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5 Steps to Creating Corporate Partnerships

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October 16, 2025

Have you seen the little wooly hats on top of Innocent smoothies and thought that’s brilliant? Or perhaps you’ve bought a packet of Pampers that includes a donation to UNICEF?

There are hundreds of charities working in partnership with companies, but there are thousands more charities that don’t. Maybe it’s because they don’t know where to start.

Here’s a five-step process for creating corporate partnerships.

Step 1 – Clarify your BIG REASON WHY

Before you start engaging with companies you want to be clear on your purose or the BIG REASON WHY (BRW) you want to partner with them. What’s your the goal of your non-profit organization and how could corporate partnerships help you achieve it?

This BRW should be emotive, brave and inspiring. For example, a hospice’s BRW could be, “In the next two years we will double the number of people we support so they can live their lives with dignity and peace.”

It’s important to be clear on your BRW from the start. By expressing it you will help create a deeper connection with corporate prospects, which will mean you secure more and bigger corporate partnerships.

Step 2 – Identify Your Target Companies

Identifying your target companies will help you secure the partners that you want because they will deliver for your beneficiaries. It will also give you more focus so you don’t waste your time on companies that aren’t a very good fit for your charity.

You should aim to create a list of your top 20 corporate prospects for your charity. This will probably mean that you start with a long-list of between 50 and 80 companies. I suggest you look at three criteria for identifying your top prospects:

1. Is the company a good fit with your charity?
2. Does someone in your charity have a contact in that company?
3. Does that company have the ability to make a meaningful contribution to your charity?

The companies that rank the highest for these three questions can then become your top 20 corporate prospects.

Step 3 – Develop Compelling Opportunities

Companies can gain huge benefits from charities, such as greater awareness, increased trust and higher employee motivation. So charities have huge value to offer companies. The way to deliver that value is by giving them compelling opportunities.

Start by identifying areas of your work that companies are likely to find interesting. For example, a homeless charity may have a project that enables people to learn new skills so they can gain employment. This is very likely to appeal to companies because they understand the value of employment and it could offer some interesting volunteering opportunities for their employees.

The important step here is your proposition. You need to package you opportunity so it’s inspiring, attractive and relevant to your target company. You should also give a choice of different ways in which they can get involved along with tangible business benefits.

Step 4 – engage your prospects

Now you’re ready to start contacting companies and the objective is to secure meetings with your target companies.

The best way to secure meetings is through introductions or referrals. So you need to know someone who has a contact at the company. LinkedIn is really useful for seeing where you have contacts, so encourage all your colleagues and people you know to connect with you. It’s also worth doing lots of networking, especially at events where your prospects are likely to go.

Once you’ve secured the meeting, you need to ensure you are thoroughly prepared. This means finding out as much as possible about the company and the person you’re meeting. I recommend you make an extra effort to gather valuable insight on your prospect, because it will show in the meeting and will give you an edge on your competitors.

Your objectives for your first meeting are:

1. Inspire them about your cause
2. Build rapport
3. Emphasise the fit between your two organisations
4. Find out their objectives
5. Agree to have a follow-up meeting

So the first place to start is by telling them a powerful and emotional story about how your charity changes lives. When engaging corporate prospects you want to follow the NSPCC approach to fundraising, which is “open hearts, open minds, open cheque books.”

Step 5 – Secure Corporate Partner

Immediately after your first meeting you want to follow up with concise meeting notes and lots of enthusiasm. At this stage your aim is to build the relationship and keep on inspiring them.

You also want to suggest a follow up meeting and this should, ideally, be an opportunity for your contacts to visit to see the cause first hand. If that isn’t possible then introduce them to someone in your charity who can talk passionately about the cause.

It’s important to be patiently persistent. So when you believe they are inspired and clearly interested in a partnership, you can then suggest that you will create a proposal for partnering together. You then need to pull together an inspiring and powerful proposal that meets their and your objectives.

You can then send them the proposal and arrange a meeting to discuss it in more detail.

Now you’re getting close to securing a new corporate partner, but don’t be surprised if there is more inspiring, relationship building and negotiation before you get a definite yes.

When they say yes then you pop the champagne…

Find other insights from Remarkable Partnerships on 5 Essential Features of a Corporate Partnership Strategy.

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How Healthy is Your Pipeline?

When doctors and nurses need to understand how healthy a patient is, they start by checking the vital signs: blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate. These simple checks can quickly tell them whether everything is working as it should or whether something needs attention.

So, when we meet with charities, we often want to follow a similar process with their corporate partnerships. One of the questions we always ask is: how healthy is your pipeline?

The answer is often incredibly revealing, because your pipeline isn't simply a list of companies you'd like to work with; it's one of the clearest indicators of the health and future potential of your corporate partnerships programme.

So, if you were giving your pipeline a health check today, what would you find?

The three vital signs of a healthy pipeline

We believe three key factors matter: quality, momentum, and ownership.

1. Quality: Are the right prospects in your pipeline?

A big pipeline isn't necessarily a healthy pipeline. You could have 100 companies listed, but if most have little connection to your cause, limited potential, or no realistic route to engagement, what value does that number really give you?

A healthy pipeline includes quality prospects: companies with high-value potential that fit your organisation and its purpose, so you need to be selective.

Ask yourself: Are these genuinely the companies we should be investing our time and energy in?

Sometimes, improving the health of your pipeline isn't about adding more prospects; it's about being brave enough to remove the wrong ones.

2. Momentum: Are your prospects moving?

A healthy pipeline should never be static. Your prospects should be consistently moving through the different stages of your pipeline, from identified to engaged, nurtured and, ultimately, converted.

