Our Partner Policy

Our approach to responsible partnerships

Overview:

Our Vision is to build deeper understanding of people and cultures through storytelling in sport. Because of that, who we partner with matters.

This policy helps us choose partnerships that protect storytellers, uphold the integrity of our work, and ensure our stories are used in service of understanding, not in ways that cause harm to people, communities, or the planet.

Our Partner Policy is informed by the B Corp framework for eligibility, controversial sectors, and responsible business relationships, but has been adapted to be stricter and more specific to Goal Click.

It needs to go further because our work is built around lived experience, editorial integrity, and relationships with storytellers and communities, where the risk of harm or distortion can be especially high. In service of our Vision to build deeper understanding of people and cultures through storytelling in sport, we apply a higher threshold for our partners, storyteller care, and the purpose the work is being asked to serve.

Who this policy applies to:
This policy applies to all prospective and existing Goal Click partnerships, including commercial clients, funders, sponsors, commissioning editors, editorial and distribution partners, agencies acting on behalf of clients, in kind partners, and collaborators on Originals projects. It applies both to paid and unpaid work.

Our partnership commitment:
Goal Click will only enter partnerships that help us build deeper understanding of people and cultures through storytelling in sport, and that do not undermine the dignity, safety, truthful representation, or wider wellbeing of storytellers, communities, or the environment.

We recognise that responsible partnership decisions cannot be made on sector alone. We therefore consider the nature of the organisation, its track record, the purpose of the brief, the way the work will be created and how the resulting stories may be used.

How we assess prospective partnerships

Before proceeding with a partnership, Goal Click considers six main areas:

Sector: Whether the partner operates in a sector that is ineligible, controversial or generally open under this policy. See sector categories section for more details.
Ownership and track record: Whether its ownership, funding, conduct and wider impact are consistent with our standards.
Purpose and integrity: Whether the brief genuinely supports deeper understanding and allows stories to remain human, honest and properly contextualised.
Storyteller and community risk: Whether the work protects the dignity, agency, consent, safety and wellbeing of everyone involved.
Meaningful benefit: Whether the partnership creates genuine and properly supported value / opportunities for storytellers and communities.
Environmental impact: We consider the potential environmental impact of both the partnership and the production approach.

How we make decisions

Prospective partnerships fall into three categories:

Proceed - The partnership meets our standards and can proceed as briefed.

Proceed with safeguards - The partner, sector or brief requires deeper review and additional protections.

Do not proceed - The partnership falls within an ineligible category, fails our assessment or would enable, conceal or contribute to harm.

Safeguards for higher risk partnerships

Where additional concerns exist, Goal Click will only consider proceeding if appropriate safeguards can be agreed. These may include, but are not limited to:

transparency about the partner, purpose and risks
fair remuneration, informed consent, safeguarding and aftercare for storytellers
protection of truthful context and editorial integrity
transparent and limited use of AI
agreed review points and circumstances in which the partnership can be paused or ended

Sector categories

The categories below guide our judgement but do not replace careful assessment or common sense. A sector not listed here is not automatically approved. Partners in generally open sectors must still meet the standards set out in this policy.

Sectors we do not partner with:

Goal Click does not pursue partnerships in the following sectors, which are ineligible under the B Corp framework and also conflict with our own standards:

Fossil Fuel Producers - the underlying harm case is strong because burning fossil fuels is a main driver of climate change and a major source of air pollution, both of which harm health globally (further reading).
Gambling - WHO says gambling can drive poverty, financial distress, family violence, mental illness, suicide, and even corruption and money laundering. (further reading).
Pornography - one of the clearest human-rights concerns raised by European human rights bodies is that pornography can reinforce harmful gender stereotypes, objectification, and the trivialisation of violence against women, even though this is a more debated category than tobacco or gambling (further reading).
Prisons and detention centres - the core concern is that detention systems can expose people to exploitation, substandard working conditions, and forced labour, especially where oversight is weak (further reading).
Tobacco and nicotine products - WHO states that all forms of tobacco are harmful, there is no safe level of exposure, and tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year (further reading).
Weapons and defence - this work is controversial because services are used in ways that harm others or be misused, especially causing civilian harm, in a sector with limited transparency and corruption risk (further reading).

Additional ineligible sectors we will not partner with:

Goal Click goes beyond the B Corp baseline in areas that are particularly relevant to storytelling, sport, communities and lived experience.

