Background
The focus group was designed to seek out the benefits and the costs accruing from partnerships, as well as the elements women's organizations were willing to negotiate in a partnership, and the criteria by which they determined the suitability of a partner.
Out of 29 women's organizations invited to participate in a focus group 6 attended. Eight others who had expressed an interest in attending were unable to liberate themselves due to an overload of work and an understaffing of their organizations.
In general, the results of the women's organizations focus group, show that the participating women see partnerships as opportunities for their organizations. They look at partnerships as a way to find new funding resources, to educate the public by raising awareness about violence against women, and to increase independence from government. However, there are also many costs for women's organizations in partnering with institutions. These costs include: buying into the corporate political agenda, risking a loss of credibility, undermining the organizations' ways of doing things, and exonerating the government of one of its responsibilities.
I - The benefits of partnerships for women's organizations
There are numerous benefits of partnership for women's organizations. Through partnerships, women's organizations hope to: increase their resources; gain financial stability; autonomy from government; recognition; and educate the public, while reaching new audiences.
1. Increasing resources and gaining financial stability
One of the benefits for women's organizations in partnering with institutions would be to increase their financial and volunteer resources, as well as resources of goods and services:
"A corporation could support a group of services by providing a free space, or volunteers from their organization."
Participants also felt that:
" Institutions have money and resources that should be shared."
They viewed partnerships as opportunities to gain financial stability in a time when funding is difficult to find, especially to support violence against women prevention projects.
2. Gaining autonomy
Women's organizations are therefore hoping that partnerships will benefit their organizations in a number of different ways:
"Through partnerships we hope to gain financial stability, and less dependence on government money, and on economic factors which determine how much is given to women's groups."
By diversifying their funding through partnerships, women's organizations are hoping to gain autonomy. Partnerships with institutions may enable women's organizations to get funding for what they do and who they are instead of having to fit certain criteria of eligibility. However, for the moment, it appears that: "Money is tied to projects."
Women's organizations agree that there needs to be a process of accountability in a partnership. However, they would rather be accountable to the community directly through their work than to institutions through grant reports:
"We would rather build a profile in the community of the work we do and spend less time grant-writing, and less time running after dollars."
Partnerships could also benefit women's organizations by allowing them more independence in a time of restricted government funding:
"Through partnership we are hoping to gain more distance from the government's political imperative."
and
"...to move away from project-specific funding from government."
The bottom line is that women's organizations want to be able to define what they want rather than having their work defined by funders.
3. Gaining recognition
Through new partnerships, women's organizations are also hoping to gain visibility and credibility:
"We hope to gain visibility in the community."
and
"...credibility within the mainstream community."
Women's organizations are hoping that partnerships with institutions will enable them to educate a larger audience about the services they offer and the work they do.
4. Educating a new audience
New partnerships would also enable women's organizations to increase awareness about the range of services they offer. It would give them access to new audiences:
"There are benefits beyond money; [such as] possibilities for public education and raising awareness within institutions."
In exchange for funding, women's organizations have thought about selling their expertise (e.g., through counselling sessions) to institutions. To the majority of the focus group participants, this venture sounded like a suitable idea especially to women's organizations serving culturally-specific communities because of the language barriers. New partnerships would widen women's groups' possibilities of elaborating specific community outreach programs to reach women from all ethnic backgrounds and in particular those who do not speak English:
"Working with employees through their workplace can be useful in reaching people with similar cultural/linguistic realities."
At the same time, this type of partnership could serve to expand institutions' and people's understanding of violence against women issues, and thereby to broaden women's organizations' goals:
"We could extend services which we have in place like a public education series for example. It is not labour intensive for us and is a huge benefit to a corporation."
II - The costs of partnerships for women's organizations
Partnerships also contain major costs for women's organizations. Some of these costs include the risk of losing control and credibility, selling out, betraying their audience, giving the government the liberty to decide which women's groups "deserve" to be funded and which do not.
1. Losing control - autonomy - independence
Women's organizations want partnerships that are respectful of their needs for autonomy and independence, in other words their "political space" which is vital to their mission and their livelihood:
"We do not want to strengthen the attack on grassroots groups by allowing corporations to decide which groups will get sponsorship and which will not!"
Women's organizations do not want to lose control of their violence against women prevention projects or of their fight for women's rights. As experts on these issues, they expect institutions to respect their expertise and to bring their own specific skills and knowledge (i.e., marketing, advertising) to the partnership. Otherwise, partnerships would mean a loss of control for women's organizations:
"The key is that our partners need to support what we know is right to be doing, not what they want us to do."
2. Losing credibility
While partnerships may build the credibility of institutions, they may, at the same time, provoke a loss of credibility for women's organizations. In fact, women's organizations are greatly concerned about losing past and present donors, clients, and audiences as a result of partnering with particular institutions:
"The issue is, if an unethical connection is publicized then we lose credibility in another sector."
Women's organizations have built a solid reputation that they do not want to jeopardize by getting involved with a partner that does not respect that for which they stand.
