Journal 7

More Than Money Matters, Establishing Effective School-Corporate Partnerships by Nancy Flynn
Learning & Leading with Technology November 2007

In this article Nancy Flynn outlines ten specific guidelines for creating successful partnerships between schools and corporations. The increasing costs of technology combined with the increasing financial constraints on public schools have led many administrators to seek out corporate partnerships. Schools benefit from these partnerships by receiving the latest technology and corporations hope to benefit through advertising, marketing and promotion.

Before entering into any kind of corporate partnership, Nancy Flynn advises that schools consider the following: what does the school hope to accomplish with the new resources, can the school infrastructure support the hardware or software supplied by the corporation, does the technology match the educational goals of the school, will there be consistency and open channels of communication between the school and the corporation, will there be someone on campus who can provide support for the new hardware or software, is the corporation committed to providing continued support, what expectations does the corporation have of the school and its administrators, what level of product promotion is the corporation expecting, is an assessment system in place to evaluate the benefits of the corporate partnership and how long is the partnership expected to last.

According to Nancy Flynn, financial constraints together with the need to continually upgrade technology will continue to encourage partnerships between schools and corporations. In light of that fact, all of the above questions must be considered thoughtfully before committing to such a partnership.

Questions
1. What level of product promotion is acceptable in a school setting?
Corporations form partnerships with schools in hopes of increased marketing and promotion for their products. Administrators need to take the first step of simply acknowledging this fact - that corporations have expectations. Given the corporate expectations, if the administrator is able to wholeheartedly recommend the technology to colleagues and peers, that seems acceptable. Making students and parents aware of the partnership, without sales pressure, also seems like an acceptable level of promotion.
2. Are corporate partnerships the wave of the future? Corporate partnership definitely seem to be the wave of the future. As schools are asked to accomplish more with less funding, corporate partnerships do seem to be a viable solution. Will we see the day when schools are named for corporate entities and corporate logos are plastered all over the lunchroom? I hope not, but it's not inconceivable.