Pitching to a Competitor

After discussing competition and working on a competition analysis, one problem I've encountered is how to address someone who is both a "friend" and a competitor?

With my re-entry program, I will need governmental buy-in for support, access and funding. The Department of Corrections also already offers re-entry services, which even though they are very basic still makes them a competitor. This puts my venture in an interesting position as I need to figure out how to address this and how much information to share when pitching my program. Another aspect I've been thinking about is how to address the fact that their existing programs do not show much success (i.e. how to go to the government and essentially say that what they have is ineffective and why I think my program is better).

I found the article "Pitch Better: How to Talk about Competitors" (https://medium.com/firm-narrative/pitch-like-steve-how-to-talk-about-competitors-f19e4d30ae52), which provided some useful insight even though I'll be talking about competitors to a competitor. The article analyzed Steve Jobs' pitches and provided some useful insights. The article points out that Jobs, in all of his pitches, refers to his competitors as a group and doesn't single out just one. This will definitely be helpful to consider as I prepare to bring this to a prison administration. Secondly, the article points out that Jobs criticizes by defining a future vision for his customers. Given that my customer is the incarcerated, a group tended to be discarded by others including some prison administrations, I will need to take a different approach that both addresses the incarcerated and also defines the benefits to both the prison and society (i.e. outlining them as indirect customers). I will need a way to also frame how my advantage will help us get to that future vision, but also why the prison cannot simply take the idea to try to apply it themselves and why an "outsider" to the prison is needed.

Does anyone else have a competitor they need to win over for support? Who is it and what are the circumstances? How do you plan on approaching this sensitive issue?