In our fifth session of Remarkable10, we were joined by award-winning fundraising strategist and sector leader Nina Saffuri, Co-Founder of Raise Impact, who delivered an inspiring and practical session on one of the toughest challenges in corporate partnerships: how to get through the door.

Mindset

Nina began the session by challenging the group to “get away from your desk.” Her message was clear: success doesn’t come from waiting for the perfect prospect or email reply; it comes from action.

Here are some of our key takeaways: 

• Relationships matter more than transactions
• Curiosity opens more doors than a perfect pitch
• Face-to-face wins trust and is far more effective than email

With 93% of communication being non-verbal, showing up in person is a game-changer.

Mapping 

One of the most empowering parts of the session was realising that charities often have more contacts than they think. Nina encouraged the group to look closely at the people already connected to their organisations, from trustees and donors to suppliers and even service users, and use platforms like LinkedIn to uncover connections. 

Nina also encouraged the group to build their dream prospect list based on values, location, and alignment, while staying alert to trigger moments like leadership changes or ESG announcements.

Mobilise

With clarity on who to target, the focus turned to how to reach them. Nina shared techniques to create opportunities for connection, from attending or hosting industry panels to small events tailored to a corporate’s lifestyle and interests.

This approach embodies everything Remarkable10 stands for: thinking differently, acting boldly, and building real momentum.

Remarkable10 is our flagship 12-month accelerator programme designed to help charities unlock strategic, high-value corporate partnerships. Through 10 in-person sessions, expert guidance, peer support and practical tools, Remarkable10 gives you the confidence, skills and structure to build partnerships that deliver real value. Whether you're starting from scratch or looking to grow existing relationships, this programme is built to deliver bold results.

This session reminded us that powerful corporate partnerships often start with a conversation. Sometimes you just have to make the first move. 

Want to join our January or February cohort for the next Remarkable10?
We’re currently enrolling the next charities. https://info.remarkablepartnerships.com/remarkable-10 

Contact us:

Jonathan Andrews – jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com
Peter Chiswick – peter@remarkablepartnerships.com
Georgina Oxlade – georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com

We recently delivered our fourth session of Remarkable10, and it’s safe to say it was one of the most energising and transformational sessions yet. Remarkable10 is our 12-month accelerator programme, created to help charities deliver transformational corporate partnerships results. 

Titled Crack the Corporate Code, this session gave participating charities the tools and confidence to approach companies more boldly, commercially, and strategically. It was all about shifting mindsets from “what can we ask for?” to “how can we be a valuable partner?”

Our guest speaker, Matt Turner MBE 

We were proud to welcome Matt Turner MBE as our guest speaker for this session. Matt is the CEO and founder of Creative Pod, an award-winning design and marketing agency. And he has recently been awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in His Majesty, The King's Birthday Honours List. His MBE is for his achievements and services to Business and to Charity. 

Matt shared practical insights from his experience working with both small businesses and major brands, helping our charities better understand how corporate decision-makers think, what they value, and how to speak their language. From simplifying messaging to uncovering a company’s commercial pain points, Matt encouraged everyone in the room to be braver, ask bigger questions, and offer smarter solutions. “Companies don’t give because they’re kind; they give because it aligns with their goals. Our job? To show them how we fit into that picture.”

Cracking the corporate code 

This session wasn’t just about listening; like every Remarkable10 session, it was designed for action. Each charity focused on real challenges they’re facing, with support from our team to help turn ideas into next steps.

We explored what strategic corporate partnerships truly look like in practice and how charities can begin building them more intentionally. Participants took part in confidence-building exercises, working together to practice asking open questions, framing their value more clearly, and planning bold next steps, all with our expert team on hand to support and guide.

Every participant left with three clear, personalised actions to help them "crack the corporate code" with their next prospect or partner.

Real progress and results 

Several participants have already started seeing tangible outcomes from the programme. Some have booked meetings with new corporate prospects, while others have pitched bold, refreshed ideas to existing partners. 

We’ve seen participants reactivating dormant corporate partnerships, companies that had previously supported the charity but had gone quiet over time. With renewed confidence, sharper messaging, and a focus on shared purpose, participants are finding ways to bring these relationships back to life.

We also had some wonderful feedback from Toby Freeman, Founder & CEO of The Robin Cancer Trust. Robin joined the Remarkable10 programme after hearing success stories from other charities that had already benefited from the experience. And he recognised the value it could bring to his team.

Since joining, Toby has embraced both peer-to-peer learning and expert guidance from the Remarkable Partnerships team. He’s seen his confidence grow significantly, not just in how he communicates with corporates, but in the belief he has in his mission and the value Robin Cancer Trust can offer to potential partners.

He’s found the consistent support between sessions especially helpful, keeping him motivated and focused. For Toby, Remarkable10 is helping turn ambition into action, providing the clarity and momentum to get where they want to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1R5PRhJW8A

Register you interest in joining the next Remarkable10 programme starting in September here: https://info.remarkablepartnerships.com/remarkable-10

Contact us:

Jonathan Andrews – jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com
Peter Chiswick – peter@remarkablepartnerships.com
Georgina Oxlade – georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com

At Remarkable Partnerships, we’ve spent over a decade helping hundreds of charities unlock strategic, high-value corporate relationships. That experience has shaped our most ambitious initiative yet: the latest round of our transformational 12-month accelerator programme, Remarkable10.

This isn’t a training course, it’s a hands-on, results-focused journey designed to drive real change. It combines expert guidance, peer collaboration and a proven framework that’s already helping participating charities achieve tangible outcomes.

What participants are saying

One of those participants is Adam Whiteley, Corporate Partnerships Manager at Independent Age. Reflecting on his experience so far, he shared: “The programme so far has been brilliant, I’m learning loads. It’s inspiring, it’s energising, and I’m using it every day in my role.”

Adam’s progress is a perfect example of the programme in action. After just the first session, he identified a high-street retailer, a cold prospect at the time, who shared Independent Age’s purpose. 

We refer to this shared purpose as “The Secret Sauce,” and it’s central to our approach. Adam reached out with a bold idea, and when the company responded with interest, our team supported him in preparing a compelling pitch. The meeting went exceptionally well, and Independent Age is now in active discussions with the retailer about working together. This kind of momentum is exactly what Remarkable10 is designed to create, and our team will continue to support Adam and others every step of the way.

Why did we create Remarkable10?

According to our latest research, 80% of charity leaders believe that corporate partnerships are very or extremely important to their fundraising. Yet fewer than 20% feel confident about hitting their income targets this year.

The most successful charities we studied aren’t waiting for change; they’re creating it. The things that set them apart include focusing on commercial value, embracing creative approaches and activating internal and external networks. We’ve taken these learnings and woven them directly into the Remarkable10 programme.

When you join Remarkable10, you gain access to:

• 11 inspirational in-person sessions in central London over 12 months
  
• A step-by-step framework to secure new partnerships and grow existing ones
  
• Exclusive insights from expert speakers from leading charities and companies
  

You will work alongside 9 other ambitious charities, learning and growing together.

Throughout, our experienced team will offer hands-on support. They don’t just advise from the sidelines; they roll up their sleeves and get involved, even joining client meetings when needed to help drive results.

In a time when fundraising teams are stretched, pipelines are uncertain, and internal buy-in is more complex than ever, Remarkable10 delivers what charities need most: structure, energy and measurable success. And we’re confident enough in the outcomes to guarantee them. If you invest £10,000 and don’t achieve at least £50,000 in value, we’ll refund 50% of your investment.

The next Remarkable10 programme starts in September and is now open for enrolment, with only seven places remaining. You can register your interest today if your charity is ready to take corporate partnerships to the next level, at info.remarkablepartnerships.com/remarkable-10.

Contact us:

Jonathan Andrews – jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com
Peter Chiswick – peter@remarkablepartnerships.com
Georgina Oxlade – georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com

In tough economic times many charities find themselves under pressure. You are juggling increased demand with smaller budgets, and trying to engage companies who are facing challenges too.

Our new research, based on a survey of over 50 charity leaders, delivers a clear message: the charities that win in tough times aren’t just resilient - they’re bold.

The Reality Facing Charity Leaders

The data reveals a challenging picture:

• 40% of charities are significantly or severely impacted by current economic conditions.
• 80% say corporate partnerships are very or extremely important to their fundraising.
• However, fewer than 20% are confident of hitting their corporate partnerships targets this year.

In other words, corporate partnerships have never been more vital - or more difficult to secure.

The Barriers Are Real - But Not Insurmountable

Charities told us their biggest barriers to building corporate partnerships are:

• Low brand awareness (56%)
• Difficulty engaging companies (35%)
• Lack of internal support - only 32% said their Trustees and colleagues are fully on board.

With corporate partnerships teams often under-resourced and under pressure, it’s easy to fall into a reactive mode. But our research shows that the charities who are achieving success are adapting their approach.

What Sets the Successful Apart?

The top-performing charities are taking bold, strategic action:

• 66% are focusing on value for the company
• 64% are being more creative in their approach
• 53% are activating their networks by asking Trustees, colleagues and partners for warm leads.

The results speak for themselves - the most successful strategies are those that show clear commercial value and creativity. These are the charities acting like customer-focused innovators - not passive recipients of goodwill.

A Clear Call to Action

If your charity is struggling to get the attention of companies, you need to rethink your approach. That doesn’t mean chasing quick wins or mass mailing companies. It means investing in genuine partnerships that deliver shared value.

Use this link to download our research report

Ready to Be Remarkable?

We’re working with a cohort of charities ready to go further, faster. If you want to:

• Build bold, creative, commercially smart partnerships
• Gain buy-in across your organisation
• Turn corporate partnerships into a strategic advantage

Contact us:

Jonathan Andrews – jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com
Peter Chiswick – peter@remarkablepartnerships.com
Georgina Oxlade – georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com

In tough economic and political times, it’s easy to assume that companies will put partnerships on hold. The instinct is to hunker down, wait out the storm, and hope for better days.

But now is exactly the time to lean in. Charities and companies need each other more than ever — to navigate uncertainty, drive impact, and come out stronger on the other side.

That’s why it’s crucial for charity leaders to stay confident, lead with purpose, and show their teams what’s possible. Here are 3 power moves you can make right now to unlock the full potential of corporate partnerships.

Lead the charge

Successful corporate partnerships start from within.  When charity leaders lead with energy, it’s contagious, lifting teams, motivating trustees, and rallying supporters. That spark spreads, creating momentum that powers the whole organisation forward.

As the Motivational speaker Tony Robbins says, “Energy is not only the basis of our existence, it is the fuel that makes everything in our lives real and possible.”

Energy isn’t just a force; it’s something you create. It’s how you bring your team together, inspire your trustees to lead boldly, and empower colleagues to build on each other’s ideas with purpose. If you’re not bringing energy, why would anyone else?

To lead the charge, reconnect with what fuels your energy, it sparks belief, inspires ideas, and builds the foundation for success.

Paint a picture of success

Corporate partnerships success starts with vision. Remarkable leaders inspire belief by helping others see the mission clearly. When teams, trustees, and partners understand the impact they’re making, they feel part of something bigger. It’s about creating a vision so compelling that it draws people in, even when challenges arise.

When I led a sales team at Sony, standing on stage at the awards ceremony after winning our first division award, I saw an opportunity to Paint a Picture of Success. I asked the team, “Where do we want to be this time next year?” That question sparked a shared vision and strategic focus that brought us back to the stage three years in a row.

To build shared vision and momentum in fundraising, craft a compelling narrative that helps your team see not just the mission, but the tangible impact they can create together. When everyone shares your vision, ambition transforms into achievement, driving remarkable outcomes.

Inspire laser like focus

When building corporate partnerships, it’s easy to think that a long list of prospects is a sign of progress. But lots of prospects can quickly become a trap. A lengthy list is overwhelming, and most teams never get past the first few names. Worse still, it often leads to a scattergun approach — sending generic messages to dozens of companies and hoping something sticks.

This “spray and pray” method rarely delivers results. It wastes time, drains energy, and leads to disappointment.

A better strategy is to focus your efforts on a small number of well-qualified prospects. These are the companies that align with your mission, have real potential to make an impact, and are far more likely to convert into meaningful partnerships.

Encourage your team to go deep, not wide — and keep their attention locked on the opportunities that matter most. As Stephen Covey wisely said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

If you want build game-changing corporate partnerships, connect with us on LinkedIn: Remarkable Partnerships, Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick

Find out more about our corporate partnerships accelerator Remarkable10

Last week’s Corporate Partnerships Everywhere conference was an incredible injection of inspiration and advice from expert speakers. From strategy to innovation, there was no shortage of valuable takeaways. Here are six game-changing insights that stood out for us.

Building corporate partnerships is like making wine
Matt Turner from Creative Pod said that building corporate partnerships is like making wine. Just like running your own vineyard, you won’t get a great return in the first two years, but after that it will deliver you incredible value every year. This means you need the right people in your charity who understand the business community and are passionate about building long-term relationships.

Find creative solutions
Filipe Gaspar from the LEGO Group and Amandeep Hoonjan from Institute of Imagination spoke about how their organisations have partnered together over the last eight years. One of the key ingredients that makes their partnership so strong is they work together to find solutions. Challenges are inevitable in every relationship, so what matters is the attitude you bring to overcome them. When you come together with positivity and creativity then you can find a way to overcome even the greatest hurdles.

Consistency is key
Joe Waters from Selfish Giving shared a powerful session about creating engaging, effective newsletter content using the 60/40 rule. 60% of content should provide value for the reader, and 40% should be dedicated to promoting your cause. Once you get the content right, you need to be consistent. Regularly sending your corporate newsletter is the key to building lasting relationships with prospects and partners, ultimately driving greater support for your charity.

Collective energy 

Javed Thomas from The Collaboratory said a corporate movement is when a collective of companies support one cause, because a systematic change needs to happen. By joining together, multiple companies can work towards solving a problem – like mental health, black lives matter or a more equal City of London. It is this collective energy, focused on one issue, that makes change possible. 

Fundraising is sales

Deri Llewellyn-Davies, author of Strategy on a Page, explained that fundraising is very similar to sales, but many fundraisers lack formal sales training. Without a strong sales mindset, charities may struggle to manage their prospect pipeline, and conver prospects into partners. To succeed, charities should embed a structured, sales-driven culture at every level to effectively manage and grow their fundraising.

Emotional engagement is key

Andy King of Fireside Fundraising said that when reaching out to a busy prospect, start with empathy. Remember, no response doesn’t always mean disinterest, it’s often just the result of their busy day. By understanding this, you can stay motivated and persistent. To truly stand out, find unique ways to articulate the emotion of your cause as soon as you can. Emotions drive action faster than logic, so focus on creating a genuine connection with your prospects through your stories. 

Conclusion

As fundraisers it is essential that we find ways to top up our enthusiasm and re-energise ourselves. A great way to do this is to attend conferences, listen to podcasts and read blogs and books.

If you want build bigger and better corporate partnerships connect with us on LinkedIn: Remarkable Partnerships, Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick

Find out more about our corporate partnerships accelerator Remarkable10

I often describe Alan Clayton as the Al Pacino of fundraising. When he speaks you hang on his every word, and he leaves you believing that anything is possible.

Now he has launched his first book, “Great Fundraising Organisations” this is a moment to savour. Because the stories, inspiration and insight in this book are like gold dust for fundraisers and charity leaders.

I attended the launch of his book in London last week. So I want to share five powerful insights that I took away.

Biggest barrier to fundraising success

Alan has worked with Professor Adrian Sargent over the last 10 years to discover why and how charities succeed at raising money. Their research revealed that the biggest barrier to fundraising success is, “internal conflict that leads to consensus driven compromise.”

If you work in fundraising then you’ve probably experienced this. I once worked with a charity where the marketing team had made a decision that they only shared positive stories about their service users. Even though I explained that we needed to share the problems that people face to engage potential corporate partners, they refused to budge. This internal resistance reduced the power of their stories which made it hard to build partnerships.

Internal conflict is draining. It wastes huge amounts of time, energy and money. Every time a fundraiser meets it their morale drops, and they believe a little bit less in what the they are trying to do. Ultimately it causes talented fundraisers to leave.

Two separate businesses

Alan explained that this conflict is inevitable because charities consist of two separate businesses:

1. The one that meets the needs of service users.
2. The one that meets the needs of donors.

The first business is all about reputation. They focus on the solution, details and avoiding risks.

The second business is all about the problem and purpose. They focus on achieving targets, keeping it simple and taking risks.

When we spell it out like this we can see why these two internal businesses are often at logger heads.

Alan’s advice is simple, “Be the best at both. Build respect and co-operation between the two businesses.”

The power of a new ambition

When Jayne George joined RNLI in 2018 their fundraising had flatlined. She new that they needed a new ambition to inspire and engage their colleagues and donors.

They worked with Alan and his team at Revolutionise International to find a fresh and engaging way of expressing their purpose. They involved the volunteers who work on the lifeboats and their shared stories about saving lives at sea. And the inspirational purpose that emerged was, “To save every one.”

From this ambition they crafted new communications that reignited their fundraising. And the results were incredible! Fundraising income grew from £182million in 2018 to £260million in 2026 (42% growth in eight years).

As Jayne says, “If you produce inspirational communications they inspire everybody.”

Trustees who get investment

Trustee support is essential for fundraising success. This is because they manage risk, they can make introductions to their contacts, and they ultimately decide where the charity invests its money.

Investment in fundraising is crucial. Look at the figures achieved by RNLI over the last eight years. Indeed, on page 12 of his book Alan shares 12 graphs showing charities that achieved transformational growth. This is why he says, “you don’t need fundraisers on your board you need people experienced in investment.”

I had coffee this week with a charity trustee who worked in investment banking. He said he believes in the power of investment in fundraising because the return is incredible. Interestingly there are other trustees on that charity board who have experience in investment too, and they have just decided to invest more in growing fundraising.

Collective energy

Once you have your new ambition you can use it to get your colleagues fired-up and united to raise the money. Achieving transformational growth depends on people that show-up because they have focus and energy.

I have seen this with my own eyes. When I was at Alzheimer’s Society we doubled fundraising income in four years. We were so focused and energised you could see it in our eyes. There was a recession going on in the outside world, but we were still achieving transformational growth.

When you have focus and energy you move faster and more efficiently. As Alan observes, “Pace transforms performance.”

Conclusion

Alan’s book is one of the most important events that has happened in my 28 years in fundraising. I hope these insights encourage and inspire you to be great at fundraising and drive transformational growth.

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Do you want to transform your corporate partnerships results? Then you might be interested in our ground-breaking new service Remarkable 10: https://info.remarkablepartnerships.com/remarkable-10

1. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
2. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/
3. Join our Remarkable Opportunities WhatsApp Group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DVqtBRBUlSE5dSy4ZNWrHg

We organised a webinar to support corporate fundraisers to make this year remarkable.

We had two expert speakers:

• Lizzie Smith, Senior Partnership Development Manager from RSPB.
• Peter Chiswick, Director of Corporate from Remarkable Partnerships.

Here are their recommendations to help you smash your goals in 2025.

1. BE BOLD

This could be approaching a company with a bigger ambition or contacting the brand you think is ‘too big’ or ‘too scary’. It could even be challenging a prospect or partner to commit to something more – more impactful, more valuable, more engaging. What is the thing that will be truly transformational for your cause and your charity? Find your entrepreneurial spirit, be audacious, be bold. 

2. INJECT THE WHY INTO EVERY CONVERSATION

We are all great storytellers. Think about when you’re preparing for an important pitch, you’ll spend weeks crafting the narrative, practising with your colleagues/friends/family and bringing the impact of your partnership to life. But it’s so easy to forget the importance of storytelling in the day to day. How can you make sure every conversation with your partner – whether it’s your regular catch up with a partner, a governance meeting, or comms planning session – keeps those stories alive, and leaves them with that same feeling of inspiration, hope and connection to your cause in every single conversation? 

3. CREATE YOUR SQUAD OF CORPROATE PARTNERSHIPS CHEERLEADERS

Who are the people who can help you on this journey? Who can help you come up with creative, innovative and exciting propositions? Who can challenge you to be bold – even when it feels really uncomfortable and scary? Who can advocate for you at work, or with your partners, to help make sure you have the right support, resource, and airtime needed to make your partnerships thrive?

4. USE THE POWER OF VISUALISATION

Peter used the power of visualisation to drive sales success for Sony. He was working in a competitive electronics sector, and he used visualisation to transform goals into tangible results over consecutive years. It began at an awards ceremony, where his team won an award. After they received the award Peter asked his team where they wanted to be in a year’s time. They said back here receiving the award again. That vision energised the team to set ambitious goals, overcome challenges, and transform ideas into outcomes.

Here are three reasons why using visualisation is an essential tool for successful corporate fundraisers:

1. Visualisation creates clarity by defining goals and the steps needed to achieve them.
2. It drives motivation and belief, helping to overcome barriers by boosting confidence and maintaining focus.
3. It energises your team around a shared vision, enhancing collaboration and purpose.

5. CREATE YOUR VISION FOR 2025

You can increase your chances of making this year remarkable by writing a letter to yourself. Start by putting the date at the top as 31^st December 2025! Write to yourself about the following:

• Describe the brilliant results you have achieved this year. 
• What challenges did you overcome?
• Who supported you during the year?
• Tell yourself you feel as you look back on your success?
• Identify the qualities that you showed to make this year remarkable.

CONCLUSION

We hope these recommendations support you to deliver your goals in 2025. It’s all about taking baby steps, every day, to deliver your vision. What’s the one thing that you will do today to make your year remarkable?

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Do you want to transform your corporate partnerships results in 2025? Then you might be interested in our ground-breaking new service Remarkable 10: https://info.remarkablepartnerships.com/remarkable-10

1. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
2. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/
3. Join our Remarkable Opportunities WhatsApp Group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DVqtBRBUlSE5dSy4ZNWrHg

2024 has provided a lot of challenges for both charities and businesses. In tough times it is especially important to focus on the positives. This is the perfect time of year to stop for a moment and reflect. So, we want to share our five corporate partnerships lessons from 2024.

Keep it simple 
Companies are juggling lots of priorities, so it can be hard to get there. We have seen that the charities who keep it simple are getting the best results. Detailed written documents, long emails and pitches listing the volume of programmes that your charity delivers are not getting cut through. So, when time is short, getting to the point quickly and haring the emotional and commercial reasons to partner is the key to success. 

Power of insight 
More than ever, companies are looking for evidence of the return on investment (ROI) for supporting a charity. This year we launched our Profitable Partnerships Research, which shared evidence that charity partnerships help company’s deliver their commercial goals. We encourage you to use this research, and your own calculations of the value your charity brings, to persuade companies to partner with you. 

Networking produces results 
As Daniel Priestley says, “You get what you pitch for, and you’re always pitching.” It is vital that we find ways to network with our target audience. Fundraisers who put themselves out there and attend networking events are experiencing greater success in 2024. Lyndsay Dixon from SolarAid said, “2024 has really produced results for us from networking. By attending solar industry events, we have built relationships, developed our prospect list and won partnerships.” 

Build a partnerships culture 
Corporate partnerships are a team game. In 2024 we have seen that the charities whose senior management team, trustees and colleagues are all on the same page are the ones who are gaining momentum in corporate partnerships. Contact mapping is a great way to involve your senior colleagues and identify new business leads.  

Find the company’s pain 
The most valuable advice that we have given to our charity clients in 2024 is “Find the company’s pain.” It could be they are struggling to retain their talented employees, or may they find it difficult to stand out from the competition. Once you know their pain, you can partnership opportunity that helps solve it. This will make you a priority for your corporate prospects. 

Although 2024 has been tough, we have seen the enduring courage and resilience of corporate fundraisers, battling the head winds to build world-changing partnerships.  

We hope these five lessons are useful to you. 

If you have feedback on our blog, or have questions about our services to get you corporate partnerships results in 2025, then please contact us: team@remarkablepartnerships.com.  

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You can also:

1. Check out our training courses: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training/
2. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
3. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/

We know it can be difficult to build corporate partnerships in this challenging economic climate. That's why we held a free webinar to support charities to build momentum during tough times. 

We heard from four inspiring speakers who are making progress right now: 

• Louise Bingham from The Felix Project 

• Rachael Ogden-Wilson from Sea-Changers 

• Louise Colbran from Sussex Wildlife Centre 

• Peter Chiswick from Remarkable Partnerships 

They shared these 10 practical recommendations: 

1. Think outside the box
Find creative ways to get your foot in the door and engage your prospects. For example, The Felix Project offers companies an intern workshop on food waste, which helps solve a problem for human resources teams struggling to find engaging activities for interns and graduates in their first week.

2. Know your value
Have confidence in the value of your charity and your brand. Create an internal matrix that outlines different partnership levels and the benefits you can deliver for each one. Then, review your levels to ensure you're not undervaluing yourself. For example, The Felix Project raised their minimum partnership value from £5,000 to £15,000.

3. Have the ability to say no
Louise Bingham’s first manager offered invaluable advice: “When is a gift not a gift? When it takes more than it gives!” Know when to say no and avoid wasting time on partnerships that drain your resources.

4. Create excitement
The Sea-Changers team meets weekly to brainstorm shared purpose and tailored activities for their prospects. This creative energy motivates them to engage with and follow up on leads. As Rachael puts it, “How can I get a company excited if I’m not excited in the first place?”

5. Focus and persist
Sea-Changers have increased their focus by identifying their top 10 prospects and putting them into a pipeline. They’re persistent because they know that building corporate partnerships requires playing the long game.

6. Engage with the cause
As a grant-giving charity, Sea-Changers have found it challenging to engage companies with the cause. To address this, they organised an online Project Showcase featuring four initiatives they've supported. Inviting corporate partners and prospects to this event was a powerful way to engage them emotionally.

7. Go back to your roots
Sussex Wildlife Centre developed a new strategy and is using it to engage companies. By sharing their strategy and discussing how it aligns with corporate partners’ values and goals, they identify common goals that can serve as the foundation for a meaningful partnership.

8. It’s not just about the money
Louise from Sussex Wildlife Centre has emphasized to her senior leadership team and trustees that corporate partnerships should be strategic and not solely about financial support. Companies can add value in many ways, for example, companies are helping Sussex Wildlife Centre with PR and IT support, and even providing an electric vehicle!

9. Don’t forget about your current partners
Sussex Wildlife Centre is reconnecting with current partners to understand what they want from the partnership. They're also hosting events where partners can collaborate, share ideas, and work together to move the charity forward.

10. Identify the company’s pain points
Understand your corporate prospect’s challenges. When you engage with them, uncover their pain points and position your charity as a solution provider. How can you help them with employee retention? How can you make them stand out from competitors? How can you help them meet their ESG goals? When you’re helping solve their pain you’re increasing your chances of success, because you are relevant to them and you’re a priority.

We hope these recommendations help you build momentum. Is there one you can use with your partners and prospects? Remember, success comes from taking many small steps in the right direction. You can take that first step today. 

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You can also:

1. Check out our training courses: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training/
2. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
3. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/

I am passionate about corporate-charity partnerships because of the positive impact they make on the world. They also deliver significant benefits for the company and the charity. 

A great example is the partnership between Fever Tree and Malaria No More. They have partnered together since 2013 to save millions of lives from malaria. This partnership is hugely beneficial for Fever Tree because it helps them stand out from their competitors, and it makes their colleagues feel proud to work for a purpose-driven company. It also delivers significant benefits for Malaria No More because it has increased their profile and raised over £1.75 million to fight malaria. 

