How corporate partnerships can be made to really work
Yorkshire-based BIU Group has raised almost £8.5m for good causes since it was formed in 2005, with beneficiaries including a cancer treatment centre, various air ambulance charities, children’s hospices and a number of search and rescue organisations.
With around 40 partners in both the corporate and charity sector, BIU’s innovative business model allows us to thrive both as a commercial enterprise and as a provider of revenue for good causes. In fact, our blueprint for success featured in the 2017 Parliamentary Review, outlining how working with long term corporate partners can also benefit the charity sector.
We also work closely with waste management companies, supermarkets, retailers and local authorities, reducing landfill, and are proud to be associated with sustainable initiatives such as Love Your Clothes as well as the SCAP 2020 commitment, which sees leading organisations from across the clothing sector working together to reduce the environmental footprint of clothing.
What is crucial to the way we work with our various partners, including the charities, is that they are aligned to our objectives and ways of partnership working. On our part we are aware of our responsibilities to properly liaise and take the lead in coordinating.
Revenue streams for charities
We are part of Textile Recycling International, a group of companies tasked with offering a range of services for charities, local authorities, retailers and waste companies. In a nutshell, we recycle clothes, shoes and household textiles to provide a regular, sustainable revenue stream for our charity partners. Partnerships are governed by our Charity Partnerships Agreement, with an agreed rate from the sale of each kilo.
This diverts thousands of tonnes of textiles each year that would otherwise have ended up in landfill, which in turn helps local authorities with their zero waste ambitions, while providing a sustainable revenue stream for our charity partners.
Donations from the public are collected in our patented recycling banks, which are made from reinforced steel, fitted with anti-theft devices and keyless locking mechanisms that prevent donated goods from being stolen. Goods are then collected by our drivers and taken to depots before being sorted and graded.
Around 75% of items are reusable clothes and textiles, which are resold across Europe, the Far East, Africa and Asia where demand is high for quality British fashion. Less than 0.5% of the remainder is recycled into goods such as industrial wipers, insulation, mattress filling and new fibres.
Selecting the right partner
Our specialism is to work with charities where the money raised directly benefits the community where the fundraising has taken place. For example, proceeds from donations to a Wigan Warriors Community Foundation bank will be given directly to that cause. Health is an important area, with partners including air ambulance charities, cancer research and hospices. We work with our partners on a long term basis, in many cases providing valuable insight and support to the charity itself.
The selection process for our corporate partners begins before the clothing banks are placed – they must be sited in appropriate locations with the correct permissions. The high standard of our banks is not only important to land owners; our collection drivers also strive to leave sites clean and tidy, with the aim of discouraging fly-tippers and attracting a better quality of donations from the public.
Site owners join our milestone scheme, a programme run jointly between us and the charity partner that provides feedback on how much money has been raised, how many bags have been donated and notifications of significant milestones reached. Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance, for example, recently reached the £1m raised milestone. As a result of this, each site host received a thank you card with details about this achievement.
We choose our charity partners carefully, to ensure a good fit within our specialism of health and community-based organisations. Making sure each charity is fully on board with our aims enables a more straightforward process when collective decisions are made – the partnership has to be right for both parties.
Communicating with partners
Honesty and transparency are at the heart of everything we do and are absolutely key to how our partnerships work. We like to ensure charity staff and volunteers are fully aware of how our scheme works and offer meetings, tours of the depot and presentations to illustrate how we work.
Quarterly reports are provided with details of each current scheme, outlining areas of potential growth, putting a spotlight on particular bank locations and hosts in addition to highlighting events attended for the charity. If required, a follow-up meeting can be arranged.
Communication is very much a two-way street. We also receive regular reports from our partners, which in addition to including general information may be in the form of impact reports, which are also shared with supermarkets and local authorities who host the banks.
This “open book” policy has always served us well. As we already work to the highest standards, recent changes and developments have not affected us and in some cases have strengthened our partnerships.
We even consult our partners about stock selling policies outside the UK. We can’t control global events but we can ensure we have a flexible business model. The textile price crash in 2014-15, for example, was out of our hands, but the fact that we kept our partners fully informed on every aspect of the business allowed them to plan for a reduced income accordingly.
I would urge charities to look very carefully at companies they are considering partnering with before committing to a scheme. While the aim will be to raise money, this should be done in an ethical and sustainable manner with a long term partnership as the goal, not merely which business may pay more for a service at one point in time.
We have found that sometimes smaller charities need more guidance at the beginning of the partnership in terms of compliance. In fact, we recently sought guidance from the Fundraising Regulator on our solicitation statement to ensure we were exceeding requirements and were as transparent as possible. As a result, a new statement has been approved unanimously by all our charity partners; this will be added to each clothing bank.
A charity partnership example
One of our longest-standing partners is the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA). We have worked together since 2005 with 260 textile recycling banks located in supermarkets, car parks and household waste sites across Yorkshire.
YAA provides two state of the art emergency response air ambulances to save lives across the Yorkshire region, both of which are fitted out with the latest medical equipment suitable for around 1,250 missions carried out every year.
While its paramedics are seconded from the NHS, the YAA is totally reliant on donations to raise the £12,000 a day – or £4.4m a year – needed to keep both its air ambulances in the air to serve a population of around five million people across four million acres.
Since BIU Group partnered with the YAA, we have raised more than £2.7m for the charity. In fact, we recently signed a new five-year partnership contract that further cements our long term relationship and will see the number of recycling banks continue to grow for many years to come.
The charity’s director of fundraising Garry Wilkinson says the scheme had not only helped to save many lives across the county, the long-term nature of the partnership has allowed YAA to plan for the future. “We count this partnership as a huge success,” he says.
Members of the public wanting to donate specifically to the charity can find their nearest YAA recycling bank through the online bank locator on our website.
Employee commitment to partnerships
Every member of the BIU Group team is a vital cog in the wheel of our partnerships and more. Our culture of empowerment and excellence reaches beyond our charity partnerships and is instilled in every individual in our workforce, from collection drivers to depot managers. Empowerment, accountability and responsibility are key to ensuring we are all working towards the same goals, including zero waste and a lower carbon footprint, and of course making our partnerships work.
