In 1984, while Michael Dell was launching his computer company from his University of Texas dorm room, Yvette Marrin was co-founding the National Cristina Foundation (NCF) to provide technology to people with disabilities. Little did either know that twenty years later, her small nonprofit would help his global company solve one of its biggest challenges: creating a sustainable system for managing old computers that consumers no longer want.While Dell sought help from nonprofits to recycle its products at the end of their life-cycle, Abitibi-Consolidated, one of North America's largest newsprint manufacturers, needed help along another curve in the recycling loop. Three of Abitibi-Consolidated's paper mills use 100 percent recycled fiber and another five use varying percentages, creating a nearly insatiable demand for high-quality feedstock to manufacture newsprint and commercial printing papers with recycled content.Both Dell and Abitibi-Consolidated say that the decisions to enter into business relationships with nonprofits created unexpected challenges and surprising benefits. They've also discovered that, despite the vast disparities in size and resources between the two sectors, nonprofits can often bring priceless commodities like consumer convenience and loyalty, making them coveted partners.Dell Finds Its Reuse Partner OnlineMichael Dell has freely admitted that he hadn't given much consideration to what happened to his company's products when consumers were done with them -- until environmental groups targeted the company. Today, due not only to Dell's vision for transforming his company into an environmental leader, but also to the strategic relationships the company has established with nonprofits, Dell, Inc. is considered by many environmentalists to be a shining sustainability star.Dell's first foray into a nonprofit reuse partnership took place in 2000 when the company contacted the National Cristina Foundation. Though initially motivated more by philanthropy and community service than environmental stewardship, the partnership with NCF is now a core part of Dell's sustainability strategy."We were the only national charity working on computer reuse that had an online donation form, and since Dell sold online, they wanted customers to be able to donate online too," explains NCF's Marrin of her first contact with Dell. NCF operates an online clearinghouse for used computer equipment. Donors complete an online form describing their equipment, and NCF matches the donor with a pre-screened nonprofit organization nearby that will pick up the equipment and use it to help a disadvantaged clientele.Dell's website directs consumers interested in donation to a special landing page on the NCF website. The nonprofit gets donations from Dell customers every day, says Marrin. "NCF was able to scale to any volume that came through the Dell donation channel because of the online capability," says Bryant Hilton, Dell's public relations manager for the initial campaign with NCF.Computer Recycling Requires Consumer ConvenienceIn 2004, after deciding to actively encourage customers to recycle their old computers, Dell approached Goodwill Industries in Austin, Texas about collecting computers on their behalf. The Dell-Goodwill Reconnect partnership has since expanded to locations in California, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. "In pursuing our goal of finding free ways for consumers to dispose of end-of-life equipment, we wanted take advantage of existing consumer behavior, like donating items to Goodwill," says Joe Strathmann, senior manager of asset recovery services for Dell.Most Goodwill locations don't accept used computer equipment because of the onerous regulatory issues associated with their disposal. Through the Reconnect program, Dell provides Goodwills participating in the pilot project with the best practices and training to accept computer donations at no charge to consumers, and to sort and consolidate them for a third-party recycling company they refer to as an "environmental partner." Dell connects Goodwill with these environmental partners only after they have passed a rigorous environmental audit.The environmental partners sell the materials in many forms, from refurbished systems to scrap metals and share the proceeds with Goodwill. If the revenues from sale of the material do not cover Goodwill's expenses, Dell reimburses the nonprofit for its outstanding costs. The partnership allows Goodwill to enter a new market previously considered too risky, with a reliable revenue source and new job training and employment opportunities. Dell also brings marketing prowess that far surpasses anything Goodwill could do on its own.The partnership has not been without challenges, however. Dell did not fully understand Goodwill's operational structure before it launched the Reconnect partnership. Dell was surprised to learn that Goodwill is actually comprised of 169 separate nonprofit organizations in North America. While they all follow basic standards associated with the Goodwill Industries International brand, local Goodwills operate independently, requiring Dell to negotiate a separate, customized partnership with each location.Dell was also surprised to learn just how important job training and creation are to Goodwill. "Providing work opportunities for those who have challenges entering the workforce is a major metric for them, while Dell was focused on the volume of material and customer service," says Strathmann. Getting the two missions aligned took some effort. "When we first got together, we realized how different our values were," says Susanne Fredericks, executive director of the Goodwill Association of Michigan, Dell's first statewide Reconnect partner. "After working together, we've seen that while our values might not be in the same order, we are both working toward the triple bottom line."NCF's Marrin concurs that common values are essential to a successful nonprofit-corporate partnership. "I've always felt that, as small as we are in comparison to Dell, that we lived in the same mind culture. We could communicate about joint responsibility in confronting these serious environmental issues and it was done in a way that was respectful. For people who believe