There are many more examples of inspirational partnerships between companies and charities. However, according to the UK Civil Society Almanac 2003 donations from companies only account for 5% of total voluntary income for charities. It seems that we are scratching the surface when it comes to corporate-charity partnerships.

The need for evidence 

We believe this is because many companies aren’t aware of the opportunity of charity partnerships. This could be because the benefits for companies are less obvious than the benefits for charities. 

Indeed, last year we asked a small number of companies whether charity partnerships deliver significant value for their organisation. 45% said they neither agree nor disagree with that statement. 

This suggests that companies are either undecided or unaware of the value of charity partnerships. But they could be convinced if they were shown evidence that they deliver commercial value.

Profitable Partnerships Research

So we decided to carry out research to gather this evidence. We worked with Rogare – The Fundraising Think Tank – to review academic publications from across the world. We also interviewed eight business and charity leaders. 

We called this research Profitable Partnerships because it provides a compelling business case for companies to partner with charities. 

Here are some highlights from the research: 

• Statistical analysis of 2,000 of the world’s biggest companies showed that giving more to charity led to increased financial performance. (Liang and Renneboog, 2017) 

• Corporate philanthropy generates “positive moral capital” among a company’s stakeholders that is well received by them. (Godfrey, 2005) 

• This moral capital acts as “insurance-like protection” for the company’s intangible assets, particularly its relationships with stakeholders. (Godfrey, 2005) 

• “The benefit for companies is you're engaging people, you're building loyalty within teams. You're making a more collegiate atmosphere. You're making a more attractive place to come and work. You're able to demonstrate social value for commercial purposes.” (Tom Roundell Greene, Head of Sustainability at Carter Jonas)  

• “When I was working at School Home Support, there was a very long-standing partnership with a company called Liberum. There was lots of on the ground volunteering. We did a survey and we were able to demonstrate quantifiably the increased connection that volunteers had to Liberum as a business as a result our partnership.” (Laura Hughes-Onslow, Director of Development at The Mayor’s Fund for London)

We recommend you use this evidence when you meet your corporate partners or prospects to persuade them to build ambitious partnerships with you. 

Use this link to download your copy of the Profitable Partnerships Research.

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You can also:

1. Check out our training courses: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training/
2. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
3. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/

When I worked in the corporate sector, I used to think that business and charity were worlds apart. My corporate life was all about the bottom line, growth, and outsmarting the competition. On the other hand, charities I thought were about compassion, giving back, and making the world a better place. It felt like two completely different worlds.

Driven by the relentless pursuit of targets, the prospect of volunteering at our local charity did not seem a priority. However, as part of the leadership team, we still wanted to use our corporate skills, to make a real impact. However, when we arrived, it was a far cry from our expectations as we taken into an old yard with a pot and some brushes to paint a wall. Our offers to help with marketing, IT systems, or HR strategies were met with blank stares, leaving us to tackle a neglected wall and start painting. That day, the divide between the corporate world and the charity sector felt wider than ever. Years passed, but the charity volunteering experiences remained the same, endless rounds of short-term activities, which failed to create any value for lasting change.

The pandemic changed everything, reshaping both the world and my career path. As the corporate world had to quickly adapt to keep up with society's growing demand for purpose-led companies, I felt compelled towards helping support meaningful change. Leaving the corporate world was a leap of faith, but the chance to use my experience and bridge the gap between business and charity was an opportunity too good to miss.

Driven with a passion for creating positive change, I joined Remarkable Partnerships to use my corporate experience to start building shared purpose partnerships, that delivered equal lasting value for both corporations and charities. One partnership I helped create, is between Nomad Exhibitions and SolarAid. This is a great example of how a company can use its professional expertise to support a charity to achieve its mission. As a global leader in immersive exhibition stands, Nomad Exhibitions sought to demonstrate its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint. SolarAid, an international development charity dedicated to providing clean, safe solar power, were perfectly aligned with Nomad’s sustainability goals. The clear shared purpose between them was a powerful combination that promised to make a real difference.

Nomad Exhibitions created a truly immersive stand for SolarAid that captivated audiences at a major London event. The stand transported attendees to the heart of a Malawian village, where the transformative power of solar light was brought to life. Visitors experienced firsthand how SolarAid's work is changing lives, from education to healthcare. By creating such a compelling and immersive experience, Nomad helped SolarAid connect with a new audience of potential supporters, shining a spotlight on their vital work. In return, SolarAid prominently featured Nomad’s brand on the stand and on their website, demonstrating their strong partnership and the company’s dedication to a low-carbon future. Nomad Exhibitions continues to partner with SolarAid, providing essential visual guides to expand their reach and inspire new supporters.

My journey from corporate sceptic to passionate advocate for company-charity partnerships has been transformative. Once convinced that profit and purpose were worlds apart, I now see them as one. The collaboration between Nomad Exhibitions and SolarAid highlights how shared-purpose partnerships can harness the power of both sectors to drive positive change.

When companies and charities come together with a shared purpose, transformation happens. By us challenging outdated beliefs about these partnerships by unlocking the incredible potential that lies within these collaborations, we can create a world that's better for everyone. It's time to redefine what's possible when companies and charities work together.

If you would like to book in a call with me to find out how you can transform your corporate charity partnerships approach, please use the link here: https://meetings.hubspot.com/peter-chiswick

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You can also:

1. Check out our training courses: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training/
2. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
3. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/

One lesson I will never forget was from Alan Clayton, CEO at Revolutionise International. I was attending his annual lecture in London and he said, “the most successful fundraisers have lots of coffees and lunches.”

It sounds so simple, but it was such valuable advice for me. In fact, it reminded me of one of the highlights of my career. 

When I was at Action for Children I was invited to a horse racing corporate hospitality day. I’m not a great fan of horse racing, but I accepted the invitation because I thought it might be a good networking opportunity. And I was right! 

I arrived at 11am and was immediately offered a glass of champagne. Indeed, the food and drink was high quality and plentiful throughout the day. 

I started chatting with the other guests in our hospitality box and there was one person who I really got on with. I will call him Mark, (I’ve changed his name to protect his privacy). Mark told me he ran a company based in London, but he was more interested in hearing about what I did. 

I told him I worked for Action for Children and we were focused on preventing youth homelessness. I also shared a story about one of the young people who we had supported. 

Mark said his company was looking for charity to be the beneficiary of their Christmas raffle, so I should get in touch afterwards if I was interested. 

When I went into the office the following day I did some research on Mark, and I discovered that his company was one of the fastest growing in the UK and he was in the top 100 richest people in the UK. 

I followed up with him and secured the support of his Christmas raffle that raised an incredible £76,000! Since then Mark has gone onto become one of Action for Children’s most valuable supporters. 

I think you will agree that this story shows that Alan Clayton is right when he says, “the most successful fundraisers have lots of coffees and lunches.” 

What is the most valuable lesson that someone gave you? I would love to hear from you.

Please email jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com 

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Are you a charity or company looking to build strong partnerships that deliver your core objectives? 

Then here is what you can do: 

1. Check out our training courses: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training/
2. Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jonathan Andrews, Georgina Oxlade and Peter Chiswick
3. Join our mailing list for inspiration, insights and practical advice: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Written by Georgina Oxlade, Director of Operations, Remarkable Partnerships.

Success isn't just about what you do. It's also about what you don't do. We see charities make the same mistakes again and again. Then they get disheartened when the results don't come. So, here are our five recommendations of mistakes to avoid when building corporate partnerships:

1. Stop sending proposals too early

One common mistake is when a proposal is sent after the first meeting. The goal of a first meeting is to secure a second meeting, so sending a proposal stops the opportunity to build a strong relationship, and to truly understand the potential of a long-term strategic partnership.

We often liken this bad habit to proposing after a first date, it scares people away! So take your time, continue to meet and present opportunities that meet to the company’s business objectives, and wait for the right time when you all agree that the ideas need to be put into a proposal and the budget has been discussed.

2. Stop asking

Charities that continue to ask for companies support, rather than pitch an opportunity are missing the opportunity to present themselves as an equal partner, with a lot to offer.

If you are able to find a shared purpose with a company that aligns with your charities mission, and present them an opportunity that help them achieve their business objectives, you are far more likely to succeed.  Lisa from HFT, Learning Disability Allies says “Since shifting from asking to offering with the corporate prospects I am speaking to, it has been a gamechanger. No longer do companies ignore my communications, but instead they are keen to meet with me to hear how a partnership with our charity can help them”.

3. Stop sending blanket emails

Having received an email in to my own inbox this week from someone trying to sell me something that was clearly generic, I know that it didn’t make me feel special, in fact, it put me off completely. So, I just pressed delete.

Sue Vincent from HVA said “I realised this was what we were doing as a charity, so I stopped my Trustees sending a mass mailing to attract corporate support. Instead we invested the same time in approaching one or two quality contacts, and are seeing far better results”.

The most powerful tool for to secure a first meeting is a warm introduction, so get Trustees and senior management to make a few quality introductions, with a powerful first email to them to secure that first meeting.

4. Stop ignoring the companies culture

Each company has its own culture, values, and operational style. Charities are still making the mistake of imposing their own processes and expectations without considering the company. This mismatch can lead to the company not feeling understood or valued.

Take the time to understand your partner’s company culture and adapt your approach accordingly. Flexibility and sensitivity to their way of working will result in a stronger partnership that lasts for longer.

5. Stop neglecting partners

Clear, consistent communication is vital in any partnership. Unfortunately, many charities make the mistake of irregular or insufficient communication with their corporate partners, especially when things get busy. This can lead to misunderstandings, unmet expectations, and ultimately, a weakened partnership. In a competitive partnership environment, this is the last thing you want. Five star account management processes are key.

During the Lloyds Banking Group and BBC Children in Need partnership, the team created monthly opportunities for face to face meetings, as well as quarterly review meetings where both sides scored the partnership on progress against its key objectives. It was the points of difference that became the topic of the meetings to resolve them.

Conclusion

Corporate-charity partnerships hold so much potential for driving social change. However, to unlock this potential, charities should avoid these common mistakes.

If you are able adjust your ways if working, you will not only enhance your current partnerships, but support your new business potential, ultimately increasing your charity’s impact and reach.

If you have feedback on this blog, or have questions about our services related maximising your corporate partnerships potential, please contact: georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com.

Whether you are a chief executive, a fundraising director, or a corporate partnerships manager, you want to build high value corporate partnerships. These partnerships will help you deliver more value for less effort for your charity and your corporate partners. Notice that I’m using the word “value” not “income” because corporate partnerships can deliver significant non-financial value too, such as increased reach, skills, and introductions to other companies.

So here are our 4 recommendations to build high value corporate partnerships.

Focus on the company’s pain

People buy for two reasons: to seek pleasure or avoid pain. And we will spend a lot more money to avoid pain, rather than seek pleasure (which is why insurance companies make so much money!)

When you engage a corporate prospect you want to find their pain. I don’t just mean the company, think about the pain of the business decision maker who you want to meet. There are several ways to discover their pain. The best way is to ask them to tell you their greatest challenges or ask someone you know who works in their company or the same industry. You can also do a brainstorm with colleagues to come up with suggestions. The more you practice looking for the pain the better you will become at finding it.

Once you have a clear picture of their pain you want to build a tailored partnership opportunity that helps solve it. For example, #NHSSweatySelfie (the partnership between Gym Shark and Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity) was so successful because it helped solved the company’s pain of low awareness, by generating over 35,000 social media posts and enormous publicity. It also raised £180,000 for the charity.

Calculate your value

Shiv Khera, author and self-help expert, said, “90% of sales is conviction and 10% is persuasion.” A great way to increase your conviction to a sale is to calculate the value your partnership can deliver for the company.

We did this exercise with a charity recently and they estimated that they had £1million of value to offer their prospective partner. This calculation significantly increased their confidence to negotiate a high value partnership.

A great way to calculate your value is to identify the different ways your partnership could help the company. For example:

• Colleagues – what effect will your partnership have on employee retention and recruitment? (according to Gallup the cost of replacing an employee can range from one-half to two times their annual salary). 
• Publicity – what would be the cost of buying advertising space that would generate this positive publicity? 
• Sales – what would be the cost of hiring a sales agency to organise a similar activity?
• Brand – what is the value of being associated with your brand?

If you add these answers together you will have an estimated value of your partnership.

Engage them emotionally

People buy for emotional reasons, then justify their decision with logical reasons. Think about any purchase that you made recently, and you will realise this is the case.

This means that you need to engage company decision makers on an emotional level. And the best way to do that is tell them a powerful story.

When you engage companies emotionally it increases their commitment to partnering with you. So not only do they see that your partnership opportunity has commercial value, they also feel a deep need to help you solve the problem. This deep need helps unlock so much more value. It moves your partnership opportunity from “we could do this” to “we must do this.”

Play the long game

Building corporate partnerships is a marathon not a sprint. If you try and secure a partnership quickly you are likely to end up with something small and transactional. However, if you play the long game you can unlock the enormous potential of your partnership. Think of your partnership as having three locks where you need to turn the key for all three to open the door. These are the three keys:

• Your relationship
• The emotional case
• The business case

So you need to spend time building each of these. For example, this could mean you meet with them six times over a period of 12-18 months. Afterall, it takes time:

• To really get to know someone and build a trusting relationship.
• To engage them emotionally with your cause. You need to tell them multiple stories and show them your work first hand.
• To understand their business pain and objectives and show how you can help deliver them.

If you take the time to build these three factors and get each of them to 10 out of 10 you can unlock a high value partnership.

Conclusion

Building high value partnerships is the ultimate goal when it comes to corporate partnerships. These are the 20% of your partners that deliver 80% of the value. These are the partnerships that last and last and help you create a sustainable corporate partnerships programme.

If you want to find out how we can help you build high value corporate partnerships then email jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com

Remarkable Partnerships are seeking a freelance virtual assistant who will support us with all areas of administration.

The purpose of Remarkable Partnerships is to enable charities and companies to create ambitious partnerships, so they deliver significant benefits for both parties and create a better world. Our virtual assistant will support the team with administration, to support our growth.

If you have a can-do attitude, excellent attention to detail, and be flexible to the fast-paced nature of our work, we hope to hear from you.

Hours: 28 hours per month

Reporting to: Associate Director of Operations

Examples of regular tasks:

• Building content and sending our monthly newsletters via our database, Hubspot.
• Updating our website with events, blogs, case studies and images.
• Keeping our training content and payment processes up to date on Eventbrite.
• Building invitation lists and managing RSVPs for events on Hubspot.
• Creating bespoke marketing mailings on Hubspot by creating lists and writing copy.
• Ensuring Hubspot data is accurate and up to date.
• Support the Managing Director and Directors with ad hoc administrative asks.
• Booking meeting rooms for events and training.
• Booking travel and accommodation for team members.
• Planning and scheduling content for Linkedin.

Skills and abilities

• Ability to manage multiple tasks with different deadlines.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Excellent organisational skills.

Personal attributes

• Flexible, with a can-do attitude.
• Proactive, positive and solution focused.
• Energetic and enthusiastic.
• Honest and collaborative.

Please send your CV and a covering email to georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com by 9am on Monday 3rd June. We will then shortlist, and be in touch with all applicants in w/c 20th May.

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

Last week we held an engagement event for charity leaders. The event focused on how to deliver growth through purpose-driven corporate partnerships.

We heard from two key speakers. Ghalib Ullah, Head of Commercial Partnerships from Parkison’s UK spoke about their partnership with Next. And Georgina Oxlade, Associate Director of Operations from Remarkable Partnerships, shared an example of a successful partnership between SolarAid and Astro Lighting.

So, we want to share three valuable insights from their talks.

Get your colleagues on board

Ghalib and his team knew that they would be able to build more ambitious corporate partnerships if they had the support of their colleagues. They specifically wanted to strengthen their relationship with marketing and communications. So, they held a joint brainstorm focused on how they could work together, to build corporate partnerships that would support their marketing and communications objectives, such as dispelling the myths about Parkinson’s.

This brainstorm gave their colleagues a clearer understanding of the potential value of corporate partnerships because they could see how brands with a significant consumer audience could help them deliver their core messages. This has resulted in a must more collaborative relationship between marketing and communications and the commercial partnerships team.

Be ready to respond

One of the reasons why Parkison’s UK was able to build a major partnership with Next is they were ready to respond to an opportunity. Before he joined the charity Ghalib worked for two marketing communications agencies. This experience taught him that companies often have short-term deadlines, and they are really impressed if you are able to meet them.

There was a key moment during their partnership with Next when the company shared some product designs that needed approval within a week. This was a short amount of time, but Ghalib knew it was important that they met the deadline. They were able to do so because of all the groundwork he and his team had done building strong internal relationships, especially with the marketing and communications team.

Deliver commercial value for your partners

Georgina told us about the partnership between Astro Lighting and SolarAid. The charity could see that there was a strong shared purpose with the company, so they wanted to build a long-term partnership together. So, they focused on ensuring that the partnership delivered significant commercial value for Astro Lighting. This is particularly important during tough economic times, because companies increase their focus on delivering their bottom line.

Through their discussions it became clear that one of the company’s big challenges was engaging and uniting their mix of employees. Some are office-based lighting designers, and many are factory employees working on the production of the lights.

So SolarAid proposed a range of ideas for engaging employees which included a night-time sponsored walk with solar lights. This means that Astro Lighting has a strong business case for continuing and growing their relationship with SolarAid.

Conclusion

We hope that these insights are valuable to you. Getting your colleagues on board, being quick to respond, and delivering commercial value are three powerful ways you can build ambitious corporate partnerships.

We would love to hear any additional recommendations that you have. Please email us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com

Written by Georgina Oxlade, Director of Operations, Remarkable Partnerships. 

Introduction 

To achieve success in corporate-charity partnership it requires a team effort, and your team must include your trustees or board members. When times are tough, it is even more important to be on the same page with your board about the direction, and ambitions for your partnerships so that you can work together more effectively. Here are 5 recommendations for getting your board onboard: 

1. Demonstrate how partnerships will help achieve your goals 

Corporate-charity partnerships are a great way to achieve your organisations’ mission. When your Board understands the positive impact that partnerships can make, they are more likely to actively engage and help your partnerships grow. One way to do this is to share examples of similar organisations where partnerships have helped them achieve their goals. For example, Prostate Cancer UK partnering with The Football League helped raise awareness with their target audience of men. It may take time and persistence, but it is important to get your Board to see the bigger picture. 

2. Cultivate partnership champions 

The problem is that you can’t influence every board member at the same time. However, a small number of partnership champions can influence change. We recommend you engage those who have some corporate-charity partnership or fundraising experience. Identify Board members who could be your champions and take time to nurture those relationships. If you don’t have any Board members with these skills, you should look to recruit some more. 

3. Get their early buy-in 

One of the best ways to avoid problems down the line is involve your Board in your corporate-charity partnerships from the start. Involving them early means you can use their skills and contacts to build and deliver partnerships. When board members feel their insights are valued they will be more invested in the success of partnerships. For example, if you have plans to grow partnerships then share the action plan and financial projections with them for their input and feedback before it is set in stone.  

4. Ask them to suggest potential partners 

Your Board are the ideal people to discuss your ideas for who you would like to partners with, as they are well connected. By running a contact mapping session with the Board you could get them thinking about the ideal prospective partners for your organisation, and get them to see where they have connections. Keep it focused, just two or three quality contacts from each Board member will be enough for you to research further. 

5. Celebrate success 

Just like with your colleagues, don’t forget to celebrate when things go well. The problem is we sometimes expect that board members should help us, and forget to acknowledge their participation when things go well. By remembering who made that introduction, or who gave you feedback on an idea you were building is vital to acknowledge that your Board was part of your success. By sharing photos, or writing a thank you note, or giving positive praise to an individual who helped you, will likely spur them and others on to continue to engage and support you.  

Conclusion  

Getting your Board onboard requires persistence and effective communication. By implementing strategies like getting their early buy-in, finding your champions, and celebrating success, you can cultivate a board that not only supports your vision but actively enhances your corporate partnerships programme.  As you embark on this journey, remember that a united and engaged board is a powerful asset in your journey to corporate-charity partnerships success. 

If you have feedback on our blog, or have questions about our services related to engaging your board, or colleagues to unite them in the possibility of partnerships, then please contact us: team@remarkablepartnerships.com. 

As we think about the year ahead, we believe that purpose-driven partnerships have never been so important, because they offer companies and charities the opportunity to drive growth. This gives us hope for the future, so we want to share five important trends for corporate-charity partnerships in 2024:  

1. Demonstrate commercial value 

In 2024, it is essential that charities and companies not only demonstrate their social impact, but also the commercial value that they deliver through their partnerships. 

A successful partnership should be win-win for both partners. As David Cantin, President & CEO of Dave Cantin Group, said, “Charity partnerships are not just about giving money, they are about creating value for both parties. Charities can help companies achieve their commercial objectives, while companies can help charities fulfil their social mission.”   

2. Purpose  

Purpose driven business is an important trend for the future. In our world of change, with every increasing content and the threat of climate change, it is purpose that has cut through. This is because as human beings we want our lives to be meaningful. And given that we spend one third of our waking hours at work, we want that to be meaningful too. And this is even more important for generations Y and Z. 

Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, said, "Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society." 

This means that companies need to embrace purpose driven business. It is also a huge opportunity for charities, because the best way for a company to demonstrate its purpose is to partner with a cause where they have a shared purpose. 

3. Artificial intelligence (AI) 

We believe that AI has the potential to transform the way companies and charities build successful partnerships. For example, you can use to find partners who align with your purpose and goals, to improve performance, track their activities, and achieve greater impact. AI can also help companies and charities to build stronger partnerships by coming up with bespoke fundraising ideas that meet the needs of both partners.

Andrew Ng, co-founder or Coursera, said, “AI is the new electricity. Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.” 

4. ESG  

ESG (environmental, social, and governance) is a hugely important trend for 2024. In the UK companies with over 500 employees and/or £500m turnover are required by law to report on the ESG impacts. This puts doing good and being good at the heart of business strategy. 

Hatem Dowidar, Group CEO of e&, said, “ESG is no longer just about a philanthropic desire to do good and be a good corporate citizen. It heavily influences the way that investors, customers, and potential hires look at us as well.” 

Delivering ESG goals is essential for companies. It is also a huge opportunity for charities, because you can show companies how a partnership with your charity can help them achieve their ESG goals. 

5. Hybrid working  

Companies are adapting to the ‘new-normal’ with many more colleagues working remotely.  This means that charities need to offer fundraising and volunteering opportunities that engage and unite colleagues whether they are working remotely, in the office or a combination of both. This is an important opportunity to offer creative opportunities that that help companies overcome the challenges of hybrid working.  

Mckinsey’s recent research on employee engagement said, “when helping employees better connect with their purpose, employers can reduce staff turnover. Research shows that people who are proud of their company are four times as likely to say they would turn down a job at another organisation, even if it offered higher pay”.  

Conclusion  

Embracing these trends will your organisation seize the opportunity of purpose-driven partnerships in 2024. 

If you have feedback or questions please contact us: team@remarkablepartnerships.com.  

At this time of year, it’s great to reflect and remember our highlights. 2023 has been a challenging and remarkable year for us, so we want to share our 7 proud moments with you. 

• In January we received a wonderful phone call from Tom Harbour, CEO at Learning with Parents. He told us that they had followed our recommended approach to secure a three-year partnership with IG Group worth £750,000.  

• We launched our Hidden Opportunities report which showed why companies and charities are missing out on valuable partnership opportunities, and what you can do to unlock them. The report has been downloaded 351 times. 

• We delivered bespoke training for Stonewall’s Client Account Managers (CAMs) to help them identify and upsell partnership opportunities. Adrian Riches, Head of Business Development, said, “The training has resulted in a 100% increase in partnership opportunities referred by CAMs to our corporate partnerships team.” 

• We were proud to hear Tim Pethick CEO of Nomad Exhibitions talk so enthusiastically about their partnership with SolarAid. He said, ““For us it’s about doing something extraordinary, with great people.” 

• We delivered two workshops on The Power of Shared Purpose at IFC 2023. Participants scored our sessions 4.8 out of 5.  

• We delivered our Introduction to Corporate Partnerships training three times this year. Kelsey Lawrence from Bowel Cancer UK said, “I would recommend to anyone starting out in Corporate Partnerships. I left feeling like I was ready to take on my new role!” 

• We delivered a powerful talk at a corporate engagement for Martin House children’s hospice. After the event they said, “Your messaging was absolutely spot on and your support in talking to our prospects was invaluable.” 

If you have a charity-corporate partnerships highlight from 2023 that you want to share with us, please email team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

Written by Peter Chiswick, Director of Corporate, Remarkable Partnerships.

"ESG is not only the right thing to do, it’s also a source of competitive advantage and value creation for our customers and shareholders”.  Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia  

The economic landscape has changed, and so have the expectations and demands on companies. In this challenging climate, high performing companies have responded by embracing the opportunities possible from Environment, Social and Governance (ESG).

We believe ESG is an enormous opportunity not just for companies but also charities. 

ESG increases performance

In today’s competitive business environment, high performing companies understand the strong connection between ESG performance and financial performance. 

ESG can help companies create positive social and environmental impact, enhance brand, improve employee engagement, increase customer loyalty, and differentiate themselves from competitors. A great example is the technology company Nvidia whose foundation was set up as key ESG initiative to empower its employees to support various causes and initiatives, such as advancing cancer research and promoting STEM education. Nvidia’s profits have achieved record growth of 61% versus 2021. 

With companies now using ESG to achieve impact and performance, charities have a great opportunity to demonstrate how achieving their ESG goals can be directly linked to them.

ESG is measurable 

ESG is able to help companies benchmark their ESG performance against their peers and industry standards, and to identify areas for improvement. By using ESG framework, they are able to understand the impact of ESG activities on society and the environment. 

Unilever has successfully used ESG to benchmark and improve its sustainability performance, and to create value for its stakeholders. Unilever uses ESG to align its purpose, and business strategy with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. They have been ranked the most sustainable company in the consumer goods sector by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for ten consecutive years.       

This represents a great opportunity for charities to use their knowledge and expertise by providing credible metrics, benchmarks, and guidance to help measure their ESG performance. 

ESG reduces risk

ESG is not only a matter of values, but also a matter of risk management. 

Patagonia the clothing company is a great example of how ESG can reduce risk for a company by not only protecting its business from potential threats and challenges, but also enhance its reputation and brand loyalty among consumers and investors, who value its environmental and social impact. 

Partnering with a number of charities including Friends of Earth, they support organisations that work on issues such as climate, biodiversity, land, water and environmental justice, and that have a clear strategy and a strong base of support from all of its stakeholders.

This is great news for charities, because it reduces the risk of partnering with companies who can demonstrate they are committed to best practices of environmental, social, and governance standards.

ESG is in the boardroom

The ESG agenda is evolving in the boardroom, with a focus on recruiting passionate leaders who can use ESG to create a vision that is purposeful, inspiring and impactful. 

A great example of this is Microsoft’s’, CEO, Satya Nadella, who transformed the company’s culture by using ESG to align their vision, values, and set ambitious goals.  These include investing $1 billion in a climate innovation fund, becoming carbon negative by 2030, and launching a global skills initiative to help 25 million people worldwide through diversity and inclusion programs.  

Ranked first on the list of the 100 Best ESG Companies of 2021, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft said, “ESG is not a cost, it’s an investment. It’s an investment in our future, our planet and our people.” .

At the forefront of addressing the most pressing ESG issues and challenges in the world, charities have a great opportunity to provide valuable knowledge and guidance to help leaders transform their companies. 

