since 2017
→ Taliban takeover of Afghanistan
Sudden-onset emergencies:
→ Nepal earthquake, 2015
→ Sierra Leone mudslide, 2019
→ Mozambique cyclone, 2019
→ COVID-19 across all our countries of operation, 2020-present
→ Ukraine War, 2022 to present
→ Pakistan floods, 2022
→ Somaliland drought, 2022 to present
EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT / ENGAGEMENT
We can tailor-make employee engagement events for you, or you can join existing events - or we can do both. We have a presence in London, Barcelona and Amsterdam in Europe, and Washington DC and San Francisco Bay Area in North America. In all of these locations we have dinners and employee engagement events to join, or we can create a bespoke event - think an Iftar dinner for your Muslim Network, or an International Women’s Day event to celebrate your trailblazing female employees. In London specifically we also have an annual soccer tournament and twice-annual open evenings where you can meet country staff.
projects to support: school construction
We are always looking for generous individuals or corporations to sponsor school construction. To assist the community we ask that a donation for construction also comes with first-year running costs to support the school to become fully sustainable; without this, schools are often unused and fall into disrepair. This extra funding would support:
a) Teacher training, so teachers can obtain government accreditation and access a government salary; this takes the financial pressure off the community;
b) Establishment of a school-run social enterprise, such as a seed bank or goat farm, to generate income that can be used to maintain the school;
c) Running costs for the first year until the social enterprise is fully profitable.
You can name the school, and it will also have signage bearing the company name / logo. There is also sometimes an opportunity for your employees to visit the school, depending on location. Current supporters include the Carson Glore Foundation, and Fly and Help.
For more information about a corporate partnership with Street Child, reach out to our CEO at anna.bowden@street-child.org.