Why a company partners with an NGO changes with its size

While preparing the workshop for the Pop Up Campus run by the Catalan Fundraising Professionals Association, I went looking for something I assumed was settled: Why does a company partner with an NGO?

There is plenty on alliances and on types of collaboration. There is not a single study that answers that question broken down by company size. I had to combine three to build one.

In a micro business, one person decides, and decides as a person.

They know someone, or the cause is close to home. No committee, no partnerships budget. Nothing sits between the conversation and the decision. The only Spanish work that tackles this directly, Murillo and Lozano, ESADE, 2006, concludes that the personal ethics of the owner is the determining factor.

In a small or mid-sized company, ownership still decides, but there is now a workforce watching.

The decision does not change hands, it changes audience. A partnership the team does not understand is a partnership that does not come back the following year.

In a large company there is no single motive. There are three, and they sit with three different people.

Leadership thinks about reputation, sustainability thinks about what it will be able to report, the workforce thinks about taking part.

	WHO DECIDES	WHAT THEY WANT
MICRO	One person, deciding as a person	Proximity
SMALL / MID	Ownership, with a workforce watching	Their team to see it
LARGE	Three functions, three criteria	Reputation, reporting, participation

Checking size before the first paragraph costs nothing and can be done this week. Split your target list into three groups and count how many different proposals you actually have written...

The three tiers are a construct developed by North Consulting from three independent sources. As of September 2026 we have found no published Spanish study that cross-references company size with motive for partnering. We present this as a working hypothesis, not an empirical finding. Sources: Murillo and Lozano, Journal of Business Ethics, 2006. Directive (EU) 2026/470.