3. Selling out
Being accused of selling out is also the last thing women's organizations want. For this reason, they do not wish to get involved in partnerships with institutions that would compromise their political agenda. They do not want to develop partnerships with institutions whose activities go against the principles of women's organizations, nor do they want to develop partnerships with institutions that perpetuate negative stereotypes, or reinforce in any way, women's subordinate position in society. For example, one of the participating women's organization would not accept funding from an institution that produces or distributes pornographic materials because that is part of what they are trying to eradicate.
In fact, women's organizations feel that partnering with certain institutions would be selling out to them:
"By partnering with big corporations we will be promoting the myth of corporate social responsibility - that shareholders, consumers, workers, and CEOs all have an integral vision which benefits everyone equally."
"We would be compromising the politics of women's groups by unwittingly being involved in corporate exploitation."
Two of the participating women's organizations refused funding from big corporations for different ethical reasons. The first one refused support from Matinee (the tobacco brand) because it was unsuitable. Matinee wanted to make the concerned women's group its charity of the year for its annual fashion show and was going to print the group's name on posters. This event promotion was unacceptable for two reasons. First, Matinee was perpetuating an image of women as display objects by choosing to organize a fashion show. Second, as a tobacco company it was promoting its cigarette products to women, which in the context of health related concerns about tobacco addiction and its effects, clearly contradicts the ethical values that women's organizations seek to promote.
The second women's organization turned down money from a pharmaceutical company to support their menopause group. It was felt that this would be supporting a pathological approach to menopause and the historical misuse of drug prescriptions by the medical profession when dealing with women's health issues.
4. Betraying their audience
In almost any form of partnerships, especially those involving big corporations, there is, for women's organizations, the risk of allowing women to become commodities. Women's organizations realize that by letting corporations reach the women they serve through partnerships based on cause-related marketing strategies, they would be allowing two things to happen. First, they would be selling institutions their connections to the women they serve. Second, they would be allowing institutions to exploit the status of the women victims of violence. In either scenario, women's organizations are aware that partnerships may be leading them to building a profit margin by betraying their audience.
"The last thing women's organizations want is to commodify their clients. We do not want to encourage corporations to think that it is OK for them to pick their 'victim of the month' and use them for public relations. If so, are we not selling off women's safety?"
While women's organizations are trying to avoid allowing institutions, especially big corporations, to exploit their clients, they are faced with severe public funding cutbacks and the need to search for new partnerships. This social crisis is giving institutions the opportunity to choose which cause they want to support and which one they do not want to support. As a consequence, certain women's organizations, such as abortion clinics, have great difficulty finding funders because institutions do not want to get involved in what they see as negative political issues.
5. The strings attached
Although it is not always obvious at first, women's organizations find that in most partnerships there are strings attached. For example, by publicly recognizing their funders in their annual report or newsletter, women's organizations endorse these institutions, what they do, and how they do it.
One of the participating women's groups realized a few years ago that its partnership with WhirlPool was not free of strings. In fact, they discovered that by accepting $10,000 from WhirlPool, they were supporting a company that was not interested in women's issues but in reaching customers.
6. Forgetting about government responsibility
Partnerships are not the sole answer to women's organizations' financial struggles. In fact, women's organizations firmly believe that the government has a responsibility toward funding the work they do. They feel they are freeing the government of one of its obligations by researching partnerships to compensate for the on-going cutbacks in government funding. They want to make it clear that they are not seeking partnerships to replace governmental support, and that they expect government to fulfil its social responsibility: "What about government responsibility? Are we not letting them off the hook?"
7. Doing things their way
Institutions and women's organizations have different ways of thinking and working. Women's organizations are not profit-making organizations, nor are the majority hierarchically structured. On the contrary, the majority of women's organizations work as collectives allowing all women to participate equally in the decision-making process:
"One person never just says "yes," there are meetings, committees, etc. Does that mean we should be penalized for having our own ways of doing things?"
Women's organizations have a very different perspective and way of doing things than corporations. They are, by essence, social change agents and thereby have been and are still working toward a society where women are free of male domination in every aspect of their lives (i.e., sexually, socially, economically, ideologically). This is why it is crucial for women's organizations to keep their way of doing things, their vision, their "political space." It is solely through this form of independence that women's organizations can work toward changing every woman's life.
III - The drawbacks for women's organizations
1. Political hot potatoes
Women's organizations, in general, are constrained in their choice of partners because of their ideas and of the work they do. Abortion clinics, for example, have great difficulties establishing any kind of relationship with institutions because they are considered to be "political hot potatoes." Institutions would have to support a woman's right to choose in order to get involved with an abortion clinic. Recent boycotts and attacks from right-wing organizations toward abortion clinics have scared away funders. As a consequence, institutions feel the issue is too political and the backlash is too risky, and are thus not willing to support such women's organizations.
2. Past and present partners
Women's organizations are looking for partnerships that will allow them to keep their relationships with their past and present partners without compromising them in any way. They are not interested in partnering with big businesses that have threatened the community. For example, one women's organization chose not to support Starbucks when it moved onto Commercial Drive and displaced more community-based businesses.
The majority of women's organizations, especially those who have extensive networks within their communities, are firm about safeguarding their existing links:
"By partnering with big corporations we risk losing other supporters who already support us."