in open dialogue, working with Dell has been a very good experience," says Marrin.While Dell does not provide any financial compensation to the National Cristina Foundation, the partnership has helped the nonprofit raise its profile considerably, including expanding outside the U.S. to Canada, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. Reconnect has residual benefits for Goodwill too. "To partner with a corporation like Dell is a real win for us," explains Fredericks, "because other corporations now take us more seriously. This partnership has opened the door to work with the automotive industry on recycling their byproducts."Dell's goal is to recover 275 million pounds of e-scrap worldwide by the end of 2009 and Strathmann expects Goodwill to account for a considerable part of that volume. According to Fredericks, Goodwill's Reconnect locations have already collected over 10 million pounds of electronics during the pilot phase. Both Dell and Goodwill are working on the steps required to roll the program out nationally and have set several goals together. Goodwill wants to have 50 percent of locations in the U.S. on board with Reconnect by 2008 and Dell wants to have the program reach 50 percent of U.S. households by 2009.Searching High and Low for Clean Paper to RecycleObtaining high-quality feedstock is a growing challenge for the paper industry and is often cited as a top concern for paper makers who use recycled content. In the mid-1990's, the amount of paper that Abitibi-Consolidated could obtain from traditional curbside recycling programs plateaued, and yet with paper recycling rates at around 40 percent, plenty of paper was still headed for the landfill.Abitibi-Consolidated decided to look at ways to get paper from places that are traditionally under-served by recycling programs and immediately thought of schools. "Schools often have very low recycling rates because there aren't part of municipal curbside systems and they don't have the means to pay for recycling services," says Xavier Van Chau, manager of public affairs for Abitibi-Consolidated's Recycling Division.In 1994, the company began providing Houston schools with a free paper recycling service. The company offered to pay for the paper collected as a fundraiser for the schools. This encouraged not only the students and teachers to recycle, but the entire neighborhood to bring in paper that would be traded in for cash the school could use however it wanted.It worked, and word of the Paper Retriever program quickly spread to other nonprofits including churches and community groups. In 1995, Abitibi-Consolidated launched the Paper Retriever program throughout Texas, followed by Midwestern locations in 2000 and Northeastern locations in 2005. The Paper Retriever program is now operating in 22 metropolitan areas in the U.S. and Canada and in 130 local authorities in the United Kingdom.Today, about 16,000 separate organizations, including schools, places of worship, and nonprofit organizations, are collecting paper for recycling in over 23,000 Paper Retriever containers. "The cleanest, highest quality old newspaper that we get through our entire system comes through the Paper Retriever program," says Van Chau. "Abitibi-Consolidated diverted 1.7 million metric tons of recovered fiber from landfills in 2006 and the Paper Retriever program is a core element of the collection strategy."Creating partnerships with thousands of small nonprofits has continued to pay off as the recycling landscape has changed. More and more communities are using single-stream collection strategies at the curb, where all recyclables are placed in the same bin. While this approach increases convenience for consumers who are no longer asked to sort into numerous recycling bins, it increases cross-contamination for manufacturers who use recycled materials. Van Chau says the company often gets bales of paper where up to 12 percent of the bale isn't paper, but other recyclables like glass shards and plastic. Because the Paper Retriever program keeps the recycled paper separate from other materials, the quality is significantly higher than paper from other sources.Abitibi-Consolidated and Dell share a motivation in working with nonprofits: convenience for consumers. Just as consumers are accustomed to donating to Goodwill, they are also already traveling to schools, churches, and other community locations where Paper Retriever bins are located. Nonprofits are often highly visible within their communities, making the Paper Retriever bins equally visible, says Kerry Copeland, the Columbus, Ohio area manager for the Paper Retriever program.Consumers also know that every bag of paper they throw in a Paper Retriever bin increases the size of the check their favorite nonprofit will receive. Abitibi-Consolidated paid out $4.7 million to community organizations in North America and the United Kingdom in 2006. The size of the payment varies based on the location, number of containers, and the amount of paper recycled, but Copeland says it ranges anywhere from $5 to $250 per month.It may not seem like much, but the program requires very little effort from the nonprofits, other than promoting the program through their existing networks. "Abitibi runs it extremely efficiently. We don't have to lift a finger. It's a first-class operation all the way around," says Neil Drobny, executive director of the Central Ohio Sustainability Alliance, which has more than a dozen Paper Retriever locations. His organization runs the Waste Not Center, a supply depot of donated materials for teachers. "Paper recycling pays the rent for a few months," says Drobny.Dell and Abitibi-Consolidated are just two of the many corporations that have built successful partnerships with nonprofits by learning how to align their business goals with the nonprofit sector's mission-driven values - a lesson that can buoy the bottom line. "We see it as a strategic advantage to be where the industry's interest lines up with what consumers and public officials want," says Van Chau.Kivi Leroux Miller writes about issues in the environmental and nonprofit communities. Her consulting firm, EcoScribe Communications, helps progressive nonprofits and businesses communicate more effectively in print and online.