ESG unites   

ESG allows businesses and society to collaborate, to address global and local challenges that affect them both. By uniting various stakeholders, such as NGOs, and communities they unite to achieve transformational impact through a clear shared purpose. 

A great example of this is Starbucks who use ESG to guide its actions and decisions and to unite their stakeholders around their purpose, “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time”.  By covering three areas: planet, people, and social impact Starbucks promotes a culture of diversity and inclusion among its partners, and provides them with the support to create a more sustainable future for coffee.

Charities have a great opportunity to become an effective promotor for a company’s vision and goals, to inspire their shareholders to unite and demonstrate their commitment to making a positive impact. 

Conclusion

ESG is an enormous opportunity. It’s vital that both companies and charities seize this moment to partner through ESG goals, by sharing their expertise, resources, and values to change our world.

Written by Georgina Oxlade, Associate Director of Operations, Remarkable Partnerships.

International Fundraising Congress (IFC) 2023 was inspirational. The theme for 2023 was Unite. We truly felt this theme throughout the conference – from the topics covered to the opportunity to network. 

Remarkable Partnerships had the pleasure of delivering two workshops during the conference, as well as attending sessions delivered by others. So we are sharing our five highlights from IFC 2023.

Momentum = mass x velocity 

Erica Chenoweth, Academic Dean at Harvard Kennedy School gave a fascinating keynote speech.  They and their team have been researching the factors which enable movements or campaigns to succeed. 

The findings had one penny drop moment for us. Erica described how we can use an insight from physics to help us deliver successful campaigns. Physics tells us that momentum = mass x velocity. Their research shows that the success of social movements increases as they gain momentum. Momentum in this instance is created through participation (mass) combined with the number of events (velocity).

So, if you want to build momentum for your campaign, consider how mass x velocity can help you achieve your goals. 

ESG is huge

We attended a thought-provoking workshop on ESG (environmental, social, governance).  

Companies are increasingly recognising that their impact needs to be measured in ways beyond their bottom line. Although ESG can be seen as tool to measure sustainability, we also see that it is an ethos that can companies follow, so they are more successful because they make a positive impact. 

Our most important take away is that ESG is a HUGE opportunity for charities to speak to corporate prospects and partners about how their partnership can help the company deliver their ESG goals.

This is the dawn of a new era - ESG is HUGE – and it is shaping the future of business.

We all need a lift

What the conference really highlights is that by getting together in person really does energise fundraisers. Being together means we can bounce ideas off of each other, learn from others, and build valuable connections.

The session delivered by Kristian A Aloma and Madeline Duran revealed that 50% of fundraisers leave their jobs after 2 years. Their evidence showed that the main reason for leaving a job is often the conflict between why we join the charity sector, (to do meaningful work), and the reality, that it is exhausting. 

Times are tough, and sometimes the role of a fundraiser is lonely and exhausting. Building connections with your peers is essential to enable you to realise that what you are doing is  incredible. It lifts you up. 

Shared purpose is the key

We delivered a workshop on ‘Partner with purpose’. During our session we shared that in tough times business leaders increase their focus on their core business priorities. This is an opportunity for charities.

In these challenging times, companies are still interested in opportunities, but they must deliver commercial benefits for the company. So we recommend you pitch them opportunities. A powerful pitch should include the big reason WHY you and that company should partner – we call this ‘Shared purpose’. 

Participants in our workshops discovered their unique shared purpose with a corporate partner or prospect.

If you would like to discover how shared purpose can help you win new partnerships, or grow existing ones, then please get in touch by sending me an email at georgina@remarkablepartnerships.com

Uniting makes bigger possible 

This year’s theme of unite was more meaningful than ever before. In a world filled with challenges such as the climate crisis, war and unstable economic conditions, uniting is vital for progress. 

Speakers throughout the conference showed us that when people come together, we can achieve something greater.

The groundbreaking speeches by young climate activists Nyombi Morris, Topaz Zega, and Phoebe Hanson left us feeling positive for the future, despite the challenges the world faces. They showed us that small actions can create real change. Unity truly does make bigger possible. 

Conclusion 

Our highlights cannot do justice to our experience of IFC. We learned so much, and our cups are truly topped up with inspiration and enthusiasm to do what we do.  

If you enjoyed this blog you might be interested in attending one of our upcoming training courses where we share our most valuable insight and tools. Use this link to see our choice of training courses over the next 12 months: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/training

Written by Jonathan Andrews, MD and Founder, Remarkable Partnerships.

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." - W. Edwards Deming

Other types of fundraising such as individual giving and legacies regularly use data to inform their approach. Whereas corporate partnerships tends to rely less on evidence. This could be because it is seen as more of an art than a science, or because there is less research in this area.

However, we are seeing a shift where the most successful corporate partnerships teams are using the power of data to make decisions. Indeed, data and insight are essential when we help charities conduct feasibility reports and build corporate partnerships strategies.

So here are five sources of insight that can help you drive corporate partnerships success:

1. Competitor research

Competitor research doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but our experience shows that it always delivers valuable insight. For example, recent research we conducted for a charity revealed that their competitors have a similar number, size, and type of corporate partnerships. This valuable insight provided them with a formula for success.

When it comes to research, quality beats quantity. We recommend you research a maximum of four competitors and create a PowerPoint slide for each one.

2. Partner feedback

This is the gold dust of corporate partnerships. We conducted partner feedback for a charity recently, and the insight was so powerful it not only informed their corporate partnerships strategy it also affected their organisational strategy.

Probably the most important question to ask your partners is, “on a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to another company?” According to Net Promoter, this is what the scores mean:

• 9-10 are “Promoters”
• 7-8 are “Passives”
• 0-6 are “Detractors”

You should ask promoters for referrals, give passives more attention and support to convert them into promoters, and contact detractors to see if there is anything you can do to help.

3. Prospect research

Probably the most valuable prospect research can be gathered via a short survey. We recommend you contact approximately 5-10 of your target prospects and ask them the following questions: 

• What is your decision-making process for partnering with charities? 
• What is your company’s purpose and how do charity partnerships help you deliver it? 
• What are the biggest challenges facing your business? 
• On a scale of 1 – 10, how optimistic are you feeling about the future from a business point of view?
• Have you heard of our charity?
• What benefits do you think we could deliver as a charity partner?

4. Market research
It’s easy to get stuck in your charity bubble, which is why market research can be so valuable. It can strengthen your strategy, enhance your pitches and help get colleagues on board. Here are some of our favourite reports:

• Edelman Trust Barometer
• ESG Heartbeat Report by KPMG
• What is a purpose driven business? By Regenerate
• Hidden Opportunities by Remarkable Partnerships

5. Impact data

There are two kinds of impact data that strengthen corporate partnerships. The first one is how has your corporate partnership changed people’s lives? Think about how you can report this in a way that will resonate with business decision makers. For example, Age UK want to tell Innocent how many older people have been supported because of their Big Knit partnership.

The second type of impact data, is how did your corporate partnership help deliver the company’s core objectives? For example, how many of the company’s colleagues feel proud of the employer because of the partnership? Or what size audience did we reach with our social media coverage? You will probably need your corporate partners to help collect this data. When you gather it and share it with your partner it will provide a compelling case for growing and extending your partnership.

Conclusion

We hope this blog has inspired you to use the power of data and insight to inform your corporate partnerships approach. Your goal is to build ambitious partnerships that change the world. So you want to build them on solid foundations.

Written by Pater Chiswick, Director of Corporate, Remarkable Partnerships.

In my 20+ years working in the corporate sector for major multi-nationals, I noticed that companies often form their charity partnerships on an ad-hoc basis. This approach often means they miss out on significant commercial value. However, if they build them on a strategic level, these partnerships can help them deliver their commercial goals as described below.  

1. To attract and retain talent

“Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave” - McKinsey

In today's competitive business environment, it’s vital that companies have a strong sense of purpose to attract and retain top talent, boost employee engagement, and drive innovation. 

We know charities can play a key role in fostering a culture of engagement and motivation by offering volunteer and fundraising opportunities to help employees find their purpose and connect with the company's mission. Known as either pro bono or skills-based volunteering, employees can offer their expertise, providing consulting or mentoring services. Building empathy and collaboration, employees are able to understand the social and environmental issues that relate to the company’s purpose and make a really important contribution.

2. Deliver Environmental Social Governance (ESG) targets

When I worked for global corporations in the early 2000s, they used Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to demonstrate their positive contributions to the environment and society. The challenge with CSR was it was often bolted onto the side of a business, which meant it struggled to deliver meaningful impact for either society or the company. ESG by contrast, is positioned at the strategic centre of companies and it emphasises the importance of delivery. If companies form strategic partnerships with charities, they can play a vital role in delivering these ESG targets, through training, skills sharing, volunteering and fundraising.

A great example of this is the partnership between Network Rail and Samaritans. Since the partnership began in 2010, the charity has used their expertise to train over 26,000 Network Rail employees on how to start a simple conversation with a passenger if they think they could be vulnerable. Last year the partnership potentially prevented more than 650 suicides. This is an incredible social impact.

3. Increase company profile

Afdhel Aziz, Chief Purpose Officer of Conspiracy of Love, said, “As brands strive for differentiation, relevance and growth, a clear purpose brought to life in compelling ways is often the difference between success and failure.”

Companies know that demonstrating their purpose is even more important in tough economic times, because it helps them stand out from the crowd and build trust. By partnering with a charity that aligns with their purpose, a company can show their commitment to social and environmental issues through powerful case studies, that matter to their stakeholders.

For example, ICG (the global alternative asset manager) launched their “Million Meals Initiative” in November 2022. This ambitious project involves them partnering with six charities in the UK, Europe, USA and Singapore to deliver support to the most vulnerable people in the crisis.

4. Demonstrate purpose

Aaron Hurst, Author of The Purpose Economy, said “If you aren’t fully embracing the Purpose Economy by now and transforming your entire organisation, you are going to join the likes of Blockbuster and Kodak.”. 

Although many companies recognise the importance of having a strong sense of purpose to stand out from the competition, it’s a real challenge for them to integrate, and deliver their purpose in their day-to-day business.

We know that a partnership with a charity who has a great fit with the company is a very effective way for a company to live their purpose. This is because charities can use their expertise and connections to translate their purpose into practical next steps. For example, the running shoes and sports clothing company Asics is partnering with Mind to establish beginners running groups, donating a pair of running shoes to each participant.

Conclusion

Charity partnerships can help companies deliver significant commercial value. The way to seize this opportunity is build partnerships based on shared purpose and identify strategical goals from the beginning.

When we speak with companies and charities the phrase that keeps coming up is Environment, Social and Governance (ESG). It’s an important topic that isn’t going to go away, and it has the potential to be one of the most significant developments for corporate-charity partnerships in decades.

We start this blog with a definition of ESG and explain how it differs from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We then share why it is important and we finish with recommendations on how companies and charities can seize the opportunity.

Definition of ESG

We like this definition from PwC, “ESG Is more than ticking boxes. It’s about making a difference – for your business and our world. Creating sustained outcomes that drive value and fuel growth, whilst strengthening our environment and societies.” So ESG is more than just targets and reporting, it’s a new way of running a business.

It’s also worth explaining what we mean by Governance (the G in ESG). As Forbes says, “it’s an internal structure of carefully planned rules, regulations, practices and processes – all of which have a direct correlation to how a company is managed and run.” Governance is about how a company interacts with its stakeholders, how it makes decisions and it’s also about accountability.

How does it differ from CSR?

CSR first started to emerge in the early 2000s. It usually looks like a policy that is shared on a company’s website. In our experience CSR is often bolted onto the side of a business. Also, the contributions made to society and the environment are often quite piecemeal. Indeed, it can be argued that CSR has failed to deliver for companies, for charities, for society and our planet.

ESG by contrast is more about delivery. It’s about making a positive impact on the environment and society and measuring it. Crucially it is also located at the strategic centre of a company.

Why is it important for corporate-charity partnerships?

In January 2022 the UK parliament passed laws that mean that ESG reporting is now mandatory for UK registered companies with over 500 employees and an annual revenue of more than £500million.

ESG isn’t just important for large companies, it’s also important for companies that seek to do business with them.

The reason why ESG is so important for corporate-charity partnerships is that these relationships provide the greatest opportunity for a company to make a positive contribution to the environment and society. Indeed, in our Hidden Opportunities research companies said that delivering ESG goals was the most important value they wanted from charity partnerships.

How can companies and charities seize the ESG opportunity

We recommend that companies and charities seize the ESG opportunity by building partnerships together based on shared purpose. Driving towards purpose is crucial, because it increases the likelihood of the partnership delivering strategic aims for both organisations.

We also recommend that both organisations take time to share and clarify their objectives from the start. It is very hard to deliverer goals that are not clearly defined from the start.

Lastly, we recommend that the company and the charity agree how they will measure the impact of the partnership. This should include the impact on the environment and society, but also the impact on the company’s and charity’s core objectives. The latter is crucial to justify continued investment in these partnerships.

Conclusion

ESG is an exciting and significant development for corporate-charity partnerships. It’s vital that both companies embrace it and seize this opportunity to build more ambitious, long-term partnerships that change our world.

Our recent Hidden Opportunities research revealed that cultural differences between charities and companies are a barrier to them partnering together. In this blog we dive deeper into this barrier to explore why it exists and how you can overcome it.

Motivation

Companies are motivated by delivering their bottom line. It is fair to say that purpose driven business is becoming increasingly important, however making a profit is still their top priority, especially in tough economic times.

What motivates charities is very different. Their priority is maximising the impact on the environment and/or society. Also when it comes to corporate partnerships often fundraising is their priority. The problem of these different motivations is made even worse because companies and charities are not open with each other about their reasons for partnering.

Recommendation: The way to overcome difference in motivation is to lean into purpose. The sweet spot of your partnership is where the company’s mission overlaps with your charity’s mission. That’s where you will find your shared purpose, which is the foundation for strategic and transformational partnerships.

Decision-making

Companies need to be agile and adapt to changes in their market place and customers' needs. This means they need to move at a fast pace, so they tend to have efficient decision making processes. Charities, by contrast, tend to be much more consultative. This has the benefit of taking people with you, however making decisions is usually much slower. I have seen partnerships between charities fail due to slow response times from the charity.

Recommendation: Companies need to be more patient and understand that charities might struggle to move as quickly as they do. Charities need to make their decision making more efficient, so they speed up their response time. For example, one of the reasons why Age UK secured their ground-breaking partnership with Cadbury’s was their speed of response.

Attitude to risk

Companies recognise that they need to take calculated risks in order to grow and succeed. They understand the importance of innovating, testing and evaluating. However, charities tend to be more risk averse. This is due to a number of factors including their consultative decision making, which means you don’t take risks because you are trying to keep everybody happy. Also the stakes for charities are bigger, because changing lives is much mor significant than just profit.

Recommendation: Companies can help charities understand the importance of taking calculated risks. Charities should embrace innovation as an important driver for growth.

Resources

Typically, companies have more resources than charities. These resources include skills, connections, colleagues and budgets. So if they want something done they can make it happen. Charities are often short on resources. This can result in them getting stuck and being slow to make progress. As mentioned above, this slow pace can cause friction in partnerships.

Recommendation: Companies should bear this lack of resources in mind when partnering with charities. So they should offer support, such as a colleague’s time or budget to overcome obstacles and keep things moving. Charities should be honest about their lack of resources and identify the help they need. If possible, they should also set aside a new partnerships budget which they can use to seize opportunities.

Conclusion

As the saying goes, “opposites attract” and this is definitely true for corporate-charity partnerships. It's this difference that makes them so vital and valuable. We hope you use this insight and recommendations to overcome the difference in organisation cultures, because these partnerships can help both companies and charities deliver their core objectives.

A fortnight ago, we launched our new research, “Hidden Opportunities,” which reveals that both companies and charities are missing-out on significant value by not partnering together in a
strategic way.  

Today, we want to dig deeper into one really important insight from the research, which shows that  mismatched expectations between companies and charities are holding back partnerships. 

You can see from the graph above that companies want these partnerships to help them deliver their ESG objectives, increase their brand profile and engage employees. However, charities want fundraising and increased impact. This is the mismatch in expectations.  

So, here are our recommendations to overcome these differences.

Commercial benefits 

As you can see from the research, companies are focused on commercial benefits from charity partnerships. As a charity, you must understand this. Listening to your prospect or partner on their business objectives is the key to success. If you make your charity indispensable to their business, your partnership will be seen as essential. We recommend when you first meet a prospect you ask, “What are your business objectives?,” then design your partnership to deliver them. 

Value not money 

The research shows that charities’ top priority is fundraising income, however, companies are rich in resources in many other ways than money – their people skills, experience and knowledge, reach and profile, as well as their spaces. Rather than approaching a company just for money, we recommend you co-create the partnership activity, and discuss what needs you have that they have the skills to fulfil. Some of the most successful partnerships begin by focusing on non-financial support from the company. Network Rail and Samaritans is a great example of this, their partnership began to reduce suicide on the railways, and they launched their campaign #SmallTalkSavesLives. The partnership has now gone on to raise over £2.5million.  

Aim long term 

The problem is that bringing up money early in any partnership is awkward. Focusing on the short-term goal is likely to sabotage your long-term potential. We recommend you take your time and build an authentic partnership that benefits both parties equally, and the money will come, most likely at a larger level, and for a longer time than you were anticipating. A great example of this is the partnership between NatWest and The Prince’s Trust, where the partnership began with financial skills training for young people who wanted to start their own business, but over the past 17 years has grown significantly to fund more than 86,000 young entrepreneurs get into self-employment.  

Put yourself in their shoes 

One of the challenges we hear every day is that partnerships are breaking down when a contact moves on, or when the company gets busy. This is because the company are not seeing the charity as an essential part of their business activities. Also the charity puts the blame on to the company that they are becoming more distant. We recommend you put yourself in their shoes. Find out what their challenges are and offer them a solution. Be persistent. If your partnership is valuable to the company, they will come back to you and you can re-ignite the partnership. 

Impact reporting 

The problem with impact reporting is that charities often only focus on the impact to their service users. However, you should also report on how the partnership has delivered the companies’ business objectives. If you include this impact, you provide evidence that your partnership is indispensable and you make a compelling case for continuing and growing your relationship. 

Conclusion  

We hope this blog has given you direction to overcome the mismatch in expectations with companies. If you created partnerships with matching expectations your partnerships will be stronger and longer.  

If you would like to read the Hidden Opportunities research please click this link.   

Written by Peter Chiswick, Director of Corporate, Remarkable Partnerships. 

Paintbrush story 

When I was working for a global technology company in a sales strategy role, I was asked to attend a volunteering day at a local charity with other heads of department, including colleagues from IT, HR and Marketing. We all arrived with a real sense of anticipation, and real excitement that we could use our collective talent to make a huge impact for the charity. So you can imagine our surprise when we were shown into a yard with pots of paint and paint brushes, and told to paint a wall. We tried to explain that we wanted to use our skills to help support the charity’s needs. Despite our best efforts, they simply couldn’t understand the opportunity we were offering. So we went back to the yard and the paint pots, picked up the brushes and began to paint.  

I knew from that moment that I wanted to change the way charities and companies worked together to create real value, but I had no idea where to start.   

Series of missed opportunities 

As I continued to work within the corporate sector, I did manage to make minor changes along the way,  by setting up small scale employee pro-bono activities which focused on developing employee skills as part of their annual performance review. Although there were positive results, my company was still not convinced as to the value that charities could bring. Things quickly went back to normal, only wanting to invest in one off, ad-hoc transactional relationships. 

The power of purpose 

Then, the pandemic changed everything. I noticed there was sudden increase in expectation from society for organisations to demonstrate they were purpose-driven. Companies started to respond, by publicly stating they understood the importance of leading with purpose by seeing this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform and redefine their organisations for the future. With purpose at the centre, it was used as a compass to guide decision-making and deliver wider stakeholder impact.    

Key corporate research organisations such as Forbes and Harvard provided evidence that purpose led companies were outperforming their competition, building loyalty and reputation with their customers, unleashing the power of employees and attracting and keeping the best talent. McKinsey endorsed this opinion by confirming that  “Winning companies are driven by purpose, reach higher for it, and achieve more because of it.” 

Taking advantage of the new economic climate, I left the corporate sector to become a consultant for Remarkable Partnerships. Even though I could see the momentum building towards purpose led business, it was clear that only a small amount of companies actually understood the way to be truly purpose led was through strategic charity partnerships. The majority were still using transactional relationships supported by ESG reports to demonstrate their purpose. 

Research reveals missed opportunities 

Our new research, “Hidden Opportunities”, reveals that both companies and charities are missing out on significant value by not partnering together in a strategic way. 

This is due to a mismatch in expectations, different cultures and the need for proof of value. In summary: 

• Companies are less convinced than charities that corporate-charity partnerships deliver against core objectives. 
• Almost half of companies are seeking proof of the value of charity partnerships. 
• Mismatched expectations are holding back partnerships. 
• Cultural barriers points to the need to focus on shared purpose. 
• Proof of value and expert advice could unlock partnership opportunities. 

We recommend that you build your partnerships on shared purpose, so both parties are clear about “why” the partnership is so important. Also, make sure you agree strategic partnership priorities, which will make it easier to provide compelling proof of value. 

Let's act together 

We hope this blog inspires you to work with us to the to seize the significant opportunity of purpose-driven corporate-charity partnerships. Together we can share examples of successful corporate-charity partnerships, which will embolden other organisations to follow their lead.. 

We hope you found this blog useful. If you would like to access the Hidden Opportunities research report please click this link.  

When I was working at BBC Children in Need, and leading on the partnership with Lloyds Banking Group, our partnership agreement was one of the most useful tools. Why? Because it was simple and effective, supported the delivery of our partnerships goals, whilst protecting both parties brands. 

This example stands out. From our experience we see a huge variation in the quality of partnership agreements. – not even in place, whilst others are so complex that they add no value.   

An effective partnership agreement helps protect the interests of all parties involved and prevents potential disputes. Here are our 5 recommendations for effective partnership agreements:

1. Simple and effective

The problem is that most partnership agreements do not provide a true reflection of what the partnership is trying to achieve, but instead are often filled with over-protective clauses which are unlikely to be pursued by the charity or partner even if they did happen. Keep the agreement simple. Be proactive by providing your partner with a simple and effective agreement to review and sign. The agreement should not allow for any ambiguity, should use everyday language, and only use legal terminology when needed. Include useful information, such as who the key contacts are, and the benefits and activity that will be delivered by both parties.

2. Include your partnership objectives

We often see that agreements aren’t a collaborative process. When you create the partnership agreement it is the ideal time to discuss with your partner what the objectives are, and what success looks like is. This will provide a framework for resolving any difficult conversations in the future, because you can always refer back to your agreed objectives. When at BBC Children in Need, it was a 3 month process discussing each element of the agreement to mutually agree on the content, however it was worth all the time as the partnership was maximised, and raised over £15m across three years.

3. Define roles and responsibilities

It is important to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each partner. This section sometimes lacks clarity, so both partners end up with unrealistic expectations of each other. To avoid this problem we recommend you include each partner's obligations, responsibilities, and decision-making authority. Defining these roles and responsibilities will help prevent misunderstandings and potential disputes down the line. When working at The Prince’s Trust and onboarding new corporate partners in the insurance industry, this was always an essential topic to discuss with potential partners before finalising the agreement.

4. Establish a dispute resolution mechanism

However much you prepare, disputes may still arise. It is important to have a mechanism in place to resolve them. Therefore, your partnership agreement should describe how disputes will be resolved, such as involving senior decision makers, or even mediation. As the saying goes “prepare for the worst and expect the best”. I have often used the agreed contract to refer to, to overcome difficulties, especially about donation amounts due and their timings.

5. Minimum guarantee

We recommend you include the financial terms of your partnership – both income and expenditure (if relevant). Partnerships agreements are legally binding, so once signed, both parties are bound by the law to deliver their contribution. However, corporate partnerships are about relationships so it is likely that any dispute over finances can be resolved without enforcing the agreement. We also recommend you include a commitment from your corporate partner to pay 50% of the partnership target, if they can’t achieve raising it as planned. This will make sure the company is serious about your partnership and will reassure your senior management.  

In conclusion, a simple and effective corporate partnership agreement is essential for any corporate partnership to be maximised. If you would like Remarkable Partnerships free partnership agreement template then please email aj@remarkablepartnerships.com

Written by Georgina Oxlade.

How to identify your 5-star prospects 

Written by Jonathan Andrews. 

This is a blog about what works. When Learning with Parents identified their 5-star prospects, IG Group was top of their list. Within two years they secured a three-year partnership worth £750k. 

When you want to build corporate partnerships, it seems logical that you need a long prospect list. After all, the more prospects the better, right? Wrong! Our experience shows that long prospect lists make corporate fundraisers lose focus, feel overwhelmed and struggle to deliver results. 

We recommend you have a short list of target corporate prospects. Approximately 10 per corporate fundraiser is a good number. So how do you decide which corporate prospects go on your list? We recommend you identify your 5-star prospects as described below:

1. Shared purpose

The first feature of your ideal corporate prospects is shared purpose. This means that when look at the company’s mission and your charity’s mission you can that there is some common ground. IG Group and Learning with Parents have a very strong shared purpose, because they both know that financial literacy helps people fulfil their potential. 

Focusing on prospects where you have a shared purpose not only increases your chances of securing them, but it also means you will create more ambitious partnerships. That’s because the partnership is built on your shared WHY. As Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

2. Contact at the company

When I started my career in corporate fundraising 25 years ago, people used to say that corporate fundraising success depends on who you know. And it is still true today. The CEO at Learning with Parents has a contact at IG Group. They met when they were on an interview panel together. This contact meant it was really straight forward to secure the first meeting. 

The reason why contacts are so important can be explained by behavioural science. The Law of Liking says that we are much more likely to do business with someone that we like and trust.

3. Problem you can help solve

When you approach a company for a partnership it’s important to understand that they will have one question on their mind, “What’s in it for me?” If you can’t answer this question convincingly then it is highly unlikely that they will want to partner with you.  

Learning with Parents has considerable value to offer IG Group because they have a strong shared purpose. This means the charity can help the company engage their employees and raise their profile with target customers, by highlighting their unique and inspirational purpose.

4. Resource to help solve your problems

The fourth feature of your ideal prospect is to make sure that the company has sufficient resources to help solve your problems. IG Group has considerable value to offer Learning with Parents. They are making a long-term financial contribution, raising the charity’s profile and they have valuable clients to whom they could make introductions. In fact, this partnership is game-changing for Learning with Parents. 

When you think about a company’s resources it’s vital that you see all the value they have to offer, not just money. This is because companies don’t want to be seen as just bank accounts. They want genuine partnerships built on shared purpose. In fact, some of the most successful corporate-charity partnerships have started with non-financial support.

5. Realistic chance of success

The fifth feature of an ideal corporate prospect is they are realistic. When you think of your ideal partners it is very tempting to write down high profile companies such as HSBC, Microsoft, and Tesco. But the queue of charities wanting to partner with these companies is very long. So, we recommend you take a different approach and look for companies that are less well known. They can be harder to find, but you could be the only charity who is approaching them. 

IG Group was a realistic prospect for Learning with Parents for three reasons: they had a contact; a strong shared purpose, and the company isn’t a household name. 

We hope this blog inspires you to find your own 5-star prospects. It’s a great way to strengthen and refresh your new business pipeline. It will help you build more ambitious corporate partnerships. And it works! 

