3M is a global company with operations in 70 countries and sales in 200, committed to creating the technology and products that advance every company, enhance every home, and improve every life. They work with the USA-based global nonprofit Pyxera Global on myriad projects around the world, including with PSYDEH in the 3M Impact Local Mexico 2022 program.
Why We Partner
3M employees make a social impact by being loaned out as business consultants advising non-profits like PSYDEH on local challenges. Pyxera Global offers companies its unique human interaction design approach to pro bono projects where company professionals work “with and not for” non-profits.
PSYDEH’s sustainable growth in a generally hostile Mexican funding climate is based on our thinking outside the box, including how we define a “resource” and from where it can come. As highlighted in this Spanish article about our resource-stream diversification strategy, one essential source is corporate partnerships. These collaborations come in myriad forms.
With 3M Mexico and Pyxera Global, we were selected as one of only 5 organizations participating in 3M Impact Local 2022, the only one based outside of Mexico City and focused on rural sustainable development.
Where We Focus Our Efforts
Our five-week partnership was organized into three phases:
♦ understand and empathize,
♦ discover and ideate, and
♦ create and deliver solutions.
In week one (understand and empathize), our joint team met in 3M’s Mexico City office with the goal of unpacking the challenge PSYDEH presented before the event:
produce a replicable business plan for one of the four cooperatives we incubate with Indigenous women through our 2022-2024 Sierra Madre Network program with the goal of leveraging our Tech para Todos program using digital tools and platforms to bring their sustainably made ethical products to local, national and global markets.
Thereafter, each of the 3M team’s four professionals dedicated a full 40-hour work week to PSYDEH, including two of the four doing an immersive field experience in our remote rural work areas. The goal was to investigate and ideate around PSYDEH’s challenge using the strategic plan we co-created during week one. In weeks three and four (discover and ideate), 3Mers continued their work part-time before dedicating week five (create and deliver solutions) to proposal preparing and sharing at a program-closing celebration event in 3M’s Mexico City office.
See this project case study to learn more.
Why it is a Win-win Partnership
3M wins in at least three ways. First, this initiative shows how the company is socially responsible. Second, their professionals are given the opportunity to learn about their country and with a high-performing Mexican non-profit. Third, they do so while collaborating with peers from across the company’s teams in Mexico (cross-fertilization) with the aim to strengthen their teamwork, client relations, and problem-solving skills.
For its part, Pyxera Global deepens its partnership with Mexican non-profits like PSYDEH, helping us to secure the knowledge and strategies we need to solve our own challenges while earning income from a corporate partner.
PSYDEH wins by building cachet as a unique Mexican grassroots nonprofit capable of facilitating a win-win partnership with global outfits like 3M and Pyxera Global. Moreover, we managed to convert 2022 program success into a loose commitment from 3M to continue discussions on how we might grow our partnership in 2023-2024. Third, 3M helps our movement of women-led cooperatives inch closer to our joint goal of their becoming sustainable independent entities. The same can be said for PSYDEH where our 3M partnership helps us make progress around resource stream and programming goals: (1-2) receiving unexpected but needed financial support along with valuable donated in-kind goods and professional services, (3) helping us to empower women entrepreneurs to organize themselves into cooperatives, which results in (4) the powerful story we and the cooperatives need to supply national and global demand for local-sourced, artisan goods in exchange for a profit that is reinvested back into our work.