Of course, that doesn't mean every prospect will move at the same speed. Building high-value corporate partnerships takes time, but it should still build momentum. If a company has been sitting in the same stage for six months, ask why.

What's stopping it from moving forward?
What conversation needs to happen?
Who else could you involve?
What's the next action?
And if there isn't a realistic next action, should that prospect still be taking up space in your pipeline?

Successful corporate partnerships teams don't just track activity; they actively look for ways to create momentum.

3. Ownership: Who is responsible for your pipeline?

Your pipeline shouldn't live forgotten in a spreadsheet that gets opened once a month; it needs ownership.

The most successful corporate partnerships teams we’ve worked with regularly review their pipelines together, with senior management engaged in the process too.

Personally, we think 9am on a Monday is a great time to do it. Start the week by looking at where your opportunities are, what's changed, what's stuck and where the team needs support. This isn't about reporting for reporting's sake; it’s about collectively asking: What can we do this week to move things forward?

Senior management can be particularly valuable here. They may have relationships that can unlock a conversation, experience that helps overcome a challenge or influence that can bring the right people around the table. Your pipeline shouldn't belong to one person. Creating remarkable partnerships should be a team effort.

Ask better questions about your pipeline

A good pipeline meeting shouldn't simply involve reading through a list of companies and giving an update on each one. It should create action.

Instead, ask questions that challenge your thinking:

Which prospect is stuck, and what could we do to move them to the next stage?
Do we have too many prospects in our pipeline?
Do we have too few?
Are they the right prospects?
How could we get better and more efficient at moving companies from engaged to converted?
What's our communications plan for keeping prospects engaged and moving forward?

The purpose isn't simply to know what's in your pipeline; it's to make your pipeline work harder.

Pace matters too

Another characteristic we see in highly successful corporate partnerships teams is pace. Your team needs to be dynamic, agile, and able to seize opportunities.

When somebody offers a warm introduction, they act on it. When a prospect shows interest, they build on that momentum. When something isn't working, they adapt instead of sticking with the same approach. That doesn't mean rushing relationships. Strong corporate partnerships are built on trust, and trust takes time.

But there's a big difference between being patient and being passive; healthy teams keep moving.

As we move into the 4th quarter, do a health check on your pipeline.

Do we have quality prospects?
Are they moving?
Does our pipeline have genuine ownership?

And be honest with your answers. If one of those vital signs isn't looking quite right, don't ignore it; work out what needs to change.

Keep your pipeline healthy, and you'll create the conditions to build remarkable partnerships

One of the questions we always ask is: how healthy is your pipeline?

Learn More

What if the big win takes 18 months?

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High-value corporate partnerships take time to build. It could take anywhere from 6 to 18 months from identifying the right company to signing a partnership worth £250,000. If signing that agreement is the only moment you allow yourself to celebrate, you're going to spend a long time feeling as though you haven't succeeded. That's a long time to wait to feel like you're making progress. Instead, think about everything that needs to happen before the agreement is signed:

A warm introduction - that’s a win.
They responded and agreed to a meeting - that’s a win.
You had a brilliant first conversation and discovered their priorities and challenges - another win.
They agreed to a second meeting and wanted to involve more senior people - win.
You identified an opportunity where your charity could help them solve a genuine business challenge - win.
They told you they were interested - win.
You developed the proposal - win.
They gave you positive feedback - win.
They told you they wanted to partner - win.
You sent the draft partnership agreement - win.

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Every one of these moments matters, and every step in the journey is a little win.

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Progress is powerful

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Research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer revealed that the biggest driver of motivation isn’t praise, money or recognition; it is making progress in meaningful work. Sharing and celebrating little wins reinforces your progress, because you write it down or say it out loud and your colleagues respond with encouragement.

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Celebrating little wins isn’t lowering your standards or pretending everything is going brilliantly; it’s sharing and recognising progress. High-value corporate partnerships aren’t built overnight. They are the result of hundreds of little wins that most people overlook.

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So, why don’t we shout about them?

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Sometimes, celebrating a little win can feel uncomfortable. We find ourselves questioning:

Is it really big enough to share?
Will people think I'm showing off?
What if the partnership doesn't happen?

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We can be so worried about appearing big-headed that we keep our progress to ourselves, but celebrating progress isn't boasting, and it isn't pretending that you've achieved something you haven't. It's simply recognising that something positive has happened and that you're one step closer to where you want to be.

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In fact, sometimes celebrating a win should attract attention.

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If somebody in your team has spent months developing a relationship and finally secures a meeting with a decision-maker, why wouldn't you celebrate that?
If a corporate prospect tells you that your proposition has completely changed the way they think about working with your charity, that's worth sharing.

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Communities should celebrate progress. Teams should encourage one another. Leaders should recognise the work happening long before the final result arrives.

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When we share those moments, something else happens: other people get behind us, and little wins create collective momentum.

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Big wins are built from little ones

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When we see an incredible corporate partnership announced, we see the result, but we don't see the introduction that happened 18 months earlier:

The first coffee.
The unanswered email.
The follow-up.
The conversation that uncovered a shared challenge.

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Those are the building blocks. So don't wait for the partnership agreement to be signed before you recognise how far you've come.

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Write the little wins down, and share them in your team meetings. Put them in your internal updates and tell your colleagues when something has moved forward. Celebrate other people's progress as enthusiastically as you'd want them to celebrate yours, because remarkable partnerships aren't built overnight. They're built through conversations, relationships, persistence, learning and hundreds of moments of progress that are very easy to overlook.

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Celebrate your little wins. They're the building blocks of remarkable partnerships.

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Behind every strategic corporate partnership are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of little wins that made it possible and yet we don't celebrate those nearly enough. The question is, why?