If you want to have a conversation about how we can help you find your 5-star prospects, then you can book a 30-minute call with Jonathan using this link: https://meetings.hubspot.com/jonathan612/30-minute-virtual-coffee-on-zoom 

Spring has well and truly sprung, and it seems like the perfect time to take a look back at our favourite blogs from my first year at Remarkable partnerships. Everything from setting up your first transformational partnerships to being inspired by other great success stories. 

1. From reactive to proactive 

What we love about our 5 insights from a first transformational partnership blog is it highlighting 5 clear tips on what is required to be ready for a partnership. When moving away from transactional and reactive, it is important to look at what contacts you already have within your corporate prospects organisation. These contacts will likely already understand who you are as an charity and what you stand for. Often these contacts are also connected personally to your cause. 

2. Strategy is key 

The presence of strategy gives you focus and consistency and dramatically increases your chances of success. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of being everything for everyone but it’s important to keep asking yourself, “What is unique about your charity?” and “Why is what you do so important?” Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” Read more from the blog about 5 features of a successful corporate partnership strategy here. 

3. Its what’s inside that matters 

You may be a team of one, or one hundred, either way our experience shows that involving your wider colleagues is probably the greatest factor determining your success.  Our 5 recommendations to build a strong internal partnership blog talks about how to optimise your colleagues’ skills and experience and bring them on board with corporate partnerships. Different departments or colleagues will like to be communicated with or involved in different ways and it is your role to best understand that. Use our internal partnerships blog  to help guide your conversations. 

4. Don’t forget to delight 

When in the depths of account managing multiple partnerships, it is easy to get overwhelmed. This blog on 5 recommendations for remarkable account management gives you a chance to take a step back and look at how you can go above and beyond to delight your partner. The goal is to know your partner, understand what is important to them. This might be to set up news alerts for the company, join their mailing list, or following the company on LinkedIn. 

5. Spotting the remarkable 

Isn’t it great when you spot a partnership that gives value to both the corporate and the charity. For us it’s when you can see the real shared purpose. Since this blog on five insights from five inspiring partnerships, another partnership has stood out: the partnership between TENA and Carers UK.  We love this partnership because it is built on a strong shared purpose.  Both TENA and Carers UK understand the challenges of carers and their families.

If you enjoyed this blog, and all those within it and want to make your own partnerships remarkable, then how about you join us at our next Masterclass taking place on the 28^th and 29^th June at Missenden Abbey. Find our more here: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/event/corporate-partnerships-masterclass-june23/ 

Corporate partnerships are a major opportunity for charities because they can help you deliver your mission. They do this by delivering several benefits including raising money, increasing profile, providing volunteers and sharing skills. The problem is that many charities don’t know where to start. So here are the six steps that we recommend you take to kickstart your corporate partnerships.

1. Get colleagues on board

Probably the greatest factor that will affect your corporate partnerships success is getting your colleagues on board. This is because they can help you throughout the whole process, including sharing contacts, brainstorming partnership opportunities and attending prospect meetings. When I worked at Alzheimer’s Society we dramatically increased our corporate partnerships success when we started involving our colleagues more. Involving colleagues can make things a bit more complicated, but as the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

2. Build your proposition

The next step is to build your corporate partnership proposition. This is how you package up your charity to make you more attractive to senior business decision makers. In our experience companies choose charities for emotional reasons, then they justify their decision with commercial benefits afterwards. As Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” So your proposition should communicate your big emotional why. The way to do that is share a story and tell them the big problem you are trying to solve. If you get this right companies will be climbing over the table to partner with you.

3. Identify five-star prospects

Once you have your partnership offer, then the next step is find your target prospects. We recommend you identify your five-star prospects, who tick the following boxes:

• You have a shared purpose
• You have a warm contact at the company
• They have a problem you can help solve
• They have resources to help solve your problems
• You have a realistic chance of success

We helped Learning with Parents identify their target prospects which included IG Group. Within two years they secured a three-year partnership worth £750k. Read the full story of how we helped Learning with Parents.

4. Create tailored partnership opportunities

Many charities think that the best way to engage companies is to ask them for money. But as one company told me, “This makes me want to run for the hills.” This is because it makes them feel like you only want their money, which isn’t a partnership at all. So rather than asking companies for money we recommend you approach them with a tailored partnership opportunity. This approach is much more likely to succeed because you can clearly show the company what is in if for them. So we recommend you create a unique partnership opportunity for each of your target colleagues by organising a brainstorm involving key colleagues. If you would like to book a free partnership opportunity brainstorm with a member of our team then please email team@remarkablepartnerships.com

5.  Secure meetings

If you want to build corporate partnerships then it is essential that you meet with your prospects face-to-face or online. This means that securing meetings is one of the most important steps. According to Rain Group it takes an average of eight approaches to secure a meeting with a prospect. The problem is that most people give up after two! So we recommend you don’t give up. Due to the increase in hybrid working, we find that email is a very effective way of securing meetings right now. If you do use email, we recommend you keep it short and say that you have a partnership opportunity which you believe is perfect for the company.

6.  Deliver brilliant meetings

You only get one chance to make a first impression, so when you meet with your target prospect you want to give them the best meeting they have ever had. We recommend you start the meeting by listening to the company so you really understand their objectives and challenges. Then you pitch your partnership opportunity, showing them how you can help them deliver some of those objectives. Then you should have a discussion about the possibility of working together. The last step is to agree a date for your next meeting. It’s really important to understand you don’t want to secure the partnership in your first meeting. The purpose of your first meeting is to secure a second meeting.

We hope this blog is useful guide to help you get started with corporate partnerships. If you would like to book a 30-minute discovery call to find out how we can help your charity kickstart your corporate partnerships, then please use this link to book a session: https://meetings.hubspot.com/jonathan612/30-minute-virtual-coffee-on-zoom

This is a guest blog written by Laura Hughes-Onslow from The Sutton Trust and Lila Dowie from Demelza Hospice Care for Children.

Last September, I closed my laptop ahead of starting maternity leave, certain there would be very little to connect my day job working with corporate partners and my year ahead raising a tiny human.

It was through a cuppa and a chat with Lila, on maternity leave for the second time, that we reflected on how much we were learning and how much was relevant for fundraising. We recorded a session called ‘Motherhood, Management and Making it Work’ for the Corporate Partnerships Everywhere conference and the comments blew us away – it’s clear that this topic resonates.

For anyone thinking about becoming a parent, no matter where you are on that journey, we want to send our warmest wishes. We hope our reflections are useful life lessons for all hoping to achieve remarkable corporate partnerships.

1. Do it Now

We have both become much more decisive since becoming parents – there are hundreds of micro-decisions to make each day for our babies. We all lead busy lives and need to focus on what’s important. We trust that if something must get done, then it will.

Action: Pick one thing on your to-do list and do it now (before reading the rest of this article). Send that email, pick up the phone, have that conversation with a colleague, draft the copy, crop that picture for your proposal that won’t sit neatly alongside your words.

2. Planning with flexibility

When preparing for labour, we both outlined birth preferences, knowing that sometimes things don’t go to plan. We’ve all had that moment where a corporate partnership falls outside of our expectations – raising more or less than we’d expected. We’ve learnt to adapt our days as things aren’t always in our control, and to go with it.

Action: Go through your corporate plans and work out what’s in your control and what isn’t, have several options laid out for what to do if corporate partners fall short or exceed their fundraising targets so you can quickly respond.

3. It takes a village

We both rely on our communities daily to juggle raising babies alongside other priorities. In the early days, such as change nappies without getting weed on, meant we were able to step away. Finding friends and allies in the workplace makes us much more successful, as fundraising is a whole-organisation effort. Plus, we can always learn how others do things.

Action: Find a colleague in another team to lead a meeting or run a presentation - support and encourage them, and use that time to instead focus on essential emails and admin.

4. Rest and re-charge

Building in pockets of time for resting is essential for self-care. Our jobs and lives are full of deadlines and targets so taking time as a team to actively plan for quieter reflections periods help us be at our best – as mothers and as managers.

Action: Identify your busiest time in the calendar year and actively plan some annual leave or team retreats for the weeks following, to proactively have time to rest and re-charge.

5. Be honest

Sometimes the things we feel most vulnerable about are what can connect us most to others. Being open about the challenges of parenthood, or the emotions we feel when hearing beneficiary stories – help us to relate to others and build stronger relationships.

Action: Take time at the start of meetings to ask meaningful questions – find out how someone really is: what are the challenges in their jobs, where are they going on holiday, are they celebrating birthdays or milestones? Actively listen and relate back, and enjoy building those connections.

We would love to hear your feedback and continue this conversation. Please share your reflections and any life lessons you’d like to contribute to team@remarkablepartnerships.com.

Maya Angelou said, “Take the attitude of a student. Never be too big to ask questions. Never know too much to learn something new.”

That’s why we loved Corporate Partnerships Everywhere , because it is jam-packed with valuable learning from companies and charities. We want to share with you our top five highlights from the conference.

1. Stick to what you do well

Its always valuable to gain insight from the corporate sector. In this session, David Adair and our very own Jonathan Andrews talked about what the cost-of-living crisis means for corporate charity partnerships. Hybrid working has impacted us all but if you can give your prospects or partners employees a reason to come into the office or make a real impact from home, they’re yours.

Remember your value. A truly great partnership understands what each party does well. David’s advice for making this happen was: 1. Do your homework, understand what’s important to them 2. Bigger is not always better, you can start small and grow a bigger partnership 3. We’re all human, people like to partner with people we like and trust.

2. It’s all about who you know

We really enjoyed the session presented by Tom Harbour from Learning with Parents and Ben Hemington from IG Group. Over the last two years they have built an ambitious partnership to help children learn good financial habits at a young age.

 One of the most powerful insights from their session was that Learning with Parents approached IG Group, because Tom and Ben already had a relationship. They had been on an interview panel together. As Tom said, “Everytime I meet someone I make that LinkedIN connection.”. This really shows the power of a warm connection.

3. The power of case studies

Joe Waters, Founder of Selfishgiving.com ran an energetic and thought-provoking session on case studies which has changed our way of thinking about them. Joe invited us to use ‘WHY’ as our focus in case studies about partnerships. Joe told us it is important “to tell the sizzle not the sausage” – a perfect way to remember to articulate the journey to the outcome, not just the result. The session provided the audience with the 7 questions you should ask to build a perfect case study which included 1. The objective, 2. The backstory, 3. The how, 4. The results, 5. The reason for success, 6. The evidence and 7. What makes this partnership exceptional. If you haven’t seen this session, catch up is a must.

4. Create the perfect pitch

A huge thanks to our volunteers Remi Ray, Anna McNee, Sarah Graham who all pretended to pitch to their ideal corporate partner. All three did an outstanding job, and it reminded us that there is lots we can from seeing other pitch.  The most memorable details of these pitches were the stories. Anna from Dementia UK told us the story of ‘Annie’ who had the juggle of multiple jobs, her own family and caring for her mother with Dementia. The twist in the story was that Annie is in fact Anna, the presenter. Her personal story really resonated with the audience, so much so that Anna was the winner of the pitch stop this year. If you don’t have a personal story to tell, go out and meet your beneficiaries as telling it from the heart will allow your audience to connect with your cause because of it.   

5.  Speak the same language

Thank you to our friends at CAF for bringing to life this often-challenging topic of impact measurement. By following these key principles, you can bring your strategy to life. 

Be clear of expectations right from the start. Think about what’s possible and what’s actually going to be used. Keep it simple.

Create a theory of change, what does success look like and how you are going to get there.

Fundamental and perhaps one of the most overlooked. What capacity do you have? Think proportionality. Does the size of the funding and activity equal the measurement required? It may be that you can build on existing frameworks that are already in place.

We hope you enjoyed Corporate Partnerships Everywhere as much as we did. If you would like to share your highlight of the conference, please email us at: team@remarkablepartnerships.com

“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.” – Lee Bolman

I have to confess that in the first 20 years of my career I didn’t think that strategy was very important. However, since I became a consultant and started advising business and charity leaders, I am convinced of its importance. A lack of strategy results in a scatter gun approach, that feels chaotic and usually fails. By contrast, the presence of strategy gives you focus and consistency and dramatically increases your chances of success.

Because it is so important, I want to share the following five features of a successful corporate partnerships strategy.

1. Share your vision

When I was at Action for Children I received some valuable advice from Gordon Edington, Property Director of BAA. We were speaking about our strategy and he said, “Imagine that you are building a beautiful, gleaming factory on top of a hill. And that factory consistently produces brilliant corporate partnerships.” I loved this image and I shared it with my team.

Your vision is your powerful why that you and your team strive for. So make it feel inspiring, unique and memorable. It will keep you focused and motivated, even in the toughest of moments.

2. Include valuable insight

The pandemic showed us the importance of science and data, so we recommend you include some in your strategy. When we help charities build corporate partnerships strategies we always recommend we interview their partners and prospects. We ask them what challenges they are facing, what do they love about the charity and what do they want them to improve.

We are always amazed by the quality of insight that these interviews provide. And we use that insight to shape the strategy. As my colleague Hannah Hockin said, “So much of strategy is opinion, but partner and prospect insight is data.”

3. What makes you different?

Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”

How will you stand out from the crowd? How will you make people feel?

A proven method of defining your difference is identifying your principles. For example, when NSPCC launched their famous Full Stop Campaign one of their fundraising principles was, “Opening hearts, opening minds, opening cheque books.”

4. Manage risk

Delivering success will require you to take calculated risks. So we recommend you include a risk register in your strategy. The first step is to write down the list of risks. Then rank each one based on likelihood and potential impact. Lastly, identify what you will do to mitigate each risk.

Having a risk register will not only help you avoid unnecessary disaster, it will also help you get senior management on board, because they will welcome your thorough and considered approach.

5. Involve your team and colleagues

The best way to build your strategy is to involve your team and relevant colleagues from the start. We recommend you invite them to a workshop to help you create the building blocks of your strategy, including:

• Your vision
• High level priorities
• The change you want to make happen
• Milestones

Keep involving them as you develop the strategy. And hold a meeting to share it when it’s finished. Your team and colleagues are much more likely to buy into a strategy which they have helped build.

We hope you have found this blog both useful and inspiring. If you have any thoughts on corporate partnerships strategy we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: team@remarkablepartnerships.com

If you are responsible for creating your corporate partnerships strategy you might also be interested in attending our Advanced Corporate Partnerships Masterclass on 27^th April in Central London, which includes a session focused on strategy.

“Networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals.” (Seth Godin)

Simply put, networking is building mutually beneficial connections with other professionals. It brings lots of benefits including identifying potential corporate partners and making more impactful connections. But how do you shift your networking from ordinary to remarkable? Here are our five recommendations to become a remarkable networker.

1. Relationship building 

We recommend you think about networking as relationship building, rather than just an exchange of contact details. Most of us become corporate fundraisers because we love the cause, not because we love being salespeople. When I first started networking it felt a little daunting and scary walking into a room full of strangers. But I switched my mindset and said to myself “I am here to just meet people and build relationships.” I didn’t put too much pressure on myself. When you’re at a business or networking event, keep in mind that many other people there are also nervous. Understanding and recognising others feelings can help to move beyond the artificial sense of networking and develop a real relationship. 

2. Set yourself goals 

The first step in setting goals is to define what your networking success will look like. 
What do you want from your network? Are you hoping for more referrals? 
It could be getting yourself out there so that more people know who you are.
Think in advance of any event and note down your networking goals for that event. These could be a mix of specific names, as well as types of people or priority industries that you want to speak with. The most important goal is to talk, even if briefly in the coffee queue. I set myself a goal to speak to five strangers and to set up a meeting with at least one person. It worked!

3. Just say yes! 

Saying YES means making the most of every opportunity and encounter.  Say yes to every invitation you get for coffee or lunch.  Go to those after-work drinks, meet-up events or network socials even if it makes you nervous. Just remember that you will come out of it with new impactful connections. You never know whom you may meet and where it may lead. I once said yes to an event on the spur of the moment, which led to me introducing myself to a contact, which then developed into a corporate partner and secured a £50k partnership. 

4. Networking conversations 

It’s tempting when you are at a networking event, to jump straight in with your elevator pitch. Elevator pitches are all about sales, whereas networking conversations are all about building mutually beneficial relationships. Networking conversations are about give and take, the exchange of ideas that evolve over many conversations over a period of time. You want to get meaningful results, from impactful conversations. A great way to do this is to focus the conversation on the other person, tell them why they are interesting to you and invite them to share more. Ask them what they want talk about. Taking a genuine interest in them increases your chances of making a meaningful connection.  

5.The law of reciprocity 

A really good question I ask someone whilst networking is: "who ideally would you like to meet here today?" This shows them that I am a helpful and generous person. And once I know the answer, I may instantly be able to introduce them to someone! The principle of reciprocation means the other person will then feel a deep need to help me in the same way. So there will be twice as many people in the room on the lookout for my dream contact. Networking should always be beneficial to both parties.  

 
In summary, there are three qualities of a remarkable networker:  

• Be real 
• Be helpful 
• Be proactive 

We hope you found this blog useful. We would love to hear your feedback and any other recommendations for effective networking.  Please email team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

“Selling without closing is just conversation”. (Personal Selling Power)

Successful corporate fundraisers are also successful sales people. You might  be selling the chance for companies to make positive social impact, but you are still selling. You are experienced in reassuring undecided prospects, and supporting buyers to organise their thoughts and reach their own conclusions. Being skilled at becoming an expert closer is going to be one of the most important techniques you can master. In this weeks blog, we share five recommendations on how to become an expert closer.

1.Question Close

Jack Canfield once said, “If You Are Not Moving Closer To What You Want In Sales, You Probably Aren’t Doing Enough Asking.”

High performing sales people understand the importance of mastering both active listening and asking closing questions. From the start of a sales process they use closing questions to continually demonstrate value and eliminate any objections getting in the way of a purchase.  By gently guiding the prospect, they are able to apply the right amount of pressure without being seen as too pushy and gain a positive response from the client.  The questions are used to make the prospect explain why something does or doesn’t work for the them and allow you to reinforce your value and provide additional solutions to meet their demands.

2. The Assumptive Close

As the famous sales mantra goes "Expect the yes. Embrace the no. That's how you master the close!"

The aim of the assumptive close is to be assertive and not aggressive. Assuming the prospect is ready to buy, you assume that the sale is as good as done and that your prospect is ready for a partnership. This technique moves the conversation from whether the prospect wants to buy, and  instead focuses on the  “how” and “when” they will partner with you.  Moving from the sales pitch you move straight into assumptive questions.  Below we share an example of how to reframe your closed ended questions with assumptive ones:

From: “Is your current charity partnership providing you with real value?”

To: “How would you like to improve your current charity partnership?”

Having such a positive approach will make your prospect start to believe in your confidence and less likely to say no.

3. The Summary Close

The summary close is one the most effective sales techniques there are. Unlike the previous technique it doesn’t make assumptions regarding what the prospect wants. Instead, it allows you to summarise all of the benefits and value they are looking to achieve, and then remind them on how you are going to get them there. This is important, as a prospect at the end of a long sales cycle may become distracted or forget something. By repeating back what they value, and then summarising the outcome this provides an effective nudge to drive the conversation towards closure.

4. The Now or Never Close

The clue is the name. This hard close sales technique is all about creating a sense of urgency with your prospect before it's too late. This technique works really well when you have invested a lot of effort with a prospect, but for whatever reason isn’t willing to commit at this stage. Making it clear this is a limited opportunity and will be offered to one of their competitors is often an excellent way to change the momentum.

5. The Visualisation Close

Finally, we recommend you use a closing strategy that relates to how the human brain works by helping the prospect visualise the potential impact of your partnership. We know that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than words, with 90% of people making decisions based on visual input. For example, you can ask your prosect, “In three years’ time, what would be the newspaper headline that describes the impact of our partnership?”. Remember, if they are able to picture the impact you are offering, closing the sale becomes much easier.

We hope you found this blog useful. We would love to hear your feedback and any other recommendations on how to be an expert closer.  Please email team@remarkablepartnerships.com

Now we are in the cost-of-living crisis it has never been so important to maximise your corporate partnerships potential by building strong internal partnerships. Our experience shows that involving your colleagues is probably the greatest factor determining your success. Partnerships often demand short deadlines and have ambitious targets, so you need to ensure everyone is onboard. So here are our five recommendations to build strong internal partnerships.

1.Gain support from the top

I’d love to say that gaining organisational buy-in was a given, however we all know that it takes work. After all you need senior support to overcome the barriers created by hybrid working and different priorities across teams. During my time at Carers UK our CEO and Director of Fundraising were committed to corporate partnerships and championed them across the organisation. In return we ensured we were responsible with their time and used it wisely for engaging senior corporate contacts and to have those difficult conversations.

2. Involve colleagues from start to finish

You can’t be master of all trades. Your colleagues are experts in their field, so use them. Work with them to brainstorm ideas, attend meetings and ultimately help deliver partnerships. Your partnership isn’t always going to be on the top of their to do list, so ensure you get their buy-in right from the start. Engage them in the development of the partnership and explore ways to create partnership opportunities. For example, could the company offer pro-bono support to help your colleagues achieve their objectives, such as reaching a wider audience?

3. Acknowledge the collaborators

When it works, shout about it. Be sure to mention to line managers, in internal comms or at appropriate meetings when colleagues have been particularly helpful. Build allies across teams to help you achieve your objectives. For big projects, set up working groups to ensure key people are engaged. It may be that an introduction from a colleague helps you build a new partnership, so make sure they get the credit they deserve.

4. Share success

When you engage with a target contact, or secure a meeting with a prospect, or receive positive feedback from a corporate, these are all achievements worth recognising. We recommend you share each of these little wins with your colleagues via your internal communications channels. In a previous role we would share handwritten notes that we would clip on to colleagues' desks.

5. Internal partnerships table

Now for one of my favourite tools the Internal Partnerships Table. On this table you create a list of the priority teams and then you meet with them to establish what you want from them and what they need from you in return. By truly understanding what colleagues want and how best to communicate with them, you will be able to build strong internal relationships. These relationships will be essential when you are faced with a short deadline or an unexpected challenge with one of your corporate partners.

We hope you have found this blog interesting and insightful. If you want to build stronger internal partnerships, then you might be interested in attending one of our training courses which are listed here.

We know that charities are finding recruitment and retention of corporate fundraisers tough in the current market. There is hope. Charities who are investing in their people now are seeing the results. If you would like to build a high performing team who are engaged and motivated, find out how by following our recommendations: 

1.Create an internal partnerships culture  

A partnership culture needs to be created beyond the corporate team. You need marketing, services, senior management, and trustees all to support partnerships. You are all there for the same reason, to solve your charity’s mission. So if you work well together you will you achieve your mission faster, which is motivating for everyone. We recommend you have regular meetings with colleagues to understand their priorities and agree ways of working together. Don’t forget to create moments to share the current trends corporate in partnerships by using case studies. This will help spark new ideas for your charity.  

2. Celebrate the little wins  

In fundraising we often delay the celebration until a new partner is confirmed, or the money is in the bank. But it is much more motivating to celebrate the little wins along the way too. How about creating moments to celebrate meetings being secured, or more participants taking part in an event, or new senior contacts being made within your partnerships. Remarkable Partnerships do this too. We have a team WhatsApp group to celebrate all the good things that happen in our week.  

3. Focus on value, not cash 

Big financial targets sometimes feel daunting, so they can demotivate fundraisers. So it’s important to record non-financial value too. When you have receive free support from a company, or a product is gifted to you, this should be recorded and reported alongside the income you receive. We recommend you include value targets in your team goals, not just an income target. 

4. Active listening 

Active listening is a communication skill that involves going beyond simply hearing the words that another person says, but also seeking to understand the meaning and intent behind them. If you are want communicate effectively with your team and colleagues, then you need to actively listen. Finding our more about your colleagues’ needs builds trust, understanding and loyalty. We recommend you practice active listening techniques in your interactions with colleagues and notice the positive effect it has on your relationships. 

5. Training and development  

When your corporate fundraising team gets busy, training and development often falls down the list of priorities. However, it is essential that you and your team prioritise learning so you can increase your motivation and effectiveness. We recommend you create a personal development plan for each member of your tea. Find out what skills they want to improve a build the plan together. Ensure that regular training is scheduled for individuals and as a whole team. Learning together will unite the team and increase everyone’s skills and confidence.  

We hope you found this blog useful. We would love to hear your feedback and any other recommendations on how to build a high-performing team. Please email team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

In tough economic times it is vital that we focus on securing new corporate partnerships. You can increase your chances of success by making your charity more attractive to companies, so here are five ways you can become a prospect magnet. 

1.Ask for referrals 
In his bestselling book ‘Influence’, Robert Cialdini’s shares the law of liking which means we like and trust. This is why warm contacts are so valuable.​ So we recommend you hold a contact mapping session with your colleagues, senior management, and trustees, to build a list of contacts that you can approach. Use your network to ask for introductions,. Being recommended by a warm contact significantly increases your chances of securing a meeting with a prospect.   

2.Clarify your offer 
Think clearly about what your charity can offer companies. What makes you unique? How can you help them solve some of their greatest business challenges, such as attracting and retaining employees. Having a unique and clear offer that speaks to companies will make your charity much more attractive to potential corporate partners. Be clear about your offer on your website and social media platforms, so when companies are looking for a charity partner, they can easily see the benefit to them. Also make it simple for prospects to contact you by giving a named person who they can contact.  

3.Create a free download 
What are companies are searching for related to your cause? And what can you offer in response? We recommend you brainstorm these questions with your colleagues.​ Once you have some ideas then you can create a free download that companies receive in exchange for their ​email address. The company will benefit from the valuable information in the download and you will have their contact details to follow up. This idea uses the law of reciprocity. When someone does something for you, you want to give them something back in return.  

4.Use the law of scarcity 
When we believe something is in short supply we want it more! Especially if we are told  it’s the “last one” or that a “special deal” will soon expire. In short, we hate to miss out, and that is the law of scarcity in action. You can use this law to increase your success with prospects. For example you could say, “We are building five strategic partnerships and have researched over 100 companies and you are in our top three.” Give your prospects that sense of urgency so the feel the need to act quickly or they will miss out. 

5.Network, network, network! 
Networking is the art of building connections with other professionals. And the power is incredible. Networking works because it increases your visibility, builds your reputation helps you make more impactful connections. Networking dramatically increases your chances of engaging your ideal corporate prospects. So the next time someone invites you to an event, say yes because you never know where it might lead, or whom you might meet!  

We hope you found this blog useful. We would love to hear from you if you have any feedback or recommendations you want to add. 

Including 6 learnings on building corporate partnerships. 

This is a guest blog by Richard Turner, Director of Fundraising, SolarAid

Have you ever built a house of cards? Spending what feels like ages carefully constructing the highest triangle possible only of course for it all to come crashing down! That’s how I used to view corporate fundraising. You spend time investing in relationships which seem to then tumble down so you have to start all over again. 

All that has changed, because now I understand the basis on how to build corporate partnerships that last. You focus on the shared purpose between your charity and the potential corporate partner. This makes the partnership as much about them as it is about you. 

I’ve learnt this critical mindset working with the remarkable Remarkable Partnerships team. So much so for the last few years Remarkable Partnerships were SolarAid’s corporate partnerships team (a unique experiment that has worked out really well).  

Now we have a foundation that we can build on year on year. It’s taken us several years to get to this point. So what have we learned for anyone seeking to build a corporate partnerships programme? 

Learnings from building a Corporate Partnerships programme 

1. Give it time. For a proper embedded approach to corporate partnerships you need at least a couple of years. There is an internal culture you need to take root so colleagues can all get involved in engaging corporate partners by building your pipeline and refining your pitch. Companies often need time to consider a partnership but then when they move it can be fast.

