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Company is asking to collaborate with my organization. What questions should I be asking to ensure we’re also benefiting from the collaboration?
I posted this to r/digital_marketing, but I think this would probably be more appropriate here.
I’m part of a small team of 10 people that manages a Facebook group of 60k+ people. Our other social media platforms have about an additional 10k followers. Individually, we do not make money from it, but in the past we’ve done collaborations with some recognizable organizations. Any money we’ve made from collaborations is funneled back into the group in the form of courses and events for our members to network.
A for-profit organization reached out to me asking to do a collaboration. Essentially, they want to source members from our group to use their platform. Both the members from our group and they (the for-profit organization) would make money from this. While one of our goals is to support our members, I also want to ensure that we as a brand are also benefitting from this partnership, especially since our name would be attached to the promotional content and we’d be the ones marketing their platform on our social media.
We have to be selective about who we collaborate with since we’re such a small team and are all volunteers. This is my first time handling the communications and details for a partnership since joining the team, and my meeting with the organization is tomorrow. I just want to avoid being taken advantage of and ensure this collaboration aligns with our goals as a group.
What questions should I ask, or what things should I consider for the meeting? Beyond money, what type of compensation would you ask for in this situation? Any and all tips are greatly appreciated!
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4 Replies
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byu/JonODonovan insocialmedia -
*whom* we collaborate with
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1. Don’t go in making demands. For every organisation acting like parasites, there’s one full of ordinary humans just trying to do their best.
2. Ask them outright what kind of compensation they were thinking of for the collaboration. Ask what they’ve paid others for similiar things.
3. Consider your other volunteers and what might benefit them.
4. Make sure you know about advertising and disclosure laws in your country.
5. Make sure you’ve cosidered what this means for your members. Not just the paid opportunity, but how they will see you knowing you are being paid. You are effectively telling them “We’re willing to sell access to you for money”. It can have massive flow on effects to a community. It can impact trust.
6. Consider whether your contracts and arrangement with them protect you from liability.
Ie you promote this service, someone gets ripped off or demands a refund and turns on you instead.
This kind of thing doesn’t often go wrong like that but if it does go wrong it goes VERY wrong. -
I’d just hear their pitch and ask follow up questions afterwards via email or phone call. Take lots of notes.
Some obvious questions:
1) ask about the company
2) ask about what they expect from your organization
3) ask about compensation
I’d also do your own research on them. What do they sell? How much does it cost? What do the good and bad reviews say?
Once you have touched on all the stuff above, I’d just talk about it with the other team members and see what they think. If you are not experienced in this, getting others opinions will help a lot.
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