“Do they love us? Do they hate us?”: Examining nonprofits’ perspectives on their relationships with professional sport organizations

Abstract

Professional sport organizations are increasingly engaging in corporate social responsibility initiatives within their local communities. While literature has examined why professional sport organizations work with nonprofits, the beneficiaries of these partnerships tend to be dismissed from the literature. Even though professional sport organizations and nonprofit organizations share a reciprocal relationship, scholarship tends to solely focus on the perspectives of just the professional sport organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to allow nonprofit organizations to share their experiences and perceptions based upon their relationships with professional sporting organizations, and to examine what unique benefits and challenges nonprofit organizations encounter by partnering with professional sport organizations. Drawing on the collaboration continuum, the current study accounted for the (de)evolution of relationships between nonprofit organizations and professional sport organizations over time. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 nonprofit practitioners who have collaborated with professional sport organizations in the United States. Thematic analysis of each interview was conducted to find commonalities between nonprofit organizations’ perspectives. The findings indicate that while nonprofit organizations across all three stages of the collaboration continuum value their relationship with professional sport organizations, they hope that professional sport organizations adjust their utilization of their unique resources to better fit the specific needs of nonprofit organizations.