– This paper aims to investigate the contribution of brokers to business non-profit collaborations, in the context of employee volunteering. It investigates the roles brokers play and ways they contribute to value creation within social alliances.
– This research focusses on a case study of a UK employee volunteering broker programme run by a local volunteer centre. A combined qualitative methodology involved document analysis and interviews, with brokers and business, community and government partners involved in employee volunteering collaborations.
– Brokers play three key roles in business non-profit collaboration as connectors, facilitators/co-designers and learning catalysts. These roles help stimulate manifestations of associational value, transferred resource value, interaction value and synergistic value.
– Results indicate brokers play an important part in nurturing conditions underpinning innovation and value co-creation, key characteristics of transformational forms of business non-profit collaboration. This study was based on a single case study. Future research could explore broker contributions within a variety of business non-profit settings.
– For managers implementing business non-profit collaborations, this paper provides a framework depicting key broker roles and ways brokers enable collaborative value that may be useful when assessing whether to use the services of a broker.
– This paper enriches the understanding of business non-profit collaboration and the role of individual actors in affecting value creation, an under-researched area in the social alliance literature. It provides a framework for assessing broker contributions in business non-profit collaborations.
