Take a look at some of
our case studies
The following case studies show you how we have helped
charities and companies build better partnerships and build
purpose-driven organisations.
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We then provided them with six months of continuous support to seize opportunities. This included brainstorms to build partnership opportunities, pitch-building sessions and momentum calls to help secure meetings and keep moving prospects forwards.
In early 2021, SolarAid’s corporate partnerships portfolio was unbalanced. One major partner dominated in size and contribution and its significant support was coming to an end in 2023, while a large number of smaller partners were time-intensive to manage and delivered low returns.
Remarkable Partnerships helped SolarAid refocus its business strategy, launch a bold purpose-driven campaign, and build stronger mid-level and in-kind partnerships. This strategic shift transformed their approach from short-term transactions to long-term collaborations, ultimately leading to renewed growth and a landmark £1 million partnership in 2025.
In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for charities and businesses. For Parkinson’s UK, it brought uncertainty about the future of their corporate partnerships.
Their Commercial Partnerships team were unsure how to engage existing partners and prospects, because communication had gone quiet across the board. The global crisis had knocked their confidence and left them unsure about how to respond to this change in market conditions. Without a clear strategy, they risked losing momentum with both prospects and existing relationships.
The Director of SOS could see there was an opportunity to diversify their income and they believed partnering with companies could be the way. They had some smaller transactional partnerships in place, but they wanted to attract and secure some long term, strategic corporate partners.
Alder Hey Children’s Charity had a large portfolio of transactional partnerships, which left the team feeling stretched and burnt out. This made it difficult to grow corporate income.
We helped them strengthen their approach so they could focus on fewer higher value partnerships that deliver greater impact for both sides. Together, we identified priority partners and ideal prospects, enabling the team to shift from short-term deals to long-term strategic partnerships.
As a result the team felt more motivated and focused securing partnerships worth £715k - a 13:1 return on investment.
Senior management at Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice Care (PTHC) were unsure whether corporate partnerships could be a viable income stream.
Their approach to corporate partnerships was reactive, low-level, and cautious, making it difficult to see the bigger opportunities available through business collaborations.
In 2014/15, corporate partnerships income was £156,000. Additionally, their Corporate Partnerships Manager, Georgi Robinson Welch, was relatively inexperienced in corporate fundraising.
The Sleep Charity are a small charity with little fundraising resource, but huge potential. They were receiving lots of inquiries from potential corporate partners, but they were being led by the companies rather than doing what was best for the charity. Their lack of capacity often meant their relationships were transactional and significantly undervalued. For example, one company asked The Sleep Charity to assist in an audio show for them, and they only charged £3,000. This relationship could have easily been a five figure, long term partnership, given the right resource and focus.
In the three months, Remarkable Partnerships secured nine meetings with top prospects, converted five of these into new partnerships and strengthened existing relationships with corporate friends.
At the start of the pandemic, all charities faced the same challenge. They needed to work out how to talk about themselves in a new way.
Soil Association in particular needed to work out how to speak about their cause in an emotional and relevant way. They needed to find the stories that would emotionally resonate and allow people to understand the benefits of organic and unprocessed food.
Due to this challenge, many of the Soil Association partnerships were commercial partnerships – based on consultancy, or transactions – rather than strategic partnerships based on shared purpose.
Helen & Douglas House’s purpose is to “create a home away from home where families can spend quality time together to make precious memories” which, during the pandemic, had never been so important for children with life limiting conditions and their families. Building partnerships that bring value to the charity, plays an important role in helping them achieve their mission.
The challenge for Helen & Douglas House was that they needed to move their partnerships portfolio towards more strategic and transformational partnerships, and away from time intensive transactional relationships, like Charity of the Year.
Helen & Douglas House wanted to seize the corporate partnerships opportunity during the pandemic and beyond, with the support of their wider Fundraising and Marketing teams to make it possible.
Following their success in securing partnerships with Avon and The Telegraph, Changing Faces identified corporate partnerships as a new income stream. They particularly wanted to focus on building strategic partnerships and securing corporate signatories for their Pledge To Be Seen Campaign.
