Keep in mind that good communication is critical to developing and maintaining successful partnerships. It's important for schools to develop a communications program which keeps people informed of their needs and communicates ways they can help others in their community. By offering benefits to the community and becoming a community resource, schools may be pleasantly surprised to find businesses and others in the community who have never worked with the school before coming forward to help them. Once partnerships begin forming, it is critical to keep partners informed of how things are going. In forming partnerships with businesses and schools, we must keep in mind that schools and businesses are fundamentally very different.
Incentives are different.
Their cultures and operating methods are different. Methods of measuring results and time frames in which results are obtained are different. With increased attention to understanding, respecting and responding to these differences, many schools and businesses can form successful and growing partnerships. Investing in the future by providing substantial donations and grant monies to education is hard for most American businesses to justify in their culture. Whether the individuals care about education is not the issue.