Interview with Thomas Först, Head of Partnerships Suyana Foundation

Thomas Först, you are Head of Strategic Partnerships at the Suyana Foundation. What exactly is your role?
As Head of Strategic Partnerships at the Suyana Foundation, I initiate and design targeted collaborations to enable the long-term safeguarding and continuous development of our international projects in health, education and agriculture. My focus is on promoting the growth of our programs in order to effectively support even more people, families and communities on their way to better living conditions. Since 2023, I have been working with my team to identify suitable funding foundations, companies and public institutions with which we can develop content-related and operational partnerships. In doing so, we attach great importance to an economic view of the approaches in order to create optimal benefits for both sides. We achieve synergies with Swiss companies in our countries of operation in particular by combining their objectives with our project requirements. These collaborations include the provision of technical expertise, the promotion of local training and knowledge building in our teams and communities. We also look for partners from the private sector who can strengthen the financial sustainability of our programs or support our work for the communities by donating products, such as technical equipment for health programs. We make targeted use of local corporate program budgets and effectively integrate their social commitment into our programs. In addition, we work closely with grant-making foundations in Switzerland that wish to support our target regions and topics financially. This approach is reinforced by the close cooperation of our local teams with the respective local authorities and universities, enabling us to implement programs that are tailored to the local cultural and legal conditions. In its first year, this approach has already generated new partnerships and enabled them to actively contribute to social and economic development in our target regions.

What are the main objectives of your foundation and how do they contribute to society?
The Suyana Foundation has been working for more than 20 years to sustainably improve the living conditions of people in disadvantaged rural regions. Our holistic approach combines the areas of health, education and sustainable livelihoods in order to create long-term, self-sustaining social structures. We are active in seven countries, including Switzerland and several countries in Africa and Latin America. In the area of health, for example, we promote prevention and access to care through programs such as "Zero Caries", which improves oral health in communities and also promotes prevention and healthy eating practices. In education, we support existing teaching infrastructures and create programs that offer children and young people better prospects. We also support communities in developing economic resilience through sustainable agricultural practices and the promotion of local marketing approaches. By working closely with public institutions and local partners, we ensure that our projects are tailored to the needs of the communities and aligned with development goals. Our "local for local" model encourages the active participation of local people and enables them to take responsibility for their own development while promoting trust in favor of joint work. We also achieve this thanks to our local employees in Latin America and our excellent cooperation with local partner organizations in Africa and Greece.

What strategies do you pursue to attract potential sponsors for your foundation?
In order to attract new partners, we rely on an approach that offers mutual benefits. With individualized cooperation models, we specifically address companies, especially Swiss companies, which, in addition to their economic goals, attach importance to social commitment and thus to strengthening their local reputation. A key success factor here is the precise analysis of local needs and the targeted approach of company management. Through a sound understanding of their market situation, we develop approaches together, always keeping the core of our work in focus. The transparency provided and the joint use of communication channels strengthen the trust of the partners and increase the visibility of the cooperation to the outside world. In this way, we not only create sustainable partnerships, but also arouse the interest of other potential partners.

What challenges do you face when looking for sponsors?
The search poses various challenges, as the foundation has only recently begun to actively use the interface between philanthropy and the private sector. This means that we first had to position and establish ourselves in this ecosystem. A key step was to develop a partner strategy in order to determine which of our topics and programs are suitable for such cooperation models, as not all programs and projects have the same level of maturity, which means that they do not always directly match the wishes of the partners. In the initial phase, this required intensive coordination and a sound understanding of the companies' needs and objectives in order to develop suitable cooperation models.

Securing long-term partnerships remains a challenge, as our projects are designed for sustainability and long-term impact. Due to economic developments in the countries, however, such projects can quickly lose priority with companies, which can jeopardize the joint project. To counteract this, we rely on cooperation that is designed for a period of two to three years and includes various models that can be flexibly adapted.

We also have to constantly reconcile the interests of potential sponsors with the objectives of our programs. This requires creative approaches in order to create a win-win situation without jeopardizing our core tasks and objectives. In addition, monitoring partnerships, particularly between local companies and headquarters, and the high demand for transparency and proof of impact require additional coordination effort. Despite these hurdles, we see great potential in this model.

What advantages do you offer sponsors who support your foundation?
Partners who support our foundation benefit from a wide range of advantages. A key added value is their active participation in the social impact of our long-standing successful programs in the areas of health, education and sustainable livelihoods. We regularly document progress so that our partners can make their contribution visible and communicate it in a targeted manner. In addition, the partnership strengthens their local reputation in the target markets, as they credibly highlight their social commitment and underline their responsibility towards the local population.