2. Avoid temptation. Those charity of the year opportunities will come and our learning has been to disregard them as they burn up time and unless you are a household name it often leads to nothing. We’ve limited ours to one a year. One where there is a good fit, we have an initial introduction, and we see potential for a long-term partnership.

3. Nudge that pipeline. It takes patient persistence to follow up prospects. You want someone who can make those calls, fix those meetings and knows how to pitch your cause in a way that resonates with their corporate purpose. That process creates an energy itself, exciting the potential partner as you go.

4. Be ready. You also need to be ready to respond promptly, i.e. within hours, to inbound enquiries, and know which are worth pursuing. When a company takes the trouble to reach out, that's when you have their attention. You need to seize it. Otherwise they will simply look to someone else.

5. Proactively nurture relationships. You need to be the driver to nurture relationships with any corporate partner as their business is likely to be focused elsewhere. Show them how the partnership brings value to their organisation and particularly how it will help engage their colleagues. 

6. Seek value. With advice from the Remarkable Partnerships team, we developed a minimum partnership level of £25,000 in value a year. It’s helped us focus on the prospects that will strive to achieve that. It doesn't have to be funds either. We’ve had a company donate an exhibition stand, help leverage match funding, develop bespoke packaging, and help attract new supporters. You explore and seek out the value they can bring together.

LIGHT IN A BOX With packaging advice from Bird Sunglasses, who also did the design probono, SolarAid now have a box to send solar lights in which can be bought from their online shop. 

Fundraising to build on 

And now we have a diverse range of corporate partners from a range of relevant industries who love our business focused approach, lighting, and of course, renewable energy. We have a solid portfolio to build on year on year instead of having to recreate it from scratch. 

Our next step 

The time has now come for us to take this to the next level. This year we are looking for someone to take the reins and lead our corporate partnerships. It is a fantastic opportunity to build on the momentum and relationships established with guidance from Remarkable Partnerships. And I know it will be key to SolarAid delivering on its mission to end the darkness and bring solar light to every home, clinic and school across sub-saharan Africa by 2030. 

As the year draws to a close, it’s a great time to look back, reflect and remember some of the special moments. 2022 has been an inspirational year for us, so we wanted to share some of our highlights with you:

1. Working with Sumatran Orangutan Society to maximise the potential of one of their current corporate partners, Lush, to create a new cause related product – a orangutan shaped bath bomb, that was sold globally, raising vital funds and awareness for the charity.
2. Delivering our first pitching skills training, where one participant from Leukaemia Foundation said "I’ve done various professional development webinars and workshops; this one was perhaps the most valuable."
3. Supporting Student Minds to seize larger corporate partnership opportunities in 2023 and beyond. Reviewing their current new business process and simplifying it, to make more time for pro-active new business.
4. Delivering our Masterclass in person and having the opportunity to hear fantastic charities share their powerful stories where they truly connected to their why.
5. Working with the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust to create a robust pipeline of prospects with great connections to the charity. We also created big goals for existing partners which will support the development of more strategic partnerships.
6. Delivering our masterclass to a group of 30 amazing fundraisers from all over the world and running a number of workshops all at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam. One participant said “I’ve attended a masterclass for the last three years, here at IFC – and yours was head and shoulders above the rest”.
7. Delivering a workshop for Hestia. Hayley Conboy said, “Wow what a fantastic training. You have taken us forward light years in just a few hours.”
8. Delivering energising and inspirational new business training for UK Youth. One participant said, “This is by far the best training of its kind that I have been to since I joined this wonderful sector almost 25 years ago.”
9. Working with SolarAid to create a new exciting exhibition stand to showcase the amazing work they do, built and designed by one of their new corporate partners.
10. Delivering a powerful corporate partnership proposition workshop in person with Young Enterprise. One participant said, “In my fourteen years of being with Young Enterprise, that was the most meaningful & inspirational training that I have ever had and I know I will use it”.

If you have a charity and corporate partnerships highlight from 2022 that you want to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com

Remarkable corporate partnerships require a different approach. Managing one or two large-scale, long-term partnerships takes planning, exceptional delivery, and growth to keep up momentum. 

In this week’s blog, we share five recommendations to help shift your corporate partnerships from ordinary to remarkable.

1. Map it out

Every partnership needs a plan. You are ready for the launch, everyone is elated and excited... now it is time to make it happen. We need to continue to breathe life into our partnerships beyond the initial enthusiasm at the beginning, and to do that, we need to map out where we want it to go. A good partnership growth plan will set out what you want to achieve in the short, medium and long term. Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) objectives for the partnership. Think about the key milestones. And most importantly, have it set out on a clear, concise one-page plan that you refer to often. 

2. See the world through the company’s eyes

Remember all of that amazing research you did when you first reached out to the company? Keep it up! Like any partnership in life, you want to consistently demonstrate that you are interested in them. You care about them and you care about what is happening in their world. Some great ways to do this are to set up news alerts for the company, join their mailing list, and follow the company on LinkedIn. Check out their Twitter and Instagram and see what digital campaigns they are running. Set up alerts for topics that you know they care about. And don’t be a lurker... use this information to demonstrate that you are engaged when you meet with them. Being aware of what is happening in their world is key to growing partnerships. 

3. Drive momentum 

If we are only contacting our partners on agreed report dates, or at the bi-annual check-in, then we are only ‘just’ delivering. A really great tip is to book check-ins with your partner regularly…schedule them into diaries in advance. This may look like a monthly 30-minute coffee, reaching out beyond the report dates to offer relevant updates or offering opportunities to connect with your services. All of the research you’ve been doing will help make sure that these check-ins are topical, offer value, and spark creative ideas, all of which will drive partnership momentum.  

4. Be like velcro 

Velcro – one of the world's simplest, yet greatest, inventions. When thinking about your partner, we want you to think of all those tiny hooks, connecting with all their lovely loops in perfect harmony. One of the most important things you can do is to build connections across the partner company. Hanging off one hook can be a tricky place to be. A partnership built on one contact is precarious, so we want to build out across multiple touchpoints to create a more stable, and embedded, foundation. Introduce their communications team with your communications team, offer learning sessions for their colleagues, and connect your CEOs. The more connections you have across the company, the more champions you have advocating for you. 

5. Knock their socks off! 

We want you to be remarkable. And one of the simplest, most enjoyable and inspiring ways to do this is to make sure you take the time to celebrate your partner. Go above and beyond when thanking them. When they come on board, send them a welcome pack. When they make a payment don’t just rely on the invoice receipt to thank them, handwrite a card. There is always something you can bounce off - birthdays, key work dates, key global dates, budget season (everyone needs cheering up when setting budgets).  Remember little details about them. Share with them the impact your partnership is making. Bring the joy and you will make partnering with your charity both memorable and uplifting. 

If you enjoyed this blog, you might be interested in attending our Key Account Management training.  

Discover the skills, tools and confidence for you to provide an excellent partnership experience and maximise value from your key corporate partnerships. 

Taking place online on the 8^th December 2022. Click here to find out more. 

International Fundraising Congress (IFC) is epic. It took place in The Netherlands in October and 700 people attended in person and 500 online. We had the privilege of speaking this year and as we walked through the doors of the conference centre, we could tell this was going to be a powerful week. 

So here are our five big insights from IFC 2022. 

Location helps transformation 

The NH Conference centre is in Noordwijk, approximately 25 miles from Amsterdam. It’s a place where transformation happens. IFC has been held there for years and it consistently delivers penny-dropping-moments for us and thousands of fundraisers. 

Maybe it’s the size of the place, or because IFC surrounds you with inspiring images and messages, or the quality of speakers, or the enthusiasm of the attendees, or the quality of service. Indeed, it’s a combination of all these factors. It’s a powerful cocktail which always delivers transformation. 

Global fundraising community 

We met people from all over the world, including Australia, Germany, India, Kenya, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, and USA. The vast majority had never met before and yet there was an instant sense of familiarity because we were surrounded by other fundraisers. This is our global fundraising community. It feels nurturing to spend time with them, because we’re motivated by the same things, we have similar goals and challenges. Although we speak many different languages, we all speak the same language of fundraising. 

Digital mobilisation meets corporate partnerships 

We attended a session on digital mobilisation delivered by Paul de Gregorio of Rally and Ali Walker Davis from Forward Action. In their session they shared an impressive case study where they helped the UK charity Refuge to dramatically increase their number of subscribers, many of whom were converted into supporters. 

It reminded us of something that Joe Waters of SelfishGiving.com raves about, which is the exciting area where digital mobilisation meets corporate partnerships. Because probably the most powerful way that corporate partnerships can deliver value for charities is reaching thousands of employees and/or consumers. These thousands of people have the potential to become subscribers and then be converted into supporters, through an engaging digital campaign.  

Inspire the inspirers 

As corporate fundraisers our role is to inspire business decision-makers to partner with our charity. But it’s impossible to keep bringing that fire and enthusiasm every day. At some stage our energy and optimism are going to take a dip. So, who inspires the inspirers? 

That’s where IFC comes in. It’s an incredible event that gives us the enthusiasm top-up we all need to go back to our roles to inspire more business decision-makers. This is especially important right now with the global energy crisis and tough economic situation. It’s vital that we bring hope and a sense of what’s possible in these difficult times. 

We are all persuaders now 

One of the greatest highlights of IFC 2022 was an interview with Anand Giridharadas, a former journalist at the New York Times. He said that fundraisers think of themselves as bringing truth and information to power, in exchange for a donation. However, according to Anand, fundraisers should see themselves as changemakers not just for our service users but also for donors. 

This is particularly relevant for corporate partnerships. Rather than building partnerships with companies to just change the lives of service users, successful partnerships should also result in positive change for the company. We need to challenge them and show them how to be and do better at the same time. 

In conclusion, Anand said that we need to be better at persuading from the inside, rather than criticising from the outside. It felt like such a fresh and important message we all need to hear right now. You can discover inspiring examples and ways to do that in his new book, The Persuaders. 

Conclusion 

One blog cannot do justice to our hugely valuable takeaways from IFC. We learned so much and our enthusiasm and inspiration feel refilled. We urge everyone reading this blog to do the following three things: 

• Book in some time to meet with your community, your fellow fundraisers.
• Buy and read The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas.
• Attend IFC 2023.

If you enjoyed this blog you might be interested in attending our Advanced Corporate Partnerships Masterclass. Discover how behavioural science can help you build ambitious corporate partnerships. Taking place on 24th November 2022 in London. Click here to find out more.

In November 2018, a carers' charity and a huge energy company announced a major partnership. It was the biggest partnership the charity had ever built. There was a noticeable ripple of excitement that travelled across the whole charity – but this excitement was quickly followed by nerves.

In October 2022, the impact of this partnership is unbelievable. It has created a step-change in the way that society recognizes, values and supports the cause. It has also created a step-change in how the company treat their colleagues and customers. They have truly delivered their shared purpose.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing. As with any first – a first pitch or a first major partnership – there were lessons learnt along the way. We are delighted to share with you the key insights from this partnership that you can apply to your own practice.

The importance of focus

Like many charities, the charity in this partnership had never truly focussed on corporate partnerships. They had a history of smaller, transactional partnerships and a busy pipeline – with a clear focus on Charity of the Year applications.

After a few disappointing losses, where they had put their all into an application, they realised that something needed to change. They needed to focus on fewer, more meaningful opportunities.

At Remarkable Partnerships, we often talk about Charity of the Year applications as the grand national of corporate partnerships. They’re big, they’re glamorous, but they only last a year. This charity saw the value in entering a one-horse race instead.

They found the companies where they already had contacts and where there was a genuine opportunity for transformation. You could read our blog on how to spot a five star prospect here.

It pays to be ambitious 

With fewer companies in the pipeline, it was important to focus on bigger opportunities.

They moved from pitching one-year, reactive opportunities to multi-year strategic partnerships. Longer, broader, greater. Initially, this put the team out of their comfort zone – but they quickly found the tools to justify this ambition.

By pitching longer partnerships, you give yourself the time to create real societal change. You also give yourself the time to build solid foundations in both organisations. The charity learnt the broader the partnership, the stronger the foundation. This particular partnership grew to include programmatic support, cause related marketing and even a commercial element.

The breadth of activity served the charity well. As the company went through a restructure, there were enough advocates for the partnership for the relationship to continue.

Create a partnerships culture  

With only a team of two to deliver this major partnership, the charity knew they would need the support of their colleagues to make it happen.

As such, they engaged their colleagues from the start and quickly established ways of working. With a clear understanding of what each team needed from the corporate partnerships lead, they were able to deliver a constantly evolving partnership.

One particular highlight was establishing a working group within the charity, catching up regularly about the various projects. This ensured everyone moved forward on the same page.

Remarkable teams  

Just as ways of working were established with internal teams, it was equally important to establish these with the partner. They learned the hard way that it is important to agree clear objectives and deadlines, especially as key contacts change throughout the partnership.

The insight here, then, is to establish goals, communication methods and priorities early. By ensuring both organisations were on the same page, they were able to move forward much faster.

Success attracts success   

Finally, the insight that stuck out to the charity most was that success attracts success. It can be incredibly difficult to build and deliver a major partnership. However, once this partnership is up and running – and you are able to communicate it – other major partners become easier to win.

It is fair to say that both the charity and the company are still learning as they go, but these five insights were fundamental for their past success.

If you would like to learn more about how to create, secure and deliver transformational partnerships, check out our advanced corporate partnerships masterclass.

“Understanding the needs of a business is the starting point of any project.” John Williams.

Right now, in the middle of the cost of living crisis, you want to understand how things are for business. It's important you have empathy with the people you want to build partnerships with. Running a business is more challenging than ever. Many business leaders feel overwhelmed. To get their attention it is important to show you understand and then offer a simple solution to one or more of their challenges.

Below we describe five problems companies are facing.

The battle for talent

One of the greatest challenges is the recruitment and retention of employees. The battle for talent has never been so competitive. The post pandemic landscape has added a challenge, because employees' needs and wants have changed. By 2025 it is expected that 75% of the global workforce will be millennials (forbes.com). Companies need to to adapt their working practices, environments, and cultures to meet the demands of this generation. On the whole, millennials want to work for companies with a purpose that goes beyond just making money. They want to feel good about their work because it is making a positive impact on society.

We recommend offer corporate partners and prospects the opportunity to authentically demonstrate their purpose through a shared purpose partnership. This will show their employees why they are such a great company to work for.

Engaging employees

It is a shocking statistic that only 11% of employees in the UK and western Europe feel engaged at work. (Gallup, 2021). People are the most important resource in a company and yet they are often neglected. Employee engagement is the greatest priority for most companies. Disengaged employees are less productive, the quality of their work suffers and they sometimes spread negative messages about the company. When we consider that 85% of employees in the UK and western Europe are not engaged at work and 18% are actively disengaged (Gallup 2021), we begin to understand the scale of this challenge.

We recommend you demonstrate how your partnership opportunity will engage a companies employees, by giving their people opportunities to help create a better society.

Working conditions 

Companies are having to operate with much smaller operational budgets, whilst balancing the need to support employees in the cost of living crisis. Health and well-being is priority, especially during this time of uncertainty.

We recommend you show how your partnership opportunity can help a company demonstrate its commitment to creating a healthy, supportive and inclusive workplace.

Supply chain issues

The war in Ukraine has caused major disruption in companies' supply chains. Also the price of oil and gas has risen sharply, which is impacting energy-intensive sectors. With increase costs for essential parts and materials, many companies are facing a cash flow crisis.

We recommend that you use a cause related marketing strategy to help support companies that need to increase pricing. By introducing a charity donation with higher pricing, they are able to show the customer the same value for money as well as being more being purpose driven.

Partnerships not delivering value

In a recent survey 63% of respondents said they, “want CEOs to take a stand on key societal issues, with income inequality, racial equality and climate change the top issues identified” (JUST Capital, 2021). Unfortunately, many charities partnerships which are created take these issues are failing to deliver real value for the business. This means business CEOs see charity partnerships as a drain on resources, rather than delivering genuine commercial benefits. And in difficult times company CEOs increase their focus on the bottom line.

We recommend you show how your partnership opportunity will deliver commercial value for your corporate partner or prospect, by helping them with their reputation, employee engagement and/or sales.

We hope this blog helps you understand the challenges companies are facing right now, and gives you the inspiration and insight to seize the significant opportunities in the cost of living crisis.

Despite all the doom and gloom of the cost-of-living crisis, one phrase keeps going through my mind:

“Out of darkness cometh light.”

This is the motto of the city of Wolverhampton, where my parents come from. It’s an optimistic and hopeful message, which feels so appropriate right now. That’s because corporate-charity partnerships are a huge opportunity in the crisis. We saw it in the pandemic and we will see it again now.

So if you’re a charity leader or a corporate fundraiser, then we strongly urge you to seize this opportunity by following our recommendations below.

Companies who make a difference will benefit

In times of crisis we expect companies to make a difference. And companies who make an extraordinary response will prosper. They will win the “brand game” because their reputation will be enhanced. They will also win the “people game” because their colleagues will feel proud to work for a company who genuinely cares. We saw this with the partnership between Gymshark and Birmingham Women and Children’s Hospital Charity, where the sportswear brand agreed to donate £5 to everybody who shared a #NHSSweatySelfie after doing exercise. This hugely successful partnership generated almost 36,000 selfie uploads and donated £180k to the charity.

Engage companies on the cost-of-living crisis

The cost-of-living crisis is the top priority for business leaders right now. They are particularly keen to ensure their colleagues feel supported during this tough time. This means that if you want to approach them you should do so in the context of the crisis. We recommend you brainstorm a tailored opportunity for each of your key partners and top prospects. Then you can approach each of them in turn and say, “we have an opportunity that we believe is perfect for your company. This opportunity will not only help you engage your target audience during the cost-of living crisis, it will also help you emerge stronger because consumers and colleagues will love your brand for being so purpose driven.”

Focus on shared purpose

For companies to be successful they need to identify and demonstrate the reason they exist, beyond just making money. This purpose becomes even more important in a crisis. This is because it’s vital that companies show they are part of the solution rather than the problem. Given the importance of purpose we recommend you engage companies on your shared purpose with them. This is your unique and compelling focus for partnering together. You can find your shared purpose by putting the company mission next to your charity mission, then look for your shared intention.

Own your commercial value

In a recession business leaders become much more focused on the bottom line. So all the activity that feels like “nice to have” is put on hold and they focus on reducing costs and maximising revenue. Therefore you want to make sure that your partnership opportunity is related directly to their bottom line and doesn’t feel like a nice to have. You can do this by brainstorming the big commercial benefits you can deliver for companies. For example, a hospice in the West Midlands could say, “our partnership opportunity will position your company as a champion of caring for families in the West Midlands.”

See the opportunity

Seizing partnership opportunities in the crisis isn’t just about what you do, it’s about how you make people feel. We recommend that you encourage your team, colleagues, prospects and partners to focus on what’s possible. Indeed, many charities secured hugely successful corporate partnerships in the pandemic. For example, Carers Trust secured a major partnership with Bloom and Wild. For every “Florist’s Pick” bouquet the company donates 15% of profit to the charity. The partnership started in October 2020, and so far it has raised an incredible £535k to provide carers with practical support and training.

We are offering charities a free one-hour brainstorm to help you seize partnerships opportunities in the cost-of-living crisis. To book your free brainstorm please email rebecca@remarkablepartnerships.com

When you start a new job, it can often feel like you have to learn a whole new language. Understanding the acronyms, the jargon, the tone – it can be incredibly confusing. 

Whether you have just started in corporate fundraising and are keen to learn the language, or if you’ve been in fundraising for a while and want to keep up with developments, we thought we would share our “fundraising decoder” - the 17 important phrases you need to know. 

1. Beneficiaries – the people who directly benefit from an organisation’s activities. For example, at The Children Society, this will be the children and young people they support. 
    

2. Charitable deduction – companies that make charitable contributions can often use this to reduce their corporation tax bill. It is always worth ensuring your corporate partners know this, as it may increase the amount they are able to give you! 
    

3. Corporate foundation – many companies will have a set bank account/structure for their corporate giving, such as the Avanti Schools Trust We largely recommend that these are handled by trust fundraisers, as they are managed much more like a foundation than they are a company. 
    

4. Corporate Partnership – a corporate-charity partnership is a relationship between a business and a charity who share passion and commitments, the kind that turns transactional support into lasting alliances rooted in mutual goals. We've seen this play out lately with idaho sportsbooks teaming up with regional wildlife funds to back conservation efforts, channeling a slice of their gaming revenue toward habitat restoration that echoes their own ethos of fair play in wild spaces. Many charities define any corporate relationship over a certain value (e.g. £5,000) as a partnership, whereas others see that they have to share certain values.
   

5. COTY (Charity of the year) - a partnership between a charity and a business that typically lasts between one and three years, often chosen by employee vote. 
    

6. Cause related marketing – an arrangement that links a product or service with a social cause to provide the cause with a percentage of the sales or profits received. For example, the LUSH x SOS orangutan bath bomb. 
    

7. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) - many companies will have a CSR Policy which outlines their commitments to society.  
    

8. Due diligence - the steps taken to assess another company or person the charity is considering a partnership or association with. These steps are taken to protect the charity or company against damage to their reputation or finances. 
    

9. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) – a set of standards measuring a business's impact on society, the environment, and how transparent and accountable it is. 
    

10. Gift in kind - a donation of goods and services made to a charity, rather than a cash gift.  
     

11. MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) or partnership agreement - a document describing the broad outlines of an agreement that two or more parties have reached. 
     

12. Payroll giving - a way of giving money through the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system from someone’s wages or pension to charity without paying tax on it. Payroll giving is sometimes called ‘give as you earn’ or ‘workplace giving’ 
     

13. Pipeline - a list of companies that have been identified as potential supporters of a charity. The ‘pipeline’ refers to the stages and actions from converting the company from a lead to a partner. 
     

14. SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) - The Sustainable Development Goals or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future". 
     

15. Strategic Partnership – Partner organisations align their missions and combine their assets to create new resources, rather than swap resources they already have. 
     

16. Transformational Partnership – Partnership lifts the lid of what the charity and company are able to achieve for their missions, often causing ‘disruptive social innovation’ 
     

17. Unrestricted funding - funds that have no specific conditions imposed by donors/partners, in terms of how or on what these may be spent. 

We hope this glossary has been useful to start getting your mind used to the language. We know how scary or confusing it can be to start in corporate fundraising. If you’d like to turbo-charge your corporate partnerships career, we’d recommend checking out our  Introduction to Corporate Partnerships Training  

The early days of being a corporate fundraiser can be daunting. When I started as a corporate fundraiser I was in a brand new profession, in a new sector and I felt nervous, overwhelmed and alone. We want every corporate fundraiser to get off to the best possible start. Which is why we have created this blog sharing our five top tips for new corporate fundraisers. 

Be a sponge 

When you first start a job the temptation is to think you need to make an immediate impact. But honestly that isn’t the immediate goal. You can do that after three months. The big priority when you start is to learn the job, understand how they do things in your new organisation, and start building relationships with your colleagues. Be a sponge. Ask questions. Learn from others and soak up the information. 

Do your homework  

When you are approaching a corporate prospect or partner, take the time to do your research and really get to know them. What keeps their CEO up at night? What are they talking about in their latest impact reports and on social media?  Have they been featured in the news recently saying something interesting that your charity could support them with? The more engaged you are in your preparation, the more thoughtful you will be when creating your tailored opportunity for them. 

Become an engaging storyteller 

As the well-known saying goes – “facts tell, stories sell.” People buy for emotional reasons, and they justify their decision with logic afterwards. One of the most important skills you can develop as a new corporate fundraiser is to tell stories.  Ask your colleagues to share emotionally engaging stories about the work of your charity.  Collect stories that inspire you, that speak directly to your heart. Your goal is to practice telling two or three stories that you can use when you meet with companies. 

Clarify your objectives 

Abraham Lincoln said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” In other words, preparation is important. So, before you start putting lots of effort and energy into your new job, make sure you clarify your objectives first. After all, you don’t want to run off in completely the wrong direction! The best way to clarify your objectives is to sit down with your manager and agree them between you. Make sure they are realistic and you understand what is expected of you. Having clear objectives makes you much more likely to succeed. 

Celebrate little wins 

Sometimes it can be hard to stay motivated in the world of corporate fundraising. We know that it can take 6-18 months to build a new partnership. So you need to be patiently persistent. We recommend you break down the journey into the little steps, so it feels achievable. Then you should celebrate the little win as you make it to the next step. You completed your research on a prospect? That’s a little win! You identified the shared purpose for your charity and a prospect? That’s a little win! You got a response to your email? That’s a little win!  Keep moving forward – incremental steps every day – and before you know it, you will have secured a partnership that will change the world.  

Being a corporate fundraiser can be one of the most inspiring and rewarding careers. And at Remarkable Partnerships we want every corporate fundraiser to feel supported, especially in the early days. If you’re new to corporate fundraising check out our  Introduction to Corporate Partnerships Training on 22 September in London. 

We fall into fundraising for a number of different reasons, some by chance, some by fate and some of us are born with it in our blood. Whatever our reasons are, we all have one thing in common, the passion and desire that led us here to make a difference and an impact. 

We thought we would put a spotlight on 5 amazing fundraisers and ask them 'Why did they become a corporate fundraiser?'   

Daisy Wilson, Corporate Partnerships Lead, Dementia UK 

My fundraising days started when I was five. I paraded around our village with a ‘save the otters’ sign, selling questionable homemade bakes. My new business asks started when I was seven - asking my parents to fund a puppy. We ended up with two Labradors. I knew I had potential…  

Building corporate partnerships is an exciting and evolving space to work in, presenting win-win opportunities for both sides and transformational impact for causes you’re rooting for. It presents a platform to share powerful stories. It attracts a creative bunch of people, who are eager to learn, share and inspire and do not shy away from a challenge. It keeps you on your toes, always, which means you never have a dull day at work.     

Denise Cranston, Partnerships Manager, Remarkable Partnerships 

For me, Fundraising isn’t something I do: it feels like who I am.  
 
When I was a child I wanted to be a nurse, as a teenager I fancied myself as the next Debbie Harry.  I doubt anyone grows up thinking ‘I really want to be a corporate fundraiser’! Ultimately, though, I wanted to help people. 
 
Being a corporate fundraiser is getting harder.  More and more charities are fighting for the same pots of money and are feeling the strain of trying to pick up the pieces of the current cost of living crisis.  But we carry on: we know the impact we can make here, and every ‘yes’ is exhilarating. This is the reason I do it. I wake up each morning knowing I’m able to help. 

If you are inspired by the reasons we became corporate fundraisers listed, we recommend you check out our Introduction to Corporate Partnerships course – helping you kickstart your corporate partnerships career. 

 
Harbi Jama (He/Him), Corporate Partnerships Manager, Refugee Action 

I was inspired by corporate fundraising because I did not see people that looked like me.  

I knew I had a passion for charity and have worked in the private sector; I know great things can be achieved when the two work together. I am fortunate to work for an organisation that values lived experience; over the years, linking my lived experience with the organisation’s mission and vision has made me an excellent fundraiser, relationship manager and communicator.  

I am also a firm believer in abundance and a positive mindset; this is key to being successful in corporate partnerships. 
 
Amy Chambers, Director of Fundraising and Marketing, Thames Hospice 

My fundraising journey started when I was a little girl. I came across a charity at a carnival and purchased a t-shirt for guide dogs for the blind and then went knocking on my neighbours doors selling raffle tickets to collect donations. My mum said to me ‘you shouldn't be knocking on people’s doors!’ and then donated the money on my behalf. When I look back this where it all started…I believe I was always meant to become a fundraiser.  

