Partnerships·
Most proposals explain why the partnership would be good for the person writing them. That is the easy half, and it is the half the reader already assumed.
The other half decides everything. If you cannot say, in one sentence, what the other side gets, you do not have a partnership. You have a request.
Their reason is rarely money
A PhD student I once wrote to was researching exactly what my company was building. He said plainly that he did not want to be paid. What he wanted was that the code stay open, that he be able to publish, and that none of it come before his own schedule.
A rescue hosting an event wants adoptions and donated supplies. A shop wants foot traffic on a slow afternoon. A university lab wants a real problem and somewhere for its students to land.
None of those are line items. All of them are worth more to that partner than a check, and each one costs you something different from cash.
Sometimes it is not an exchange at all
I once asked whether a hospital in New York would receive a group of orthopedic surgeons visiting from China. NewYork-Presbyterian agreed, and charged nothing at all. They did it out of goodwill.
The interpreting came the same way. A Harvard graduate offered to do it for free, because, he said, he wanted to help more people.
Neither of them was trading. Doctors like teaching doctors. A person who lives in two languages knows what it is worth to be understood in the second one.
Do not put the trade on the table
This is the part that surprised me, and it took a while to believe. Knowing what the other side gets is necessary. Saying it out loud, as a swap, often costs you the yes.
Price a gift and it becomes smaller. Offer an institution an exchange and the conversation moves from the person who was interested to the department that reviews agreements.
So keep the trade to yourself and describe the purpose instead. Say what this is, who is coming, what they hope to learn. Let people place themselves in it. The ones who want to be part of something will say yes for their own reasons, and their reasons hold better than anything you could have offered them.
You do not even have to ask
You can spend months guessing what the other side wants. You do not have to. Send the proposal plainly and let them tell you.
An organization that charges for this will say so in the first reply, and one that wants something in return will name it. It is routine for them and nobody is embarrassed by it. The PhD student named three conditions without being asked.
Asking what would make it worth their while invites a price where there was not going to be one. Describe what you are doing, leave room, and the terms arrive on their own.
Take their constraints seriously
The PhD student named one condition that had nothing to do with what he was getting: the work could never come before his studies.
That is the part people skim, and it is the part that decides whether the partnership survives. A constraint honored the first time is why there is a second time. A constraint quietly ignored is remembered long after the details of the project are forgotten.
The second time is easier than the first
Most of the work sits in the first collaboration. After that, the other side knows how you run a day: whether you arrive early, whether the numbers you promised showed up.
A partner who had a good day does not have to be persuaded again. The next one is a text message instead of a proposal.
That is how a long partnership actually forms. Not with an agreement at the start, but with the same names saying yes a few times in a row until nobody thinks of it as a pitch anymore.
The sentence they will repeat
Before you send anything, write one sentence saying what this is and why it is worth someone’s time. Not what you want from them.
Sometimes that sentence contains what the other side gets. Sometimes there is nothing in it for them at all, as with the hospital, and it is still an easy yes, because the thing itself was worth doing.
Either way it is the sentence they will repeat to whoever has to approve it. You will not be in the room for that conversation. The sentence will be.