Our partners can contribute their commitment in three dimensions: by providing know-how, donations in kind or financial support for specific project modules. Ideally, cooperation should cover all three areas in order to achieve maximum impact. We also develop targeted marketing and communication strategies to make the joint successes visible and authentically communicate the partner's social commitment to the outside world.

With our work, we can offer our partners a number of things, including on-site work visits in which we can contribute our partner know-how depending on the topic and content.

Can you tell us about a particularly successful sponsorship campaign?
Our first successful collaboration is our partnership with Curaden for Peru, which was launched in 2024. The aim of this cooperation is to sustainably improve dental health in remote communities in the Apurímac, Cusco and Puno regions. Thanks to Curaden's valuable support, we have been able to equip our mobile dental fleet with additional material and at the same time develop and offer special training modules for professionals, our dentists and members of the communities.

The cooperation covers two main areas: On the one hand, we were provided with high-quality dental care products for our annual program; on the other hand, Curaden organized targeted training for our teams as well as for the local public health facilities we support. They received up-to-date specialist knowledge on innovative prophylaxis concepts as well as practical tools and learning materials that they can use in their daily work. Another highlight was the dental hygiene workshop at our Suyana school in Cusco, where pupils received dental hygiene kits and were instructed in practical exercises on proper dental care.

The partnership promotes long-term improvements in the dental health of communities through a combination of product donations and training. At the same time, Curaden was able to strengthen its position as a responsible partner and demonstrate its commitment to the local people. We were able to communicate our successes in accordance with our agreed communication and marketing measures and also actively involve local authorities and stakeholders from the healthcare sector.

In the new year, we will also be launching similar collaborations in the areas of education and sustainable agriculture, which we are already very excited about. It can take 6 - 9 months for such a partnership to develop.

How do you maintain relationships with your existing sponsors?
We maintain our partnerships through personal communication, transparent reporting and regular information about new project opportunities that offer potential for joint implementation. We also actively invite our partners to events and program initiatives on site so that they can directly experience the impact of their commitment and participate in the implementation if required. In the future, we plan to invite partners from the private sector to joint development sessions to work together on solutions for various topics and challenges. Although managing these partnerships requires intensive coordination and considerable human resources, the positive results confirm that this effort is already paying off for us.

What role do personal networks and contacts play in your search for sponsors?
Personal networks and contacts play a crucial role in shaping our partnership ambitions. Thanks to my many years of experience in the private sector and consulting, I have an extensive network of companies that I can use specifically to approach partners in Switzerland and abroad. This, combined with the foundation's long track record of success, which has been in operation for more than 20 years, means that the approach works well. Building trust and understanding the common goals is essential for these relationships. In addition, direct personal access facilitates the identification of interfaces between the interests of the partners and our programs, which significantly increases the success of our cooperation strategies. We have also been able to gain excellent access to local companies through Swiss institutions and organizations on the ground, which makes our work much easier.

To what extent do trends and current developments in fundraising influence your strategies?
Trends in fundraising undoubtedly influence our approach, I am thinking in particular of the increasing interaction between philanthropy and the private sector. More and more companies are looking beyond traditional sponsorship as well as other cooperation models that offer both added business value and social impact. We see great potential in this for the further development of our foundation.

Another key trend is the growing expectation of transparency and measurable impact. This has led us to focus our approach more on data-based reporting in order to clearly demonstrate the successes we have achieved and win new partnerships based on this. This approach takes time and a long-term perspective, as sustainable collaborations need to go beyond one-off measures and short-term engagements to create real value.

How do you measure the success of your sponsorship activities?
The success of our activities is measured using a combination of quantitative and qualitative indicators. We define goals and success indicators together as early as the clarification of expectations. We compare the results with the initial situation and, if necessary, adjust the way forward together. An additional success factor is the desired visibility. We check compliance with agreed communication measures to ensure that the partner's commitment is appropriately visible. We also want to secure the programs beyond the term of the joint partnership. We achieve this by constantly recruiting new partners. We also pay attention to network effects: We measure whether the partnership has initiated new collaborations and follow-up projects that further strengthen the joint impact.

The interview was conducted by Dr. Dr. Elisa Bortoluzzi Dubach. She is a foundation and sponsorship consultant, author and lecturer(www.elisabortoluzzi.com)

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