Transaid has a very successful Corporate Membership scheme, with 37 committed corporate partners from across the UK transport and logistics industry, each sharing Transaid’s belief in the power of safe available and sustainable transport, and its ability to transform lives.
The challenge for Transaid’s corporate partnerships team was how to package one of their core programmes – their international road safety and driver training initiative – to potential corporate supporters, in a way that was more emotive and engaging.
Transaid also wanted to improve how they captured the attention of prospects from the word go, highlighting the potential benefits they could deliver for the company, and making them ‘the heart’ of the approach.
Corporate partnerships are a relatively new activity for the Hospice of St Francis (HoSF). In 2016/17 they had grown corporate income to £190K p.a. However, this was achieved by working with a large number of local companies, built on a huge team effort at networking, relationship building and organising events, in particular their growing Corporate Partners Network. This took all the available time of their Head of Corporate Fundraising, Carolyn Addison and her colleague Amanda Stalham. It was proving challenging for Carolyn and Amanda to move to the next stage and develop larger partnerships to help accelerate their income growth.
Since the release of the movie Born Free in 1966, there was a unique connection between Land Rover and Born Free. Land Rover Defenders were heavily featured throughout the movie. However, the first time the charity approached Land Rover for a partnership was in 2002. Land Rover donated branded vehicles for field projects rescuing animals in Africa, India a for their education work in the UK. Ten years on Born Free believed there was much more potential. It was time for a renewed, powerful and more strategic alignment.
By reframing the partnership narrative and aligning brand purpose, Helen secured a global, multi-year collaboration that advanced wildlife conservation and elevated both brands worldwide.
Missing People had achieved some success in corporate partnerships. In particular, they secured and delivered partnerships with BHS, Barclays London Region and Royal Mail. They were yet to crack a large-scale partnership worth £100k+ p.a. They were confident that with the right approach this would be possible.
By combining strategic review, hands-on leadership, and purpose-led training, Remarkable Partnerships equipped Missing People with clarity, confidence, and a breakthrough corporate partnership.
Vivacity is a charity that runs arts, culture and sports facilities in Peterborough. It enriches people’s lives by providing inspiring events and life-changing services.
In 2014 Vivacity was keen to strengthen and grow its flagship activities including the annual Heritage Festival and Arts Festival. So it decided to explore the possibility of creating partnerships with companies in the Peterborough area.
By combining strategic targeting, creative pitching, and community-focused storytelling, Vivacity secured its biggest-ever partnership and elevated the impact of the Heritage Festival.
In 2005 Age Concern (now Age UK) had a partnership with Innocent. It involved little woolly hats being placed on Innocent smoothies that were then sold in Eat and Waitrose stores.
It is a very special ‘cause related marketing’ promotion. The hats are knitted by older people in local Age Concerns and the funds raised go straight back to those centres.
However in 2005 Age Concern raised £20,000 from the promotion, which was quite a modest return for considerable effort. We believed there was significant potential to grow the partnership.
By scaling production, strengthening retail and brand collaboration, and deepening emotional engagement, Age Concern transformed a small campaign into a long-term, award-winning partnership.
In 1998 Ken Deeks, Managing Director of Arrow PR (now Director at The Amber Group), approached Action for Children with the idea of uniting the IT industry to help prevent youth homelessness. He was inspired to contact the charity when he saw their ‘House our Youth 2000’ campaign poster and, being from the IT industry, he assumed it was something to do with preventing the millennium bug. But he soon realised it was for something far more important!
By acting quickly, fostering collaboration, and engaging key supporters, Jonathan transformed one creative idea into a long-lasting, multimillion-pound national fundraising event.
Research from Age Concern in 2005 revealed that 44% of people over 50 in the UK did not have Internet access. Further research from OFCOM found that older people, particularly those in lower income brackets, felt alienated from the digital economy.
By combining strong corporate partnerships with a clear social mission, Silver Surfer Week empowered thousands of older people to get online and created lasting digital inclusion opportunities.
Don’t miss bold insights that shift how you think about partnerships.
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