I started my career working for Audi as a group marketing manager. I was asked to write their CSR strategy and create positive PR and boost staff morale, and this is when I got involved in fundraising for a local hospice. I loved it so much I went to work for them as a corporate partnerships manager. 

For me, corporate partnerships are all about the change and impact that they have and how it can benefit both charity and company. It helps to give employees a sense of pride in the work that they are doing and the company, and both charity and company benefit financially and in other ways. Fourteen years on and I still have a special passion for corporate fundraising. The landscape has changed so much but it’s still just as exciting. 

Laura Swan, Partnerships Manager. Remarkable Partnerships 

I have dabbled in quite a few areas of fundraising over my 19 years working with charities, but it’s the potential that truly remarkable Corporate Partnerships can have that really excites me.  

More than ever before, I believe that we are seeing huge opportunities for companies and charities to work together in a way that can have an extremely significant impact on the causes we all work on. A meaningful corporate-charity partnership is one of the most wonderful things to be a part of – it’s about excellent and inspiring relationships, it’s about problem-solving collaboratively, it’s about getting outside of our own silos (and often comfort zones),  it’s about having the courage to think about innovative ways of approaching the challenges in our world. Ultimately, it's about dreaming BIG about what we could really achieve if we work together – and getting on and doing it!  

As the African proverb says – ‘if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together’. With a meaningful, long-term, shared purpose partnership you can go very, very far. 

Corporate fundraising is a fantastic career. We’d love to hear why you became a corporate fundraiser. 

It can be difficult to maintain your momentum over summer.  

The key way to tackle this is to keep inspired – to remember why you are doing what you are. 

So we’re sharing these five partnerships to re-energise that why. To see the impact that is possible, and learn what we can from them in turn. Here are some of our favourites – we’d love to hear yours: 

Pringles & Movember 

Pringles and Movember have more than a moustache in common. 

They share an audience, have similar brand voices and their messages exist to be shared. The fit couldn’t be stronger. So when Mr. Pringle shaved his iconic moustache, its no surprise that it caught media attention. 

Movember saw an increase in people taking part in their shaving challenges and Pringles saw a 156% uplift in their sales. The partnership was able to create important conversations whilst also raising vital funds. Our favourite part is the simplicity of the tagline: Pop, Share, Chat. 

This partnership teaches us to start our prospecting with shared purpose. Who cares about the people we care about? 

LV and Family Action 

These two organisations installed a number of telephone boxes in repair garages – giving men a place to talk about their feelings amid the cost of living crisis.  

The two organisations know that men are less likely to look after their help – and often fear looking weak in front of their family. By creating a secluded space and offering a free helpline, they are offering a clear first step to break this taboo.  

This partnership demonstrates the power of innovative thinking. How can corporate partners help you get in front of potential beneficiaries?  

If you’re wondering how to apply these lessons – such as how to identify companies that share your purpose – we recommend checking out our upcoming Corporate Partnerships Masterclass. This will teach you to build and deliver inspiring partnerships. 

Carpet Right and Cats Protection 

Cats are territorial creatures – they like to have a square of land to call their own. 

To ensure that the cats in Cats Protection centres feels like they have a home to call their own, Carpet Right have donated a large number of carpet samples. These squares of carpet allow the cats to maintain their claws, mark their territory and get used to new surfaces.  

What’s more, when cats are rehomed, they are able to take this carpet with them – supporting their transition to their forever home with something familiar. 

This initial gift in kind has led to a campaign for #MatureMoggiesDay and we know more exciting partnership activities are brewing. This demonstrates one of the key principles of corporate partnerships – where you start a partnership with the mission, rather than the money, stronger partnerships are often built as a result! 

Doritos &  It Gets Better Project 

Pringles aren’t the only crisp brand to make the cut. Doritos, a PepsiCo brand, ran one of our all time favourite campaigns with American charity It Gets Better project. 

PepsiCo brands are well known supporters of the American diversity and inclusion movement, making Doritos a brilliant prospect for It Gets Better. 

The two organisations worked together to build on PepsiCo’s historical work – demonstrating their shared commitment to the LGBT+ community by introducing Doritos Rainbows chips, the first Doritos product in history made up of multiple, rainbow-colored Doritos chips inspired by the Pride flag.  

The reason we love the campaign is the #BoldandBetter hashtag. This partnership offered incredible reach and offered hope to those who may not otherwise see themselves represented. This is particularly the case in the school canteen, where a number of young people would have seen the doritos.  

This partnership shows us the power of understanding what is going on in the corporate market. With diversity and inclusion becoming a growing priority, how can you help a company stand out? 

Budweiser and SolarAid 

Budweiser have recently launched their partnership with SolarAid – encouraging their audience to watch a full advert for the beer in order to trigger a free donation to their charity partner.  

The banner reads “this ad lights homes”. By using advertising technology, Budweiser are able to engage their customers with their shared values. The impact of the partnership is huge, too. The initiative will help donate over 6,100 solar lights, reaching 33,200 people and saving families a total of £981,500. 

This partnership teaches us that solving company problems – such as audience constantly skipping advertising – can create powerful partnerships. 

We hope these lessons have been useful. If you want to build partnerships that can inspire the sector, we strongly recommend our upcoming Corporate Partnerships Masterclass. 

As Daniel Priestley says – “you get what you pitch for, and you’re always pitching.” 

We love this approach. Pitching is a compelling way to inform or persuade others and it is part of our natural conversation. We pitch our ideas and thoughts to other people daily.  It can be as simple as deciding where to go for breakfast, or as complex as asking others to invest their time and money to support our cause. To be a truly remarkable corporate fundraiser, you need to nail your pitches – both the formal ones, and the every day. So how can you take your pitch to the next level? 

Interact with your audience 

When presenting, you want to ensure that you have your audience’s full attention. With more and more of our meetings happening online, it can be all too easy for your audience’s mind to wander to their inbox. 

By asking your audience to interact with you right at the start, you break this temptation. You also make it clear that this isn’t going to be a normal sales pitch – you’re going to involve them. 

When the Sleep Charity pitch to prospects, they ask the people in the room to reflect on how they feel if they’ve had a bad night’s sleep – writing down the one word that comes to mind. They might say angry, or forgetful, or tearful. Once they’ve shared all these feelings, the Sleep Charity invite them to think how they would feel if that was every night. 

With this strong emotional connection established, they know their audience are fully focused – it often feels like they’ve won the partnership before they’ve even begun.  

‘Prop’ your pitch

The well-timed use of a well-chosen prop can make a big impression on your audience. Props can help a presentation in several ways: 

1. They can have an emotional impact. 

2. They can be effective metaphors. 

3. They are memorable.

In their book  Switch Chip and Dan Heath tell the story of Jon Stegner, an employee at a large manufacturing company who wanted to show executives the enormous amount of money that was wasted annually because of poor purchasing habits.

Stegner needed a compelling example of the company’s poor purchasing habits. So he got an intern to investigate one item that the company purchased: work gloves. The intern found that the company’s factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves from different suppliers and for different prices.

Stegner collected one sample of each of the 424 different types of gloves and tagged each with the price the company paid. The gloves were then brought to a boardroom and piled up on the conference table. Stegner invited all the presidents of the company’s division presidents to come visit his “Glove Shrine”.

In their book, the Heath brothers write: 

What they saw was a large expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked high with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minute… Then they walked around the table…. They could see the prices. They looked at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55. It’s a rare event when these people don’t have anything to say. But that day, they just stood with their mouths gaping. 

The company changed its purchasing process and saved a great deal of money.

Such is the power of a well-used prop. 

Tell a powerful story 

Through years of research, world famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman learned that our emotional brain works 2,000 times faster than our logical brain. 

This means that we make decisions for emotional reasons, then justify them with logic afterwards. The number one way to engage your audience emotionally is to tell a story. 

You can see our recent blog on the power of stories here. When telling a story, we recommend you focus on one individual. For example, rather than telling a story of a family, focus on one of the parents or the child. This makes it much easier to imagine their emotions and relate to them. 

The story you tell can make or break a pitch, so if you want to learn how to choose and tell the best story, we recommend checking out our upcoming New Business Crash Course. 

Leave it out 

We can talk all day about what your pitch should include - but what do you leave out? The answer is easy: everything the brief doesn’t ask for. 

• Don’t outline a detailed budget/partnership plan. This would come along if and after you are selected for the partnership. Instead, use this space for things that work to your benefit - an extra creative reference, perhaps!

• Steer clear of saying obvious things or repeating the brief verbatim. Your word count is as precious as your prospects’ time, so avoid wasting it on things that are not constructive to your pitch. 
   
• Jargon. Don’t focus on listing details specific to your charity or using your charities’ language in-depth. You have to remember that the prospect isn’t the expert on these things, you are, so avoid going on a tangent. Instead, stay on brief and let your idea do the magic. 

Write your happy ending 

A pitch is only as powerful as how you close — that said, many of us still struggle with how to end a presentation. Most pitches end with a whimper rather than a bang, taking a major toll on prospect's interest and enthusiasm. 

To help you add a little extra oomph to your presentations and consistently end pitches on a high note, try ending with one of the following:  

1. Go back to your opening anecdote or idea. 

2. End with a challenge. 

3. Invite your audience on a metaphorical mission. 

4. Offer inspiration. 

5. End with a quote. 

By incorporating these core tips, you will take your pitches to the next level. You will start to involve prospects, partners and colleagues in the choices you are making – and unlock a lot more value as a result. 

Join us on our upcoming New Business Crash Course to learn more about turboboosting your new business approach.  

“I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.”

- Estée Lauder

Good corporate fundraisers are good sales people. They may be selling social change, the chance to make an impact, or a good feeling – but they are definitely selling.

With this in mind, Peter from Remarkable Partnerships is pleased to share the five essential sales techniques that every corporate fundraiser should learn.

Create intrigue

When Greggs decided to launch their first vegan product, they knew they needed to ignite an already crowded market. To create an element of intrigue, Greggs used a marketing technique called “drop culture” to launch its vegan steak bake.

Using teaser videos, they announced something big was about to happen. When it launched, flagship stores were given huge physical adverts and their “vegan steak bake finder” tool went on Gregg’s website to help customers buy the in-demand product.

The launch was a huge success. As well as winning many marketing awards, they increased their year-on-year sales by 13.5%.

This case study shows us the power of curiosity. As a corporate fundraiser, we encourage you to offer your prospects an idea, without telling them what the idea is until they meet you. The power is in the intrigue.

Help your prospects discover their pain points

Steve Jobs once said “It's not the customers’ job to know what they want."

Successful companies understand that in order to sell anything, you must first understand who your customers are and what problems they are facing. By acting as a consultant, rather than a salesperson, you are better able to solve those problems.

When Steve Jobs set up Apple, they understood that consumers found technology both confusing and unreliable. In response, Apple revolutionised the way people view technology: creating a simple and consistent experience across their products. The rest is history.

So when talking to your corporate prospects, find out what their key pain points are. Then when presenting your partnership idea, tailor your idea to the problems that your prospects are trying to solve.

Sell with stories

Telling stories is one the most effective sales techniques there are. By telling stories, you connect on a personal level and provide an insight into your “why”. The most successful salespeople are able to make their audience feel an emotional and personal connection – hence the saying “people buy from people”.

A good story grabs their attention, motivates them to take action and most importantly is memorable. A study by Stanford professor Chip Heath found that 63% of those tested were able to remember stories, while only 5% could remember a single statistic.

Become an expert closer

As the famous sales mantra goes, sales is simple as ABC. Always be closing.

The most important part of the sales process is closing the deal. Everything else leads to the close – the result. It is important to practice reassuring hesitant prospects, helping buyers organise their thoughts and reaching their own conclusions.

In order for you to become an expert closer, consider using the following methods:

1. Assumptive close -  in the assumptive close the aim is to be assertive and not aggressive. You achieve this by moving the negotiations forward under the assumption that your prospect is ready for partnership, and tackling any hesitations as they come up.
2. Pros and cons -  listing the pros and cons of your partnership helps your prospect organise their thoughts. It also allows you to determine the key elements that are important to them.
3. The time-limited offer – this method can create a sense of urgency in the negotiations if the buyer is hesitant and wants to consider alternative options.
4. Summary close - by summarising all the options discussed, you provide the prospect with the opportunity to picture what your services may look like before making a decision.

Understand your prospects communication style   

High performing sales companies develop their people to build better and more meaningful business relationships by using four simple colour profiles. Using the “personality insight model”, they build communication models based on four colours:

• Fiery red = Competitive / demanding / purposeful
• Sunshine yellow = Sociable / dynamic / enthusiastic
• Earth green = Caring / encouraging / sharing
• Cool blue = Questioning / precise / formal

These colour profiles provide insight into how people want to be communicated with. Rather than using trial and error, sales teams are able to mirror their prospects’ communication style and quickly develop stronger relationships. For example, for social sunshine yellows they will spend lots of time on the phone, whereas with formal cool blues they will stick to emails.

We recommend you think about what colour profile best represents your key contacts and mirror their communication style. You will start to see results instantly.

To learn more about how to create and secure major corporate partnerships, check out our upcoming new business crash course.

The sales team for BMW are measured on one key metric.

Can you guess what it is?

It’d be understandable if you thought it might be the number of sales they make, but you’d be mistaken. They are actually measured on the number of test drives they secure. The idea is that the cars are so good, that once you are behind the wheel, they should sell themselves.

Often, our corporate partnership pitches are the same. You have an amazing prospect in front of you. You have an exciting idea, a strong shared purpose and you know that there is huge benefit for them in the partnership… if only they’d meet you.

That’s why Hannah and Nic are coming together to share our top five tips to secure that all important first meeting.

An introduction to the right person 

We’ve all heard the saying – “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

Well, when it comes to corporate partnerships, it’s important to have both. Securing a warm introduction can make or break a partnership approach, then you have the room to give them a brilliant first meeting.

As such, we recommend contact mapping throughout your organisation. You can do this industry by industry to help identify top prospects – or if you already have prospects in mind, you can put the company logos on a slide and ask people to go through their LinkedIn. It’s important to remember that everyone in your charity has a network – not just the senior management team.

Once you’ve identified a shared connection, give them the tools they need to make the approach – a suggested first email and possibly a biscuit for good luck.  

 Tailor your approach  

Once you know who the best person to speak to is, it’s important you send them the best message possible. It can be tempting to copy and paste previous approaches, but we know that with a focussed prospect list it’s important to take a quality approach to that first impression.

When the company receive your email, or answer your phone call, they will have some core questions in their mind. They will want to know what’s in it for them, why it’s relevant for them, and what you’re asking for.

As such, try to ensure your initial outreach answers these three points. Cover your shared purpose – what unites your two organisations together – and ask for a thirty minute meeting to share a partnership idea with them. The temptation of this idea should be enough to secure that conversation.

Seek the magical details  

Before you make the first approach, do your research. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Why this company?
• What is your shared purpose?
• Who’s problem at this company are you solving?
• Is there anything you can learn about this person – things other people may not know?

This is your opportunity to show how keen you are, as well as the value that you will bring as their eventual charity partner. For example, if they mention on LinkedIn that they are training for a marathon, could you put a running playlist in your initial email? Perhaps you post them a protein bar?

These magical details don’t need to be expensive or complicated – they just need to show that you care, and that this isn’t a standard sales approach.

Be persistent 

We know it can be frustrating, and even demoralizing, when you aren’t getting a response.

But we’d encourage you not to give up. A silence or a non-reply often doesn’t mean a no, it just means they haven’t got to your email – and there are a hundred and one reasons why people don’t’ reply to as quickly as we would like them too. 

In fact, recent research by Hubspot shows that the average prospect will only respond after five follow-ups. But only 6% of sales people follow up five times! So remember not to give up too early.

Do something unexpected 

When being persistent, it’s important to try new things and ensure you don’t sound like a broken record. After all, we are all short of time – so if you keep trying the same thing, you won’t necessarily get different results.

It can really help to be creative. For example, when Rennie Grove Hospice were trying to secure a meeting with Amazon Logistics, they realized their email approach wasn’t working. As such, they decided to do something a bit different. They popped a little card with a teabag inside saying ‘we know you are super busy right now, so have a cup of tea on me and relax for 5 minutes, perhaps next time we can meet face to face and I will bring the biscuits’.  

It worked! They got a response and a secured a meeting, and like a BMW test drive they went on to win the partnership. 

This brings us to the question: what ‘something unexpected’ could you create for your prospects?  

In summary, you have to do something different to get yourself noticed. You have to be willing to go the extra mile, to keep going in the face of no reply and eventually you will secure that meeting.

If you’d like to become a prospect magnet, we’d recommend checking out our upcoming Advanced Corporate Partnerships Masterclass – this course teaches you to increase inbound opportunities and become an expert closer.

On the 26^th March, 2020, everything changed.

In response to the growing coronavirus pandemic, the United Kingdom entered the first of three national lockdowns. Overnight, the corporate agenda changed. Business leaders were immediately struggling with questions of supply chains, working from home and responding to the crisis.

In 2022, we find ourselves facing new problems. The cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the continuing effects of the coronavirus dictate the corporate agenda.

To build ambitious corporate partnerships, your charity needs to respond to this shifting agenda. As such, we have outlined five ways in which the agenda has changed this year.

The battle for talent

When surveyed by Inspiring Workplaces, the majority of CEOs listed hiring – and retaining – the right talent as their top priority.

The pandemic has given a lot of people the space to consider their options. As such, thousands of workers are moving to companies that better align with their values or offer greater flexibility.

Therefore, organizations looking to remain competitive have to prioritize their workforce. This prioritization comes in many forms. It could be increased wellbeing support, providing flexibility around working hours or even meaningful charity partnerships.

In recent research, Slack have found that up to 30% of employees intend to leave their job this year. Your charity partnership could be the thing that makes candidates choose that company.

Adapting to a hybrid world

We find ourselves in the middle of a digital revolution. The pandemic taught us that whilst face to face interaction is valuable, it isn’t always essential. As such, companies are having to rethink how they create value for their customers.

As more basic services and goods – such as education, employment and social interactions – move online, problems arise. It is easy for people to feel left out and for small details to be overlooked. Left unchecked, this can lead to disastrous results.

Companies are racing to solve these problems. Whether they are trying to replace the ‘water cooler culture’ or ensure that their platform works for all generations, they are all looking to build a digitally inclusive future. It is worth thinking if your charity can play a part in this.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Forbes research shows that millennials will be the predominant workforce by 2026.

As customers and as colleagues, millennials demand to see themselves and their friends represented by companies. This means there is increasing pressure to demonstrate diversity in advertising, in leadership and in workforces.

To tackle and stay ahead of this trend, businesses are beginning to pay closer attention to their diversity and inclusion policies. They recognize the need to understand their workforce and identify any barriers to underrepresented groups. The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion conversation is tough for companies, but has incredible results. When done correctly, it presents an exciting opportunity to tap into diverse perspectives – creating better products, partnerships and culture as a result.

Increasing focus on sustainability

We are moving from a world of reporting on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to a world of reporting on Environmental, Governance and Sustainability data (ESG).

In the wake of COP26, the general public are more aware than ever of the threat climate change creates. As such, we are demanding more environmental action from companies.

The smartest companies are looking at how they can go beyond carbon neutral into planet positive – or at least reduce the impact of their supply chain on the planet. By giving companies a nuanced way to discuss their ESG, your charity could be providing a much needed solution.

The era of purpose driven business

Finally, the Edelman Barometer shows us that we have become much less trusting of companies than we have been before. Business leaders, therefore, are looking at key ways to rebuild this trust with their target audience.

The most advanced solution to this problem is to identify and demonstrate their business purpose. To think what problem they exist to solve, and how they can best go about solving it.

This has led to a significant move from transactional modes of corporate philanthropy, towards strategic partnerships. Consequently, corporates are typically partnering with fewer charities more intensely.

Giving from corporates is likely to increase in the coming years. There is more evidence that partnerships work, increasing understanding that business and charities have complementary assets, and mounting pressure on companies to demonstrate social purpose.

We have seen a dramatic shift in the corporate agenda. This has created exciting partnership opportunities which are only available to those who rise to the challenge. Come to our Advanced Corporate Partnerships Masterclass to seize these opportunities with both hands.

It can be all too easy to find ourselves in a negative news cycle - the Cost of Living Crisis, the war in Ukraine, the Great Resignation - and imagine that corporate partnerships success is impossible.

But that’s not the case. We’re seeing huge successes from charities of all shapes and sizes right now. As such, in this blog we share five examples – and the lessons they teach us - to demonstrate that there has never been a better time for corporate partnerships.

Be tenacious

Libby Kaluna, Senior Partnerships Manager at Acorns Children’s Hospice, shares the importance of knowing when an opportunity is too good to let go.

When an existing partner stopped engaging with the hospice, she knew the partnership was in danger. Rather than bury her head in the sand, she decided to take a bold approach. She contacted the PR agency that represented the company and showed them the marketing benefits the partnership could bring – and the results speak for themselves.

Libby said “we’ve been able to host their CEO for a visit and engage in a marketing campaign to dispel myths associated with Children's Hospices in addition to fundraising”.

In this case, it would’ve been easy to give up. But by taking a different route to the finish line, Libby opened up a new conversation, and a whole new arm to the partnership.

Be creative

When you have a consistent ‘menu’ of fundraising activities, it can be easy enough to see your partnership offering as ‘good enough’ and stop there.

Steph Rukin, from TransAid, however knows that ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough and chose to offer some creative extras to her current partners. This led to their partner Goodyear offering the charity a joint PR campaign focusing on the importance of women’s inclusion in the transport industry, featuring a female blimp pilot. With joint PR activations, a raffle of some blimp tickets and some incredible content – this creativity is likely to pay dividends.

It's worth asking yourself what creative extras you could bring to your partnerships – you might have a blimp-sized idea too!

Make it fun!

Speaking of creativity, Sally Barney shares the highlight of her partnership management career: a “pig off” between Percy and Peppa Pig.

Despite the fact that Marks and Spencer’s and Waitrose consider themselves competitors, Sally was able to bring both partners on board with the same event. This competitive spirit and the joy of the idea led to huge success. This success came through in the event that both retailers sponsored, but also in the ongoing partnership for both parties.

Sally said that “the event brought a smile to faces, helped [both partners] feel great and have a sense of respect for the partnership.”

So be bold, but make sure you let yourself have a little fun.

Be consistent

Lyn Prodger, Partnerships Manager at AFK, tells us that the key to her corporate partnerships success is being consistent.

She gave the example of AFK’s annual beach volleyball event that takes place right by Canary Wharf tube station. Having run it annually, it is now a staple in a number of company calendars – all participants look forward to and it creates a relaxed opportunity to meet face to face.

It’s worth thinking about what consistent elements you can add to your partnership journey. What can you add to the calendar that can build year on year? You could even brainstorm this with a number of your existing partners to ensure it fits.

Be collaborative

Last, but by no means least, Momentum told us about the value of taking a “one team” approach to corporate partnerships.

By brainstorming new activities for one of their key partners as a team, they created a competitive challenge called Miles for Momentum. This taught the team a valuable lesson: ownership is always better than buy-in. Because the entire team, and the partner, felt ownership of the event it was a huge success.

One of the key reasons this brainstorm was successful was the fresh energy brought by people outside the corporate fundraising team – it’s always worth knowing you don’t have to do it on your own.

Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed reading about the five lessons from five account management wins. Perhaps you can take away some of these lessons today and apply it to your current partnerships. If you enjoy learning and sharing with others in the sector, why not join us at our upcoming Partnership Growth Crash Course?

Corporate fundraising can be a joy. But it can also be challenging. We know there are some particular pain points that come up time and time again – so wanted to address these for you below.

This blog will give you the confidence, skills and tools you need to deliver a better partnership experience. This, in turn, will ensure your charity delivers its mission faster and with greater certainty.

So let’s get started.

Time

Not having enough time in the day is the most common challenge facing corporate partnerships professionals. Our recommendation to make the most of the time you have is to prioritise your partners, and allocate your time based on that prioritisation.

By mapping your current partnerships against the Boston Matrix (image below), you can see…

• Consistent cash cows, who will always deliver but could have elements automated
• Your star partners, who deserve time investment to grow their value
• Dogs, that are low in value and don’t have growth potential. These are ones to really be strict with – what can you automate or delegate?
• Problem children, who you need to truly investigate the growth potential of when you have the time.

Alder Hey Children’s Charity have recently done this exercise, which has enabled them to put good processes in place to deliver all their current partnerships, whilst allowing them to free up some much needed time to pitch to those with growth potential.

If you are looking for more inspiration and some examples on growing your existing partnerships , then read our recent blog here.

Managing Expectations

When managing partnerships, it is inevitable that expectations get higher and higher as time goes on.

One of the best ways of managing expectations is to have a clear plan in place at the beginning of each year of the partnership. This should detail the goals and activities for the year.

This doesn’t mean the partnership plan can’t evolve over time but my ensuring the goals are written down, and agreed by both sides then you will be on the same page about the priorities vs the ‘nice to have’. If a piece of work isn’t working towards a partnership goal, you will want to discuss if it is truly required. The word ‘no’ is a powerful tool for your partnerships team.

The other tool for managing expectations is agreeing reasonable timeframes for requested work. You must remember that a partner will understand you are lower on resource, and therefore may move more slowly.

Handling difficult conversations

Difficult conversations are bound to occur in even the most collaborative and authentic of partnerships. It may be a factor outside of your control that has caused a problem, or maybe one partner needs to tell the other something that won’t be easy to hear.

The first thing is to address difficult conversations head on. The best first step is to pick up the phone and have a conversation. Listen first, take a breather, then consider how best to respond. People will admire your transparency.

Secondly, ensure that your partnership is like Velcro – that as many of your colleagues are connected to as many of theirs as possible. Some conversations are more appropriate at a CEO to CEO level, or one marketing colleague meeting another.

Finally, ensure you have face to face meetings often. Research shows that only 7% of your intended meaning comes across when communication is only in words, so if you are trying to discuss a difficult topic, get on Zoom or face to face as soon as possible. The relationship will be much stronger because of it.

Partnership agreements

Do you have agreements in place with each of your partners? Are you confident the agreement covers everything it should? This uncertainty is a very common problem we hear about.

Our recommended solution is firstly to seek out any legal support that your charity have. Many charities use legal advisers (either paid or pro-bono) to progress their required legal matters – a common pro-bono project is to create some simple corporate partnerships templates agreements to use. If you don’t have any legal support yet, then we would be happy to share our own templates with you – simply email team@remarkablepartnerships.com with “template agreements” in the email subject.

Our second recommendation is to refer to the Fundraising Regulator and their Fundraising code of practice  which sets the standards that apply to fundraising carried out by all charitable institutions and third party fundraisers in the UK. The answers to many of your questions can be found here.

Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed finding out about the solutions to corporate fundraisers’ most common pain points. Perhaps you can identify one or two that you can begin working on today.

If you want to gain more experience in partnership planning, delivering and growth, then check out our Partnerships Growth Crash Course. Find out more here.  

What corporate fundraisers do is extraordinary. Out of nothing, they bring together a company and a charity to create a partnership that makes a better world. They are the modern-day alchemists. It can also be challenging job, because one day you’re celebrating your latest partnership win and the next day you are disappointed because your prospect said no.

This means that corporate fundraisers need to develop some serious skill to be successful. Below we share five essential skills of corporate fundraisers.