State-backed, sovereign wealth, tourism, event-hosting, or government-linked entities where the brief appears about reputational transfer: Using the cultural power of sport to shape perceptions, gain soft power, and normalise a preferred national image on the world stage rather than deepen understanding.
Alcohol brands or trade bodies aimed at youth, families, grassroots or community-facing sport: there are calls for restrictions on alcohol sponsorship and promotion, with recent research shows that sports-linked alcohol branding normalises alcohol use and reaches children and young people even through indirect branding tactics (further reading).
Political parties, candidates, and campaign bodies - party-political storytelling carries a high risk of becoming persuasive political advertising rather than independent human storytelling, in a field that regulators increasingly treat as sensitive because of disinformation, opaque targeting, and foreign interference risks (further reading).
High cost / predatory financial services - we do not pursue partnerships with high-cost short-term lenders, payday lenders, or similarly predatory credit products where the work would normalise, market, or emotionally soften forms of borrowing associated with over-indebtedness, arrears, and consumer harm (further reading).
Fast food and unhealthy food & beverage brands targeting children - we do not pursue partnerships with unhealthy food or beverage brands where the work is aimed at children, youth sport, grassroots, families, or community-facing sport, because WHO treats the marketing of foods high in fat, sugar, and salt to children as harmful and recommends restrictions to reduce its impact (further reading).
Any brief whose real purpose is reputation laundering - we do not pursue work that asks Goal Click to sanitise, over engineer, selectively frame, or manipulate lived experience in order to protect or improve a partner’s image.
Any brief that restricts truthful context - we do not pursue work where relevant facts, critical voices, or important context must be hidden, softened, or removed in ways that compromise story integrity.

Controversial sectors we only pursue with care and consideration:

These partnerships are not automatically ruled out, but they require deeper scrutiny, written rationale, and appropriate safeguards.

Mining - while perceived to be economically necessary, UNEP notes that extraction can cause climate impacts, pollution, biodiversity loss, and human rights harms including child labour and impacts on Indigenous peoples’ rights (further reading).
Nuclear power or radioactive materials - nuclear technologies can have legitimate uses, but radioactive waste creates health and environmental hazards if not properly contained (further reading).
Pharmaceuticals - controversial rather than automatically excluded because they can save lives, but there are serious global concerns around rising prices, shortages, falsified products, and lack of affordable access to essential medicines (further reading).
Debt collection agencies in emerging markets - debt collection in weakly regulated markets can slip into harassment, public shaming, abusive contact practices, and poor treatment of financially vulnerable borrowers (further reading).
Recreational marijuana - although legal treatment varies by country, there are health risks including bronchial injury and the possibility that cannabis use can exacerbate schizophrenia in affected individuals (further reading).
Lotteries - they use gambling mechanics, so even where proceeds support good causes they can still generate the same kinds of gambling-related harms, including financial distress and mental health harm (further reading).
Religious organisations: we assess religious organisations case by case because faith-based actors can make a positive human rights contribution, but partnerships become unsuitable where the work is exclusionary, coercive, sectarian, or linked to discrimination or incitement based on religion or belief (further reading). E
Alcohol where the audience is adult and the project is not youth or grassroots, but the work still sits close to sport or community identity - This category remains controversial because alcohol sponsorship in sport still normalises drinking through trusted cultural spaces and community affiliation, and WHO treats sponsorship restrictions as a public-health measure, not only a youth measure (further reading).
Governments, public bodies, federations, rights holders, or mega-event partners operating in contexts with credible human rights concerns - these institutions have been repeatedly linked to forced evictions, worker exploitation, silencing of civil society, harassment of journalists, and discrimination against affected communities (further reading).
Financial services - consumer finance models can rely on financial vulnerability, weak transparency, repeat borrowing, or problematic data use, with OECD and World Bank materials highlighting over-indebtedness, unfair pricing, and data-related consumer protection risks in parts of the credit market (further reading).
Fast food and unhealthy food brands targeting adults - marketing foods high in fat, sugar, or salt through sport and community culture can help normalise unhealthy consumption, and WHO recommends reducing the impact of this marketing, especially where children are exposed (further reading).

Generally open sectors:

Many sectors may be broadly open to partnership. Even where a sector is generally open, Goal Click will still apply the core test. A partner in an open sector may still be declined if the brief does not meet the core test.

Keeping this policy under review

Goal Click will review this policy periodically as our organisation evolves and as the wider landscape around sport, storytelling, technology, ethics and responsible business continues to change.

We recognise that responsible partnership practice develops through experience. Where this policy proves unclear, incomplete or out of date, we will refine it in line with our Vision, our business & impact strategy and what we learn through our work.