Building Successful Nonprofit-Fintech Partnerships

GreenPath adopted a five-step framework to organize the telling of its story of partnering with fintechs:

1. Form an intent.
2. Select potential partners.
3. Implement and manage prototypes.
4. Fine-tune with user feedback.
5. Pilot: Determine success or failure.

Each chapter in this whitepaper explores one of the steps, providing context for the company’s approach, along with action items to consider for any nonprofit exploring new ideas and/or partnerships.

This whitepaper draws on insights GreenPath gained from three different partnerships it tested over the course of a year, plus other partnership opportunities we explored. It provides the most details on the EarnUp example, as it was the first to scale.

Rather than being a best practices manual, the whitepaper presents principles, insights and tools that can help guide nonprofits and financial technology firms through the process of navigating a partnership.

This is a critical point: Having a culture open to innovation is a prerequisite to partnerships. GreenPath recommends you use the following questions to assess whether your organization has a culture that will support innovation:

• Do we have a clear vision for the future?
• Have we set organizational milestones to achieve that vision?
• Are staff empowered to innovate?
• Do we embrace missteps and make it okay to fail?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” focus on the culture change needed to set your organization up for success before seriously pursuing any partnerships.