"We want to develop partnerships that allow us to keep the ones we already have. For example, we do not want partnerships with big businesses who impact small business in the community."
However, larger women's organizations also understand that smaller women's organizations may not be able to make these choices. For survival reasons, smaller women's organizations may need to accept funding with fewer restrictions. Unfortunately, it appears that choosing funders is becoming a privilege fewer women's organizations can afford, and most smaller organizations do not have the visibility to attract potential donors. Furthermore, most smaller organizations do not have the visibility that bigger ones have and therefore are often unable to attract potential donors.
3. Keeping their vision
Women's organizations have learned the hard way about the risk of losing their vision in a partnership. First, during the Women's March Against Poverty, held in Vancouver on the 13th of May 1997, they were constrained by the fact that unions had co-organized the event and, at the same time, it was the unions that made it possible. Second, at the Women's Conference Against APEC, which took place in Vancouver on the 17th and 18th of November of 1997, unions that had again endorsed the entire people's conference, spoke out on behalf of the women's conference without appropriate consultation. These two incidents partially explain why women's organizations feel so reluctant towards the idea of partnership.
Women's organizations feel strongly about their vision and autonomy, and do not want to compromise it in any way:
"The bottom line is that we maintain control, that corporations understand that we have a role to play and that this is not negotiable."
IV - Women's organizations' criteria for suitable partnerships
When women's organizations were asked how they determined the suitability of an institution for partnership, they answered that it was impossible for them to establish strict criteria. However, they felt strongly about developing partnerships based on the principles of self-determination, respect and ethics.
1. Self-determination
The first issue that dominated the focus group was the issue of self-determination. Women's organizations realize that any partnership would be difficult to establish unless their institutional partner was interested in supporting women's issues specifically. For this reason, women's organizations feel they need to reaffirm in more details who they are, what they need support for, and what they are willing to exchange in a partnership.
2. Respect
The second issue that prevailed in the discussion was the issue of respect. Focus group participants agreed that:
"A partner's decisions need to be based on their respect for women's organizations' expertise in the field."
Based on this idea, women's organizations have considered developing feminist guidelines that could be used to examine the ethics of a potential partner.
3. Case-per-case
In order to conform with both the need for self-determination, and respect, women's organizations concluded that the best way for them to select appropriate partners would be to study the situation on a case-per-case basis:
"Proactive partnership development is stymied by the difficulty of moving beyond a case-by-case process. Going from specific to general rules for a framework document is really hard. There are a few policies at work which make it easy to eliminate some institutions (e.g., smoking), but otherwise it's on an individual basis."
A few women suggested that this process of evaluation be done gathering as much information as possible on the potential partner and discussing benefits and costs among themselves. Others proposed looking at list of criteria (for example, see Appendix I) and setting priorities.
4. VanCity: a model of social responsibility
Women's organizations regard VanCity as an example of the kind of institution with which they would be interested in partnering. They feel VanCity is committed to serving their community in many different ways:
"VanCity offers financial services that meet the resources and needs of grassroots groups."
"They allow their employees to volunteer on their work time whenever needed."
"They give credit to women who would never be given a chance anywhere else."
In fact, VanCity conducts its work in accordance with three main principles(1):
1. Economic Self-reliance defined by:
2. Ecological Responsibility which VanCity defines as its responsibility to minimize the ecological impact of its activities, and to actively pursue activities that sustain, nurture, and enhance the ecological well-being of our communities and of the earth.
3. Social Justice which VanCity sees as promoting equality for all people, by advocating:
For all of these reasons, all six focus group participants suggested that women's organizations use guidelines from VanCity as a standard for seeking partners. This means that women's organizations would expect potential partners to do more than market their social responsibility by writing a cheque to the order of a women' s organization. The partners would be expected to be involved in their community the way VanCity is (i.e., VanCity's Employees' Clear The Air Programs encouraging their employees to ride their bicycles to work; subsidizing low-cost housing for low-income families; and supporting women's groups).
Summary
The decrease in public funding, and the growing need for services, combined with the
limited resources of women's organizations, is forcing these organizations to seek new
partnerships. Although it may bring women's organizations increased resources,
financial stability, autonomy from government funding requirements, and an opportunity
to educate a larger audience about their work and services, it may also generate
negative consequences. With the rising demand for funding from the entire voluntary
sector, women's organizations face fierce competition in their search for new partners.
These conditions are allowing institutions to be more selective and demanding of their
potential partners. As a result, women's organizations face losing the control of their
work, and of their "political space" in order to answer institutional funding requirements.
They also risk losing credibility and betraying their clients and past and present
supporters, by partnering with institutions who are not respectful of their work, their
vision, and which exploit and perpetuate the subordinate position of women in society.
Women's organizations also feel governments have the responsibility of funding their
work for social change and the advancement of the status of women in every aspect of
their lives. Thus, women's organizations have come to the conclusion that to protect
their mission, their vision, and their independence, they need to partner with like-minded institutions which echo these principles, and who are thus similarly committed
to serving their community.
Endnote
1. VanCity Credit Union. (1997). Corporate
Social Responsibility. Online.
Available at
www.vancity.com