Every day we speak to charities who want to grow their corporate partnerships programme, and one question that we always ask is, “are you corporate partnerships ready?”

When we look at the fundamentals that need to be in place there are usually gaps. In this blog we share our recommendations on how to get corporate partnerships ready:

1. Get your colleagues on board

One of the most important factors to corporate partnerships success is to get your colleagues on board. We recommend organising regular meetings with your colleagues – ask for their advice and input, share your plan, and don’t forget to celebrate success together when good things happen. Henry Ford once said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – we recommend you continue to work together to have corporate partnerships success.

2. Ensure your website shares your corporate partnerships offer

The corporate partnerships page on your website is the shop window for companies who want to find out what partnering with your charity would look and feel like. We recommend keeping things simple with a case study, a few examples of activities and most importantly a call to action for time to booked with you to find out more. A great example of this is The Sutton Trust’s corporate partnerships page: https://www.suttontrust.com/support-us/corporate-partnerships/.

3. Have your essential tools in place

We often see charities tripping themselves up by not having the essential tools and templates in place before partnerships begin. One of our most popular blogs of 2023 was the one about corporate partnership agreements which you can find here https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/5-recommendations-for-effective-partnership-agreements/, we also shared our due diligence recommendations here https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/five-due-diligence-recommendations/. Do an internal process audit and fill the gaps before you need them.

4. Prepare three emotionally engaging stories

We recommend for you and your colleagues to be confident in telling three stories about your beneficiaries in an emotionally engaging way. If you are an animal or environmental charity then take inspiration from Sumatran Orangutan Society who did this so well in the pandemic, because they told companies about the impact of Covid on the livelihoods of rangers. Keep it simple. Focusing on just three stories that you can share in.

5. Prepare your powerful pitch

When the opportunity comes your way you want to stand out from your competition and be able to pitch the socks off of your corporate contact. Check out our free 30-minute training video on the essential ingredients for a powerful pitch based on shared purpose here: https://youtu.be/E00i0aD81Is?si=QaPxWwFWeG0JveWY.

6. Create a list of benefits for partners

When a prospect asks you what benefits they will get from partnering with your charity, you want to be prepared. Charities such as SolarAid do this really well – by planning and discussing internally first what benefits could be available, and then creating a tiered system to only give away benefits when a certain value has been contributed. It doesn’t need to be an external facing document, but having your tiers agreed internally will ensure you don’t undersell yourselves.

7. Create your list of target prospect

Without a focused prospect list then it is easy to get distracted by ideas from colleagues and Trustees about who you could partner with. Put a process in place to asses which companies are on your top prospect list, and systematically plan how you are going to progress each one from week to week. Some charities doing this well dedicate just 15 minutes each morning to move each prospect forward through an email, call, Linkedin request, or sharing an article to get their attention.

Conclusion

At Remarkable Partnerships we are big believers in being ready for opportunities that come your way, so we hope you found this checklist helpful to get your charity prepared. If this blog has inspired you, then we would love to hear from you about how we could help you kickstart or upgrade your corporate partnerships programme though the range of services we offer. To find out more book a call with one of the team soon using these links: Jonathan: https://meetings.hubspot.com/jonathan612/30-minute-virtual-coffee-on-zoom Georgina: https://meetings.hubspot.com/georgina21/30-minute-virtual-coffee-on-zoom Peter: https://meetings.hubspot.com/peter-chiswick/30min-virtual-coffee