In a Corporate Partnership, the Donors Became the Messengers

February 26, 2015 | Read Time: 2 minutes

Horace Mann is an insurance company that serves schoolteachers. Its agents are in constant search of new customers, which often means going to school principals and asking to make staffwide presentations about insurance.

“They need access to the schools to meet new clients,” says Kirk Smiley, a senior director at DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit that runs a crowdfunding site where teachers ask for donations to support classroom projects.

The organization thought it could help. DonorsChoose is just the type of thing you’d want to talk about if you were trying to keep teachers’ attention.

“Our first pitch to them was: Horace Mann serves teachers. Your customers are teachers. Our users are teachers. Let’s work together on something,” says Mr. Smiley.

Soon a partnership formed: DonorsChoose trained Horace Mann agents to talk about the charity’s website. Horace Mann agents, in turn, asked principals if they could come and talk about DonorsChoose. They might add a quick sidebar about Horace Mann to bookend their presentations, but the bulk of the talks revolved around the site.

“It’s a way for agents to build their brand and develop relationships with teachers,” says Mr. Smiley.

Horace Mann started giving its agents DonorsChoose gift cards, which they would raffle off to teachers who signed up to hear more about insurance services. The company has also run matching programs for agents who donate to teacher projects.

DonorsChoose, meanwhile, developed a detailed training curriculum so that agents representing the organization could become what Mr. Smiley calls “mini-experts on our site.”

“They’re not just there to sell themselves,” says Mr. Smiley. “They’re there so they can be someone teachers go to for help.”

The relationship between the company and the nonprofit began in 2010 with a modest training program in two states and soon grew to include every Horace Mann agent. It also expanded beyond the training program to include actual donations in the form of gift cards and matching funds.

Horace Mann has since donated $2.3-million to classroom projects, introduced 2,500 schools to DonorsChoose, and picked up 6,000 new teacher clients. The relationship, however, took time and patience. DonorChoose approached Horace Mann a full year before the company decided to try the pilot program.

The lessons learned? Mr. Smiley cites three: Don’t get frustrated if you don’t get an immediate yes, don’t be afraid to pilot something, and don’t be scared to prove yourself.