Tenacious

In a recent study by Hubspot, they revealed that 80% of sales require an average of five follow-ups in order to close the deal. However, 44% of sales reps follow up with a prospect only once before giving up. After four follow-ups, 94% of people have given up.

In order to be a remarkable corporate fundraiser, you need to be in the 6% of people who keep following up with prospects until they get an answer. When Rainbow Trust were pursuing their dream partner – a large financial services company, where many of their beneficiaries’ parents worked – it took them three years to secure the partnership. They let their passion for the cause guide them. Eventually, they landed the partnership – leading to the charity having more Family Support Workers - supporting children with terminal illnesses to make the most of their time with their family. If the corporate fundraising team at Rainbow Trust had been less tenacious, those families might not have had that support.

You are offering these companies the opportunity to make a better world, so make sure they see your email. Our previous blog on how to bring dead prospects back to life will give you actionable tips on how to keep your tenacity up.

Able to build relationships

Being able to build relationships is essential for corporate partnerships success. Partnership is the name of the game – and that means you can’t do it alone.

Whilst we might immediately think of the relationships you can build with companies, it’s important to build your internal relationships first. Think of a corporate fundraiser as a formula one driver – in order to win the race, you need a strong pit crew around you. If your wider organisation isn’t 100% bought in, you won’t go as fast or as far as you need to.

With prospects and partners, you need to build trust in order to build, deliver and grow partnerships. Without that trust, they will continue to think your partnership is a nice idea, rather than something that can actually happen.

Clear communicator

You are always battling to get the attention of your prospects, partners and colleagues – so being concise and persuasive is a must.

In order to achieve this, we recommend you consider your audience. The average reading age of an adult in the UK is that of an eight year old. So to ensure you are understood, use the simplest language possible. Before you send anything, ask: would an eight year old understand this?

With the above said, the real transformation in communication skills comes from becoming a master storyteller. If you can tell a powerful story, you will become an expert fundraiser overnight. Check out our blog on the power of stories here.

Goal orientated

A Harvard Business Study found that the 3% of graduates from their MBA who had their goals written down, ended up earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together, just ten years after graduation.

This is because setting goals helps you gain greater focus. Goals help you increase your energy, excitement and productivity. They also give your senior management team a sense of where you’re headed.

We recommend that you set goals for:

• The number of meetings secured with target prospects
• The number of prospects converted
• The number of new opportunities secured with corporate partners
• The satisfaction rate of your current partners
• The overall value of your corporate partnerships programme

Focussing on these five things will ensure that you are delivering the most you can for your charity. As Kinich Ohmae once said: “Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction”.

Resilient

The final skill we recommend developing is resilience. As a corporate fundraiser, you can often find yourself feeling rejected or ignored.

If you don’t hear back from a prospect, you can take it as a sign that they’re not interested. But as we touched on earlier – you need to take no answer at face value – it’s not a no, it’s just not an answer. Knowing you have something powerful to offer will give you the confidence to follow up.

If you do hear back from a prospect and it’s a no, it can be very easy to feel like you wasted your time. However, as Bernard Ross lays out in his “Nine Nos of Fundraising”, often when they say no they mean “ask me a better question”. Being able to bounce back and work out that better question will set you apart from an ordinary fundraiser.

Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed finding out about the five essential skills of corporate fundraisers. Perhaps you can identify one or two that you really want to work on. Being a corporate fundraiser is hugely rewarding. We wouldn’t swap this job for anything. But there is a shortage of corporate fundraisers in the UK. So if you want to enter the profession or you’re just starting out, then join us at our virtual careers event from 1pm - 1:30pm on the 5^th of May.

You can book your free place by emailing Nicky on nicky@remarkablepartnerships.com

Office Assistant

£20,000 – £24,000 per annum.

Part-time or full time. (21-35 hours per week).

Job is homebased.

We are committed to salary equality.

Benefits include:

• Flexible location
• Flexible working schedules
• Professional development and learning
• Thorough induction process with colleague support and shadowing
• 23 days annual leave plus bank holidays plus the office closed between Christmas and New Year
• Company pension contribution

We are in a new era of purpose-driven partnerships. There has never been a better time for companies and charities to partner and we are only scratching the surface of the value that corporate-charity partnerships can deliver.

As a result, Remarkable Partnerships is seeing increased demand for our services from both current and new clients and our motivated and high-performing team is growing – we want you to be a part of that!

The Office Assistant will support the team with all areas of administration to support our growth. You will have excellent attention to detail, a can-do attitude, and be able to work under pressure. We have a collaborative team approach and supportive culture. This role will be working with all team members across a variety of exciting projects, events and client activities.

To download the job pack, please click here: Job Pack

We want to represent the communities that we serve, representation and diversity matters to us, as a business we are fully committed to creating an inclusive culture where everyone is welcome regardless of your identity, background or circumstances.

If there is anything we can do to make our recruitment processes better for you and to allow you to show your best self, let us know or we are open to any suggestions or requestion that may help us make our recruitment processes more accessible, equitable and inclusive.

We are managing this process directly, so don’t require the support of recruitment agencies right now, thanks!  

Application deadline is Monday 4^th April

1^st Interview for the Office Assistant will take place in week commencing 11^th April.

Described as ‘The Great Resignation’, a recent survey revealed that almost one in four UK workers are planning to change their jobs. (Randstad UK, 2021). As such, increasing employee engagement is the top priority for companies, or they risk losing their best talent. Employee engagement increases performance and loyalty, whilst reducing the risk of burnout.

Whilst this is a huge challenge for companies, it presents a real opportunity for charities. By engaging their employees in your charity partnership, you are providing a huge benefit – ensuring your partnership grows longer and stronger. Below are our top tips for using your charity partnership to engage your corporate partners employees.

Create opportunities for employees to have a positive social impact

The Edelman Trust barometer shows us that 7 in 10 employees expect opportunities for social impact. Helping employees connect what they do to what they care about is one of the most important ways that companies can increase employee engagement (Harvard Business Review,2021).

Giving employees live updates on how their company is benefitting your cause can be hugely powerful. A key way to do this is to tell stories – you can see our blog on how to do this here.

Create opportunities for colleagues to develop their skills

A key way of securing employee engagement is through upskilling and personal development plans. Think about the problems your charity is facing – it might be that your social media strategy isn’t strong enough, your helpline isn’t automated or that you don’t have a long term strategic plan. By taking this problem to a company and offering them the opportunity to solve it, you give them the opportunity to engage their team.

This leads to a company with stronger teams, improved morale and the opportunity to shout about their work.

A recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development highlighted the most popular skills and competencies that volunteering had helped to develop:

Support the company to live its Purpose

According to a recent PwC study, millennials who have a strong connection to the purpose of their organization are 5.3 times more likely to stay. But the vast majority of employees remain disengaged from work, and only 33% draw real meaning from their employer’s purpose.

Though it is increasingly common for businesses to have a set mission statement, companies cannot claim they are a purpose-driven unless they are actually doing something about it. We know that one of the most effective ways for companies to show their commitment is by building a shared purpose, long-term partnership with a charity. By partnering with a charity they can tap into the specialist knowledge and skills of a cause that matches their purpose. This partnership will give them the scope to involve colleagues, engage customers and demonstrate their impact.

Putting purpose at the heart of your partnership strategy creates a stronger offer for each partner.  Show your corporate partners how your charity is uniquely positioned to help them deliver their purpose, due to the work that you do and where you are doing it. 

Purpose-driven partnerships have the potential to increase employee motivation, performance, loyalty, and collaboration. They are employee engagement dynamite because they bring meaning into the workplace. 

To learn more about using charity partnerships to engage employees, download our recent report – Engaging with Purpose. Alternatively, please contact us on team@remarkablepartnerships.com.

You’ve had a fantastic first meeting with a prospect. You gave them some great ideas and they gave you all the right signs – nodding as you spoke and agreeing that the fit was really strong. Then when you go to follow up the meeting, they just don’t respond.

We’ve all been there. It can be incredibly disheartening when a prospect goes cold on you. But we’re here with three key tips to bust those ghosts and get you the partnerships you and your cause deserve.

Know that “no answer” doesn’t mean no

Sumatran Orangutan Society had a great first meeting with a global engineering firm in January of 2021 with their Head of Climate Resilience. In this meeting, the prospect said they “saw how powerful this could be for the firm” - but after the meeting, stopped responding.

When a company doesn’t reply, it is very easy to take this as a sign that they are not interested. That “no answer” is code for “no”. But it doesn’t mean that – it simply means that they haven’t made their decision yet.

Knowing this, the SOS team followed up with patient persistence. In August, the firm came back and were able to book a meeting in within a week. The contact explained that their company had been going through significant structural changes, but that they’d been progressing the partnership internally. They thanked the SOS team for their patience, and communication has been far more consistent since.

This example shows us that it’s important to remember – we can’t read our prospects’ minds. If it is a no, they will tell us. So don’t count yourself out of the race – keep following up with patient persistence.

Break patterns

It is estimated that the average adult makes up to 35,000 decisions a day. Everything from what mug to use through to what show to watch on Netflix. With all of these micro-decisions to make, our brain chooses the path of least resistance.

This ‘path of least resistance’ includes repeating choices we’ve made previously. So if they’ve already chosen not to respond to your email once, they will see that and will be nudged towards not responding again.

Knowing this gives us a clear insight – you should always start a new email, rather than respond to yourself. This takes away that nudge. Treat each follow-up email as a fresh start. Try new subject lines and calls to action. If a few emails haven’t worked, try reaching out via WhatsApp or LinkedIn.

Activate the law of reciprocity

When Cats Protection realized that a number of their prospects weren’t responding during the second lockdown, they decided to change up their new business approach. Rather than following up for another meeting, they decided to take a generous approach. They emailed all of their prospective partners a link to their “Moggy Modules” – a tool developed by their community team to engage primary school children.

They sent the Moggy Modules out with a nice note saying that they understood lots of people were struggling with their children being at home all the time, and this was something that might help. That they had seen this resource and thought of the person.

The response was incredibly strong. The Cats Protection team had activated the law of reciprocity. This is the behavioral science law that states that when we are given something for free, it creates a deep psychological urge to give something back to that person. In this case, what the companies gave back to Cats Protection was a meeting to move the partnership forward.

This brings us to the question: what gift could you give your prospects? Maybe you have a great resource you could share, story you could tell or physical item you could post. It’s worth thinking about.

In summary, you want to make it as easy as possible for the prospect to come back to you.

By following up on a regular basis, you bring yourself back to their mind. By breaking patterns, you nudge their brain into seizing this opportunity to respond. By giving them a gift, you create a psychological need for them to respond. Using each of these tools will help you bring these prospects back to life – and ultimately, achieve your charity’s mission faster and with greater certainty.

If you enjoyed this blog, we recommend checking out our upcoming conference Corporate Partnerships Everywhere – particularly Dana Segal’s session on using behavioural science to nudge your partner into saying yes. You can check out the whole programme here.

If you want to build corporate partnerships it can be tempting to contact lots of random companies and see if any of them are interested. This is like throwing lots of mud at a wall and hoping that some of it sticks. The problem with this approach is you are counting on getting lucky and you will probably waste lots of time.

We recommend you take a more focused approach by looking for companies that are your ideal prospects. A great way to do this is to identify your ideal prospect criteria. In this blog we share our five recommended features of an ideal corporate prospect.

Contacts

Having a senior contact at a company can make a corporate partnerships approach much easier. Not only are they more likely to open your email, but you come recommended. This means they are more likely to meet – and ultimately partner – with your organisation. Think of your contact as rolling out a red carpet.

When Momentum Children’s Charity was looking for their dream partners, they realised they had key contacts at ICAP – which meant they were a top prospect.

These two champions were identified – a broker whose daughter had been supported through the charity, and the Chief Finance Officer who knew the staff team. By approaching ICAP through these champions, they were able to build a successful partnership – funding a family support worker to provide support to 40 families whose child has cancer.

Shared Purpose

One of the underlying characteristics of high performing business and charity partnerships is having a shared purpose. You need to choose business partners who are the right fit for your organization, sharing common principles with you and your charity’s culture. This makes it easier for them to identify with your social mission, and define the overall purpose of the partnership.  

When looking for prospective partners, therefore, look at a company’s mission statement. If you were to put your mission statement and their mission statement into a venn diagram, you want to see an obvious overlap. You want a customer to look at the partnership and think “that makes sense”.

Resources

When you think of your ideal corporate prospect, it is vital that they have sufficient resources to help your charity tackle your problems. Can they help you put a dent in your mission? The most obvious resource is money, so we recommend you find out their latest profit figures. However, companies can help in many ways other than just money, so we also recommend you find out how many employees and customers they have. After all, for many charities one of their greatest problems is a lack of awareness, so companies with a wide customer base can significantly increase your reach.

You should also consider whether they have the expertise to help you tackle your problems. For example, during the pandemic lockdown, Scottish Gas helped CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) by using their network of engineers to deliver essential items to children with life-shortening conditions and their families.

Benefit to them

Having considered whether they have resources to help your charity – you also need to consider how much you can benefit them. This is the true meaning of partnership: a win-win.

For example, if you are looking at companies in the finance industry – you might consider that one of their big problems is in gender equality and pay. What can your charity do to help them address this issue – can you help them win the battle for talent?

Identifying this will ensure you make a partnership offer, rather than a partnership ask, strengthening your chances of success.

Realistic

Finally, you need to consider whether your prospect is realistic. In their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim explained there are two places you can fish. The red ocean and the blue ocean.

In the red ocean are all the big fish. Think of HSBC, Tesco and Deloitte. In the blue ocean are all the medium and small fish. These companies can still be a decent size, but aren’t household names.

The reason that the red ocean is red, they explain, is the blood of everyone fighting to fish there. So focusing on realistic prospects in the blue ocean will not only be more enjoyable – you’ll also catch far more fish.

Conclusion

At Remarkable Partnerships, we like to think of these five factors as the “five stars of a corporate prospect”. If you are able to find a five star prospect – you know you are onto a winner.

For more information on how to contact map within your organisation, how to identify shared purpose and how to fish in the blue ocean, consider booking onto our New Business Crash Course: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/event/new-business-crash-course/

Helen Keller once said "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.  

The problem is, when working with colleagues we can all make the assumption that their buy-in to partnerships should be automatic.  We can see them as a service provider and do not consider the marketing and comms team’s priorities, including being responsible for protecting the brand.  This often can lead to a breakdown in communication and lack of willingness to help. 

We are sure that we have all been in the situation where we have swung by one of your marketing colleagues' desks (or indeed send them an urgently flagged email) for them to sign off some partner marketing materials which need to be approved within the hour. We often focus on the task-based nature of the relationship and don’t spend the time to step back and see how our colleague's expertise in their area of work could add to our partnerships.

With over 70 years of experience in charity-corporate partnerships, the Remarkable Partnerships team have put together our recommendations to create a genuine Partnership Culture with our marketing and communications colleagues.

Recommendation 1: Listen, learn and find your common purpose 

Listen and understand your marketing team’s objectives. Then, just like you would do with your partners, find your common ground, your common purpose. You both want to reach more of your ‘service users and providing them with the help they so desperately need. Corporate partners are integral in being able to achieve this. They can help you reach new audiences and provide much needed funds to provide front line services. Once you know your shared goals, you can then make a plan.

Recommendation 2: Create a collaborative culture 

Set up a regular meeting with the marketing team to understand current projects you are BOTH working on. Involve them in planning of any new projects right from the beginning. Work with your colleagues to make them aware of your team’s function, responsibilities and goals. Get them to suggest how their expertise could be used on partnerships. Rather than focusing on tasks, focus on their skills enhancing your prospect and partnerships discussions.  

Recommendation 3: Plan for success 

Planning is key to make the relationship a success.  Put together an independency table, which includes what both parties want from the relationship, key responsibilities, and deadlines.  You can also create a partnership benefit matrix together to make sure you are offering your partners realistic benefits which can be delivered.  

Recommendation 4: Take along to client meetings 

Involve them in your pitches, take the team to your client meeting to be the expert in the room. You are far more likely to get the action completed if they have agreed to it to the partner. 

Recommendation 5: Celebrate Success 

Make sure you celebrate success and recognise their contribution to the whole organisation.  It is about working together for the whole journey and involving them in every stage, not just when you want something! 

In summary 

Creating a partnership culture will enable you to achieve Remarkable Partnerships which will have a transformational impact on the people who need it most. Invest effort and time in your internal partnerships and you will reap the rewards.

If you would like any help in building relationships with internal stakeholders, we can deliver Purpose workshops to bring your team together with a common purpose.

Feel free to get in touch about this or any other queries by emailing us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

‘Plan, Deliver and Grow’, it sounds like the title to a good book, but in fact it isn’t. These are the fundamental building blocks which enable you to grow the value from your current partners. 

This blog will not only focus you on how to grow your current partnerships, it will also fill you with inspiration from four examples of partnerships that started smaller and now are the high profile (and high impact) partnerships that we all know and love.

The first step is identify your shared purpose. This is the inspirational statement that defines why you are in partnership, and will anchor your partnership even during difficult times. Then, during the partnership ensure you are showing your partner the impact they are making together. Also develop senior level relationships, and ensure you build multiple relationships in the company, so you're not over dependent on one or two important people who could leave.

Once you are delivering an excellent partnership experience, the most important thing to do once is pitch new opportunities. Don’t save all of your exciting ideas for new business prospects! Keep engaging your partners with new growth opportunities. A really useful model for growing partnerships is called "Add a pillar" and it is used by Save the Children. It showed the different a company can partner with a charity. So the idea is you keep adding pillars to your partnership to make it stronger and more impactful.

Some of the most successful corporate-charity partnerships started small and grew over time. We hope these examples give you the inspiration and insight to look at your partnerships portfolio in a different light and take action today to identify and pitch growth opportunities, so together you can deliver more impact in a sustainable way.

1 – Macmillan and M&S 

Macmillan were looking for a headline partner for the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning. M&S had been involved for some time, but the partnership was only in M&S cafés and didn’t really live up to the ‘World’s Biggest’ billing. 

Macmillan decided to take a proposal to M&S to move the partnership into the Food Hall and expand into cause-related marketing promotions on relevant food products. It was a bold move, and they knew that not only would they have to come up with a compelling proposal, but they would have to be tough negotiators because they would be dealing with people who negotiated deals for a living! 

The Macmillan team prepared ahead of time, ensuring they were agreed on what was important for the charity, and what was simply a ‘nice to have’. They also agreed at what point they would walk away – and they were prepared to do that. They worked as a team to negotiate with the team from M&S. It was quite stressful at times, but being prepared really helped. They managed to agree a deal that meant the partnership grew hugely over the next three years, to one that now raises millions each year. 

2 – Innocent and Age UK 

In 2005 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 the partnership raised £20,000, which was quite a modest return for considerable effort. Age UK believed there was significant potential to grow the partnership. 

So they investigated the possibility of knitting more hats by involving more local centres. They estimated they could increase the scale five-fold in two years. 

So in 2006 Age UK went to Innocent with an ambitious proposal to substantially grow the partnership. It involved a significant step-up in sales, marketing and project management. 

Innocent were very excited by the proposal and shared their ambition for growth. So they took the promotion to Sainsbury’s who were pleased to put it in store.  

The growth in success over the next two years was phenomenal. The number of hats grew from 80,000 in 2005 to 400,000 in 2007 and the contribution to Age UK grew from £20,000 to £200,000. Also the partnership won the Business in the Community Award for Cause Related Marketing in 2007. 

The partnership between Age UK and Innocent continues today and has now raised over £2 million to keep older people warm in winter. 

3 – Millennium Consulting and Raising Futures 

The founder of Millennium Consulting, Phil Keates, was born in Kenya. Having seen the work of Raising Futures Kenya first hand, he decided to support the charity through his business. In the first few years, the relationship was purely philanthropic – the company donated each year because it was a nice thing to do. 

When the Raising Futures Kenya team evaluated the relationship more seriously in 2019, they identified the shared purpose between the two organisations. Millennium Consulting provide financial software for companies. Raising Futures Kenya provide vocational training for Kenyan youth. Though what they do is very different, why they do it is identical – they both give people what they need to grow.  

This was exactly what Millennium Consulting needed to commit to a more strategic partnership. Two years later, they have committed to supporting Raising Futures through mentoring of their in-country teams, client engagement through an annual golf day and they regularly make introductions to other like-minded businesses.  

4 – WWF & Sodexo 

WWF have worked with Sodexo globally since 2010 to address some of the key environmental issues linked to their business including carbon reduction, responsible sourcing, food waste and sustainable eating. 

Fixing the food system is a core part of WWF’s strategy to stop the destruction of nature and to help it recover. It’s so important that we reconsider all the foods that we eat in order to reduce our carbon footprint. And that is exactly why WWF has teamed up with Sodexo helping them embed sustainable diets into their business models and encourage their chefs to more plant-based foods. 

In 2018 the partnership was across the UK, France and the U.S. At that time the challenge with the partnership was there were great initiatives happening in each country, but how could they be connected to make a big holistic impact on the planet that would really drive change but also be best in class that could push the rest of the sector to get on board. 

Then something happened. There was a change in leadership at Sodexo. A new person stepped into a global sustainability role. This was a game-changer for WWF, because this new person had a different perspective and really saw the value in what WWF were proposing based on the work in the UK. 

The WWF team realised this was an opportunity to grow the partnership so used examples from other companies to inspire Sodexo. They also engaged colleagues beyond their immediate contacts in the company.  

So the scope of the partnership started to change it became broader and they renewed in 2020 for three more years of partnering in 2020 really focusing on promising sustainable eating and reducing carbon emissions. 

The key insight from this case study is: 

• The change in leadership was an opportunity 
• They built relationships based on trust 
• They engaged people at a senior level in Sodex 
• They recognised that changing the scope of the partnership would involve some frustrations on both sides, but got through that because they did it together. 

In summary 

We recommend you not only deliver a brilliant partnership experience, but you build in opportunities to grow throughout your partnership. If you want to discover more about exceptional account management and how to grow your partnerships, please join us on our Partnership Growth Crash Course on 23^rd, 25^th and 30^th November. Find out more here: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/event/partnership-growth-crash-course/

If there’s anything we can help with, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch by emailing us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

Building strong relationships helps you win new business. It lays the foundations for successful partnerships and their growth and retention.  In the words of the psychotherapist Mick Cooper: 

 “Relational depth is a state of profound contact and engagement between people.”

In this blog, Briony Markham, a trained counsellor and member of the Remarkable Partnerships team, talks us through five person-centred counselling skills that will help you build successful corporate partnerships.

1. Active listening

As a corporate fundraiser you want to make sure you hear what your prospect or partner tells you they need. Don’t make assumptions.  We recommend you ask open questions, really listen to the answers then summarise back to so they know they have been understood. Active listening is an important life skill and an essential tool for every corporate fundraiser.  

2. Be authentic

People relate to people, so be yourself.  This will build trust so you can sail through any storm which you meet along the way.  Sometimes this will involve admitting you made a mistake, or shifting a partnership due to a strategy change within the company.

When you meet with a prospect it is essential that you build your relationship. An effective way to do this is to share a story about your cause which means something to you.  By being real you give your prospect permission to do the same. And relationships built on authenticity are rare and powerful.

3. Be empathetic

Make it your goal to understand where your partner or prospect is coming from.  Research is vital when you are writing a proposal and for relationship building.  We recommend you ask yourself these three questions:

• What keeps their CEO awake at night?
• What are their business priorities right now?
• How can our proposal/partnership help them deliver on those business priorities?

You also want to be aware of any changes that happen in the company and how this might affect your relationship. So we encourage you to follow them on social media and book in a catch-up meeting to find out what is happening with them.

4. Have clear boundaries
Counsellors have to keep clear boundaries so they protect themselves and their client.  We also need to protect ourselves and our charities, so this means we sometimes need to say “No” to a company. However, it is important we say it nicely, because someday we might want to get back in touch and revisit that opportunity.

Also look after yourself.  A counsellor has to look after themselves because the have tools which enable clients to make important changes.  Corporate fundraisers are the same. You are building corporate-charity partnerships for a better world. So, look after your wellbeing and this will enable you to be professional and deliver what you say you are going to deliver.

5. Timing is everything

In counselling you have to keep strict time boundaries. As corporate fundraisers planning your time efficiently is important to set expectations with your prospects and partners. When you create joint partnership plans and keep them informed of progress, you demonstrate you are professional and reliable, and this builds up valuable trust. 

If you want to find out any more about how to build successful relationships with your current partners to increase value and extend their commitment, join our Account Management Crash Course on the 23^rd, 25^th and 30^th November 2021. 

“Being empathetic is seeing the world through the eyes of the other,

not seeing your world reflected in their eyes.”

Carl Rogers

Over the years, we’ve had the privilege of watching numerous pitches by charities to companies.  Some have been good, few have been great and many have been disappointing. 

There are many important aspects to a great pitch, but the thing that stands out for us, is the presenter’s ability to tell a story. 

We all love stories. A good story can convey a message, entertain and ignite a fire within your audience. As Vera Nazarian, the Armenian-Russian American writer said,   

“The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.”  
 

And charities have stories in spades!  But they need to be told in the right way! 

Many people think that the art of storytelling is something difficult and complex, reserved only for certain skilled members of society. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The skills necessary to tell a story can be acquired through practice and with the right toolkit, everyone can become a master storyteller. 

Whether you are trying to attract new partners or engage your current ones, quality storytelling is the way to go. So here are our seven recommendations for telling powerful stories: 

 1. Know your audience  

Before beginning your story, spend 5 minutes thinking about who you are targeting. Who are you speaking to? What is their role in the business? What do they care about?  What are they looking for in a charity partner?  Do you need to come across more professional or will a friendly tone work better?  

2. Make them care 

A good story is an authentic and genuine story. Don't be afraid to share personal experiences with your audience. Most importantly, you want to share your story from an emotional point of view. Your goal is to build empathy with your audience. A great example of this is when Georgi Welch secured a partnership with Bridge’s Estate Agent for Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice. She shared her own story in such a powerful way that the Chairman agreed to the partnership on the spot. 

 3. Set the scene 

We experience the world through our senses, so you want to share how things look, sound, feel, smell and taste. By engaging the senses of your audience and setting the scene, you will achieve a more immersive experience for your audience. Also these will be the memorable details that your audience will take away so they can share the story themselves. 

4. Be creative with time 

Sometimes you can choose to catapult the audience straight into the midst of all the action, or to the end of the story to catch their attention. It is also one of the most effective create curiosity, suspense and tension. Since your audience does not know what is happening, they will want to continue listening to solve the missing pieces of the puzzle. 

5. Engage your audience 

Remove the boundary between your audience and you, the storyteller. Engage them with a question and put them in the centre of  the story. This way, you create a first-hand experience of the narrative, igniting the desire for them to want to be involved with your cause.

6. Use tension 

Have you ever read a book that was so intense you simply had to keep on reading until you finished it, completely forgetting about time and space? This is what you are trying to achieve with your story. Be descriptive when describing the crucial moments in your story.  Be expressive and inject emotion into the story you are telling.  

7. Use a prop 

We recommend you use a prop to really bring your story to life. We organized an online corporate engagement event wih SolarAid. On that call, their CEO told a powerful story about a school dormitory that burnt down due to a fire started by a candle. Tragically all of the 12 girls sleeping in the dormitory died. At the crucial moment of the story, he held up a burnt exam paper that they had retrieved from the fire. It was incredibly powerful and one of the most memorable moments from the event.

So we encourage you to tell powerful stories to your prospects and partners. Tell them often and share them with feeling and commitment. If you do this you will significantly increase your chances of securing and delivering successful corporate partners  

Bain & Company research shows that "It can cost five times more to attract a new customer, than it does to retain an existing one”, therefore it is really important as corporate partnership professionals to maintain and grow our existing partnerships, and then to harness those partners to promote your charity to likeminded companies.

When roles are busy and the pressure of new business targets and the budget are upon us, it is natural to think of which new companies can be approached to help achieve those goals, but what if the solution to your problem is right in front of you, with your existing partnerships.

It’s not to say that new business shouldn’t be focused on, because of course it should, but we recommend you take on board our recommendations for exploring the potential growth from your existing partnerships and balance these actions alongside your new business goals.

To begin, firstly, you need to know what your current partners think about your charity. One of the greatest tools that we recommend to get feedback from your partners is by using a Net Promoter Survey (NPS). NPS is a globally used market research metric that takes the form of a short survey asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend your charity to others.

The outcome of the NPS gives your charity an overall score, and divides respondents into three different categorises. Firstly, detractors, people who wouldn’t recommend your charity to others to partner with, the second being passives.  These partnerships are at high risk of being lost if your contact moves on, as it is likely that just your day to day contacts support your partnership. The third and final category is the promoters who would recommend you internally and externally, they are your true champions.

The image below shows how these categories are split up depending on their score out of 10.

With our wealth of experience managing charity-corporate partnerships, the Remarkable Partnerships team have put together five recommendations for how to convert any partner in to a promoter, and how to shift your partnerships up the scale to ensure your partners will stay loyal to your charity and continue to grow their support.

1 - Regular review meetings

Ensure you keep up regular honest communication with your partners by having monthly or quarterly review meetings. You may want to include what is going well, and what challenges the partnership is facing, so that each month you can discuss these things. Remember to plan your meetings face to face where possible so you can really listen to your partner and understand their feedback.

2 - Pitch to your partners

Often we don’t feel we have permission to pitch to our current partners, but why should all the new and exciting opportunities be kept for new partners? We recommend that you use their feedback from the NPS, and from your review meetings, to really listen to what is important to them, and how your charity can continue to meet their business needs. For example, if one of their current business challenges is about keeping employees engaged and motivated whilst still working at home then what is the virtual engagement event or fundraising activity that you could pitch to solve this?

3 - Engagement events

Virtual or face to face events are still a brilliant way of engaging a wider network from across your corporate partnership. Consider getting a key speaker from your charity that is able to give an inspiring update on the impact of your work, or invite a beneficiary to tell their story of how your charity has changed their life. An event with no fundraising call-to-action can inspire key stakeholders and help embedded your charity in to their organisation.

4 - Speaker events

Keep your day to day contacts close to your work by asking them to speak alongside you at conferences and events. Understanding your partners business perspective can be really valuable to be alongside your charity views at panel events or conference sessions. Inviting them to join you on these occasions can refresh their memory on the big picture of your partnership, and keep them focused on the ‘why’ your partnership exists. Co-speaking events like this also give an opportunity for the company to promote the session (and therefore the partnership) on their social media channels, which increases your charities profile amongst their network.

5 - Ask them for a testimonial

Similar to speaker events, it is only when our partners stop and reflect on your partnership do they take the time to see the huge importance that your charity has on their company mission. By asking the CEO or senior contact at your partner for a video or written testimonial where you are able to hear what they really think of the partnership. You could use the content in pitches or proposals to new partners that you are seeking. You could also ask your current partner to speak on the phone to a prospective partner to get them to hear what the reality of partnership with your charity is like.

In summary

We encourage you to once a year use NPS to review your current partnerships and see what space for growth potential there is. Then to take the necessary action to address any concerns, and implement positive actions to build trust and loyalty, resulting increasing your NPC score.

Remarkable results

Earlier this year the Remarkable Partnerships team took our own advice and ran an NPS survey for our own clients. We were delighted that we received an NPS score of +75. A score about 50 is acknowledged as excellent and that client satisfaction is high. To compare, Apple has a score of +68, Amazon +62 and Netflix +68!

If you want to learn more about exceptional account management to deliver results for your charity, why not join us on our Account Management Crash course to transform your partners into corporate champions. Our next course is running on the 23^rd, 25^th and 30^th November, find out more here: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/event/account-management-crash-course/

If there’s anything we can help with, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch by emailing us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com

Somerset Maugham once said, “We live in uncertain times.” As we emerge from the pandemic it is essential that leaders plot a clear path ahead. Strategy has never been so important.

Oxford Languages defines strategy as follows, “A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.” There’s so much value in that definition, which we will unpack in our blog below. So here are our five reasons why strategy is important.

1. Clarity on your current position

When Alex Ferguson started as the new Manchester United manager in 1986, the club were 19^th in the league. They had only won 12 of their previous 40 games.

His first step was to clarify their position. Even though they were no longer competitive, he recognised the amazing potential of their youth team and started to build for the future.

After looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition, he also realised he needed to change their training methods to achieve success.

The rest is history. Alex Ferguson and his team lifted over 30 trophies in 26 years.

The business landscape is equally competitive, yet the large majority of companies and charities behave as if they are operating in isolation.

You can define your current position by answering these questions:

• Do you understand your market?
• Do you understand what makes your organisation different?
• Have you carried out competitor analysis?
• Do you understand what needs to change?

The following quote from Henry Mintzberg, sums up the power of clarifying your position:

“Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: it’s the starting point.”

2. The power of goals

“A Harvard Business Study found that the 3% of graduates from their MBA who had their goals written down, ended up earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together, just ten years after graduation”. (Forbes, 2017).

If you set clear goals, you are able to visualise and achieve success. This helps trigger positive behaviours, even during rough patches, by reminding yourself about the big inspiring goal.  

We recommend you set clear goals that are measurable and achievable. It will also help to have clear timeframes that you regularly review.

The importance of setting the right goals goals is beautifully made by Kinichi Ohmae, “Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.”

3. Identifies key activities

One of the most effective ways to be successful is to understand which activities matter most to achieve your purpose.

We recommend you break down these activities into bite-sized chunks that highlight the key actions on which you want to focus. These should include: how to build your offer, how to reach your target audience, and how to manage and grow partnerships that deliver revenue.

Muhammad Ali, summed up the importance of identifying important activities, even when they are not the most enjoyable, when he said, “I hated every minute of training, but I said… don’t quit, suffer now, and live the rest of your life as a champion.”

4. Empowers your team

Having a clear strategy empowers your colleagues by giving them permission to take actions in line with the identified goals. An empowered team feels more confident and focused and results are more rewarding.

The following quote from McKinsey & Company sums it up perfectly, “Empowerment is much easier if the strategic intent of the organisation is clear. If everyone knows what the organisation is trying to achieve, teams can pull in the same direction without requiring the leader’s constant supervision.”

5. Brings colleagues with you

Finally, and most importantly, having a clear strategy gives your colleagues a big goal to rally around. Colleagues who can your vision will feel more engaged and motivated to give their best. This is because they see their role in the long-term plan.

The result? A loyal and committed workforce who are proud to work for their organisation.  

The following quote from Helen Keller brilliantly sums up the importance of a united team:

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."  

We hope this blog gives you the inspiration and insight to write your own strategy. You can also join us on our Corporate Partnerships Strategy Training starting on 22nd September. Click here to find out more and book your place.

Since 2004, we have seen corporate giving evolve into corporate social responsibility, and more recently into purpose-driven business. Companies have moved from having partnerships with charities because it is “the right thing to do” to knowing that having a clear purpose is essential for success.

With this transition comes huge opportunity for charities, but only if we evolve our mindsets too—like the time our team pivoted a stagnant annual gala into a hybrid event, pulling in unexpected support from a Missouri online casino's community fund to cover streaming tech and boost virtual bids, which not only tripled attendance but showed us how embracing unconventional backers sparks real innovation. The corporate fundraising models that worked in 2004 are no longer fit for purpose in 2021. As a sector, we need to evolve our attitudes from corporate fundraising to corporate partnerships. This evolution will enable us to build more valuable, long-term partnerships that actually bring us closer to achieving our missions.

Therefore, we have put together what we believe are the five biggest differences between corporate partnerships and corporate fundraising. These will steer your corporate charity partnerships from a place of exclusively raising funds in a transactional capacity to a place of strategic win-win partnerships that deliver value for your charity, the company, and society.

Money vs Mission

The first difference is the reason for building your corporate partnerships.

Are you building corporate partnerships to raise money, or to help you achieve your mission? If it is to help you raise money, why do you need to raise money? It is likely to achieve your mission.

Start building your corporate partnerships from a place of shared purpose. Identify the mission of your non-profit organization, and the company’s mission, then find the overlap. Building a partnership around a shared goal or purpose allows your partnerships to grow and evolve over time, creating the impact you need.

For example, campaigning organization Fixe X More work to solve the problem that black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts. Rather than approach Positive Birth Company to ask for money, they approached them about their shared purpose. They built a partnership based on knowing every birth matters, which is a message that will evolve over time, and in turn support hundreds of women.

Short Term vs Long Term Thinking

The second difference is how you approach setting targets.

Corporate fundraising is driven by short-term financial targets, often putting pressure on you to build a partnership before either of you are ready, just so that you can meet your in-year target. In a recent interview, one fundraiser told us that their annual target “favours our desire to conclude negotiations quickly because we need to see their money hit our books now”.

Whereas with any major prospect you need time to understand each other’s organization. We know that major partnerships often take six to 18 months to build, and better KPIs to measure are how many meetings you’re securing with target prospects, how many prospects you are moving through your pipeline and how satisfied your partners are.

Whilst it is important to have money coming in, we recommend a practice of patient persistence in order to achieve the best overall outcome for your charity.

Asking vs Offering

The third difference is the difference between looking at companies as something to take from rather than an organization you can add to.

Coming with a fundraising ask to keep the office lights on isn’t inspiring, and it creates an obvious power imbalance within the relationship. In our Inspiring World Changing Partnerships Report, Daniel Priestly tells us “A lot of businesses feel like if they were to let a charity in the door, it would be like letting a vampire in and they just want to suck everything dry. They would suck the blood out of the business and then move onto the next victim.”

Corporate partnerships is about going to the company with an offer. Your charity is a great catch, and it is your job to make the company see this. Imagine going to a company and saying “you can be the company that ensure children feel like they belong”, or “you can be the company of choice for young black professionals”.

Being confident in our value, and showing the company what’s in it for them, is the key to building more balanced and valuable relationships.

Solutions vs Problems

The fourth difference comes from how you pitch.

Corporate fundraisers will often take ready-made projects that need funding to a company, asking them to write a cheque and nothing more. Corporate partnerships professionals will take a problem to a company and ask them to solve it. This often leads to a better solution to the problem.

This approach transforms the relationship from a one-time donation into an ongoing collaboration where both parties invest in shared outcomes. It fosters a work culture rooted in mutual respect, creativity, and accountability, where businesses are not just supporters but active problem-solvers. Within this dynamic, moments of genuine appreciation—like the simple exchange of thank you quotes between teams—carry weight, reinforcing the idea that every contribution matters.

When partnerships are built this way, they go beyond transactions and evolve into long-term commitments. Employees feel proud to be part of initiatives that have a tangible impact, and companies strengthen their reputation by aligning values with action. The result is a culture where collaboration thrives, and both organizations and communities benefit from the shared pursuit of meaningful change.

An example of this comes from SolarAid, who approached Yingli Europe. They had a shared problem in that solar lights weren’t affordable to the mass market. Together, they developed an affordably priced light which is sold worldwide. This partnership was worth way more to SolarAid than a donation from Yingli Europe, and the solution they created is helping to give people light to this day.

Quantity vs Quality

The fifth difference for a charity comes down to focus.

Corporate fundraisers are often expected to hold a number of transactional partnerships, so need to be speaking to a huge number of companies in order to meet their objectives. The question they are asked is “where is the next million pounds coming from?”

Corporate Partnerships professionals ask a much stronger question – “what is the next partnership that will help us achieve our mission?” – and this allows them to focus on a much smaller, more qualified list of prospects.

When the Hospice of St. Francis made this change, they were able to secure their biggest partnership to date with Aitchisons Estate Agent.

Summary

Whilst there are many more ways that corporate partnerships are different to corporate fundraising, we hope that these give you a taste of how your corporate fundraising programme can evolve.

Are you ready to move your charity from corporate fundraising to corporate partnerships? Contact the Remarkable Partnerships team to get started.

The new landscape

“The UK’s first lockdown was potentially the single biggest
and most abrupt change in daily life since World War II.”
Jane Falkingham and colleagues, University of Southampton

The business landscape has changed forever. So, what are the main features of this new reality that you need to consider when building corporate-charity partnerships?

1) Digital acceleration

Online sales grew by 46% in 2020 (ONS). Companies are moving sales, systems and communications online at an incredible pace. The challenge for charities is to keep up with this rapid change.

2) Hybrid working

Many people have been forced to work from home during lockdown. And many have discovered that they prefer it that way. In fact, 87% of office workers said that they want to work from home at least some of the time (Atlas Cloud). But how will companies keep colleagues engaged when they’re not in the office? This represents a major opportunity for corporate-charity partnerships.

3) Climate change

Nearly one third of the UK’s largest companies have signed up to the United Nations Race to Zero campaign. And COP26, the next UN Climate Summit, is taking place in Glasgow in November. Climate change has never been so high on the business agenda.

4) Mental Health

1 in 5 adults experienced some form of depression during the pandemic (ONS). We are also talking so much more openly about our mental health problems. If companies want to attract and retain the best talent, they need to prioritise employee well-being.

5) Awareness of inequalities

Inequalities have always existed in our society. But the pandemic has shone a new spotlight on them, so they are impossible to ignore. And George Floyd’s death in the US heightened our awareness even more. This means that diversity and inclusion are also top priorities for companies.

“If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us
then it’s probably not that important.”
Simon Sinek

1) Be agile

Companies are moving faster than ever, so it is essential that you keep pace. This means that your internal partnerships are essential, so your colleagues can help you react faster.

2) Make your offer virtual

With so many people working from home, it is vital that you develop a unique and engaging, virtual fundraising and volunteering offer for employees.

3) Focus on shared purpose

Jamie Mitchell, former MD of Innocent, said, “We are now seeing this move from shareholder to stakeholder… with more and more businesses saying they care and they want to be a force for doing good in the world.” Therefore, we recommend you build partnerships on your shared purpose with the company. This will ensure you create more strategic and less transactional partnerships.

4) Be authentic

There is a new authenticity in our working lives, because we are joining meetings from our homes. This means we are getting to know more about our colleagues, partners and prospects, such as their hobbies and the name of their pets. If you build your partnerships on this new authenticity, it will make them stronger and more impactful.

5) Be ambitious

Now that companies are focused on issues relating to diversity, mental health and climate change, it’s time to make your corporate partnerships more ambitious. So many business leaders are thinking about how they can help “build back better.” It’s up to you to show them how.

If you want to find out how your charity can seize corporate partnership opportunities in the new different, then please contact us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com

The pandemic has transformed the business landscape. Companies are now re-evaluating their purpose by asking themselves “why” they exist and how can they make a real difference, instead of simply operating for profit.

Although the word “purpose” has been a business buzzword since 2010, we are now seeing clear signs that companies want to develop an authentic approach to changing their role in society. As Jamie Mitchell, former MD of Innocent Drinks says, “We are now seeing this move from shareholder to stakeholder… with more and more businesses saying they care and they want to be a force for doing good in the world.”

If you’re a business we recommend you seize the purpose-driven opportunity described below. If you are a charity this is a huge opportunity, because the best way for companies to demonstrate their purpose is to build ambitious corporate-charity partnerships.

Here are five reasons why a purpose-driven approach is now vital for companies:

Purpose-driven Companies Outperform the Competition

There is growing evidence that companies which are purpose-driven outperform their competition because they understand “why” they exist. Able to see the bigger picture, they transform their business model to engage their employees and meet the rapidly changing expectations of their customers. As reported by Deloitte in 2019, “Purpose-driven companies have witnessed higher market share gains and grown three times faster on average than their competitors.”

Unleash the Power of Your Employees

Only 45% of employees in the UK feel engaged at work (Qualtrics, 2017). This is a significant challenge for business, because it means that more than half of your workforce are not 100% motivated. Employees who have a clear understanding of their company’s purpose, feel more engaged and motivated to give their best. This is because they see how their role directly connects to creating a better society. The result? More creativity, working better together, improved performance and therefore increased profit!

Attracting and Keeping the Best Talent

One in four workers is considering leaving their job after the pandemic (Forbes, 2021). This means that companies are concerned about keeping and attracting the best talent. Millennials are central to this challenge, with greater expectations around flexible working, career development and the company’ contribution to society and the environment. This is highlighted in a study by Cone Communications, which found that 64% of millennials won’t take a job if the company doesn’t have a clear environmental and social policy. Also 83% would want to stay if the company addressed it’s wider social and environmental responsibilities.

Creating consumer loyalty and brand value

Consumers today are more likely to base their buying decisions on how companies treat their employees, deal with their environmental impact and support the communities in which they operate. Purpose-driven companies are able to develop authentic, deeper relationships with their customers who believe that their loyalty contributes to the brand’s purpose. Patagonia, the outdoor clothing manufacturer, is an excellent example of a company that has matched their purpose with their target consumers’ values. Their purpose is, “We’re in business to save our home planet.”

Demonstrating Purpose through Corporate-charity Partnerships

Companies cannot claim they are a purpose-driven unless they are actually doing something about it. We know that one of the most effective ways for companies to show their commitment is by building a shared purpose, long-term partnership with a charity. By partnering with a charity you can tap into the specialist knowledge and skills of a cause that matches your purpose. This partnership will give you the scope to involve colleagues, engage customers and demonstrate your impact. Not only will this show you are truly committed to your purpose, it will also help you stand out in a crowded market.

If you want to speak with someone at Remarkable Partnerships about how your company or charity can build purpose-driven partnerships, please contact us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com.

Corporate partnerships have the potential to deliver significant value, both financially and in-kind for your charity. However, you do not want to partner with companies whose objectives or practices are in conflict with your mission. An effective due diligence process should protect your charity’s reputation, streamline your decision making, and remove any scope for personal opinions.

If your charity doesn’t have a due diligence process in place, or maybe it does but your colleagues are still challenging the process, then seek support from this blog where Remarkable Partnerships share our five due diligence lessons…

Fundraising Code of Practice

The first place to start is always the Fundraising Code of Practice which is the standard that all UK charities should work to. One key thing that the code mentions is that you must carry out due diligence, appropriate for the size and nature of the donation, on both the financial and reputational dealings of possible partners, before accepting their donations.

However, having a due diligence process in place that will take account of the size and nature of the donation doesn’t mean that a process should create unnecessary rules that restrict you from considering accepting a donation. It should be kept in mind that accepting a donation is the right decision when the value (financial/in-kind/awareness) outweighs any potential risk of partnering with that company.

Simple but effective

Over the years, we have worked with charities who have a process in place, but they are so complex that they aren’t used, which means it is pointless. An effective due diligence process should enable your charity to seize the opportunity that corporate-charity partnerships offer. The process should be simple, quick to complete, and provide a clear direction on next steps.

The process needs to be simple, so it enables you to quickly progress prospect conversations, not get tied down by red tape. Our recommendation is that your process has a handful of steps with appropriate levels of sign off. We recommend creating a flow diagram of the steps, which shows the criteria and who needs to approve.

Personal Opinions

One reason for having a due diligence process is to avoid personal opinions, and base all decision making on the process and research. This means that an outdated view of brand or company, will no longer be the reason to veto an opportunity for a long-term strategic partnership.

We recommend you create a standardised research template as part of your process, so that all companies are evaluated in the same way. Based on that research, each company can be given a low, medium or high risk rating, which will determine the next step of the process and the level of approval required.

Minimal restrictions

Gone are the days of whole industries being tarnished with the same brush. In some cases the corporate partner may want little or no external profile for their donation, which means you should be open to considering all industries and to be evaluating the risk by company. Only if a particular industries conflicts with your charities mission should it be on the ‘no go’ list. An example of this would be an anonymous donation from a tobacco company may be acceptable, as long as it doesn’t conflict with your charity’s mission.

We highly recommend having little or no industries that are excluded from being considered, but instead, have a due diligence process which means that all companies are considered on a case by case basis.

Securing internal buy-in

Once you create or amend your due diligence process, you want all your colleagues to understand, support and be invested in the process. The best ways to do this is to share your simple process, by running a short session with colleagues to get them engaged. Getting your press and PR colleagues on board is especially important, also the support of your CEO and trustees is essential

We know that having a due diligence process in place may sound like a daunting task, but in its simplest form a two page will do the job. Simple and effective is the way forward. So don’t hesitate, put it in place today!

It is now well over a year since the global pandemic began, and the heady days of visiting our corporate partners by train (or plane!) for partnership review meetings is a distant memory.

Over the past year, we have seen a number of charity-corporate partnerships thriving. We have seen a number of others that have struggled. We know that the difference in whether a partnership has grown or shrunk is often down to the work of the partnerships manager. So we've put together our five key lessons for thriving partnerships in the pandemic:

Link your Partnership to the Pandemic

33 million people in the UK have received their first vaccine and lockdown is gradually lifting. However, the pandemic is still the most important topic for business leaders. Right now they’re thinking "what is our recovery plan?"

So it’s vital that your corporate partnership is relevant to the pandemic and that it’s part of their recovery plan. After all, your cause is more urgent right now because of the coronavirus, so what activity can you add to your partnership which is helping meet that greater need?

For example, CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) has a partnership with Scottish Gas, which was in danger of dropping of the radar because of the pandemic. Their hospices had to close their doors because of the risk of contamination, so they decided to launch the UK’s first ever virtual children’s hospice. Making this happen was a huge challenge for CHAS, so they approached Scottish Gas to help them build and deliver it. The support from Scottish Gas has been incredible and it has made the partnership even stronger that it was before the pandemic.

Put Shared Purpose Front and Centre

During the pandemic we have run over 140 free brainstorm sessions for charities. One of the most important insights from those sessions is that some corporate partnerships have become dormant or faded away over the last twelve months. This could be because the partnerships are mainly philanthropic or transactional in nature, so they don’t feel important to the company right now.

To ensure your partnership always feels important for the company we recommend you put your shared purpose front and centre. The way to identify that shared purpose is find the company’s purpose (it could be their mission) on the internet. Then you put it alongside your charity’s mission and look for the common ground. What is your shared belief, passion or commitment? You should brainstorm this with a colleague and you might need to write down a few different versions before you have end up with a shared person that feels inspiring, punchy and unique to your partnership. If you do that then both the company and your non-profit organization will see your collaboration as a way of achieving your respective missions faster and with greater certainty. And those are the partnerships that last the longest and make the greatest impact.

Strengthen your Partnerships Temple

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen that the partnerships that have survived are the ones that are multi-faceted. The partnerships that rest on a single activity (such as a joint marketing campaign, or employee fundraising) were hard to sustain during lockdowns. Conversely, the partnerships that were already broad and diverse have been able to thrive, adding more layers to their partnership.

We love the “partnership temple” method used by Save the Children to ensure that your partnerships are as strong as possible. In this method, you see your partnership as a temple, held up by pillars of different activity. Your aim as a partnership manager is to add another type of pillar to the temple. For example, if you are already engaging their employees in fundraising activities, you will want to consider how you can activate their customers/clients, or what skilled volunteering work they could take on, as the next step of your partnership. For further clarity, see the diagram below:

Make your Partnership Activity Virtual

With the COVID-19 crisis cancelling all major events and forcing staff to work from home, there has been a predictable rise in virtual engagement activities. No longer it is an item on the corporate teams strategic plan, but in order to engage employees, fundraising and volunteering has needed to go virtual.

Some great examples we have seen from the sector have been:

• Teach First’s “Shut In, Not Shut Out” webinar series – throughout 2020, Teach First launched their coronavirus proposition that being “shut in” at home shouldn’t “shut out” disadvantaged students from their future.
• SolarAid’s partnership with Oxford University Press’s delivered a day of virtual team volunteering. The communications team supported SolarAid to deliver creative content for an upcoming virtual fundraising event.
• Children’s Hospices Across Scotland’s (CHAS) tailored virtual calendars. These calendars replaced the previously planned activities and appealed to the specific audiences in each office – for example ensuring PwC teams were able to engage in a virtual Christmas party, “Merry CHASmas”.

These partnership activities demonstrate how powerful virtual opportunities can be for partnership building and for employee engagement.  Virtual activities will remain, and are an essential tool to your partnership offer in order to raise funds and keep employees engaged in your cause.

Build Personal Relationships

As corporate partnerships professionals, our role is to build the relationship between our charity and our corporate partners as organisations. However, the pandemic has shown that it is crucial to build and capitalize on individual relationships within organisations too.

Having champions within your corporate partners can be game changing. These relationships will allow you to learn about their problems and priorities. These people will promote your partnership internally. Perhaps most importantly, these people will fight for your partnership activity even in tough times.

As such, it is worth considering what you can do to delight your partners on a personal level. Whether it is sending them a birthday card or remembering the name of their partner, these little touchers can turn a partner into a promoter.

We hope these recommendations have been useful for you to demonstrate that partnership success is possible right now, with the right approach. We also hope these five lessons help you up to think more strategically about your current partnerships, and renew your confidence and excitement for your partnerships today.

If you want to grow and develop your account management skills, check out our account management crash course .

Smart people learn from their mistakes. Smarter people learn from others' mistakes. But the smartest of all learn from others’ success.By understanding how other corporate fundraisers have built and delivered major corporate partnerships, we are able to improve our own craft. We can learn lessons about account management, re-examine our prospect list and light the fire in our stomach of knowing that success isn't just possible – it’s inevitable.With that in mind, we asked five corporate fundraisers to share a recent win – and the valuable lesson they learnt from it.

‍The power of being honest

‍In October 2020, The Felix Project was approached by the marketing team of a luxury bag company to partner on their Christmas campaign. This campaign led to a strategic, long-term friendship, including the company making introductions to other companies and luxury designers. Louise Bingham, Partnerships Manager, said, “As a small, local charity, working with a national brand could have been tricky. Right from the start, we were transparent and honest about our ability to support a public facing, cause-marketing campaign. We were particularly honest about our social media reach and the commitment we could give to PR. They were fantastic to work with, really engaged with the cause, and we are now benefiting from an extended strategic relationship."Having these open conversations right from the start helped us build strong relationships, open internal doors and has converted a short term product partnership into a strategic long term friendship between the business and the charity."We love this example from Louise because it demonstrates the power of being honest. By ensuring they were clear with the company about what they could deliver, they were able to provide a positive experience throughout the partnership and reap long term benefits.

‍Non-financial partnerships can be priceless

‍Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust are about to launch a new partnership with a professional sports team. The partnership will provide the sports team with sustainability resources and training for their employees, academy and team, focusing on strengthening links with the community. Michele Duma, Partnerships Manager, said, “One of our strategic goals is to see one in four people taking action for nature’s recovery. That’s a big number for a local charity. By supporting and working with this partner, we can start to see how this might happen. "They are followed by millions of people on social media and are loved and trusted by a much more diverse audience than our own. As an ambassador of our work they can influence behaviour change at a far greater rate than we could alone. Doing so will increase the impact of their own sustainability strategy."Together, we can help address the inequalities in access to nature and green spaces, and use the power of sport to create a fanbase of inspired supporters.”This example from Michelle demonstrates the power of non-financial partnerships These partnerships often create value far beyond what a simple donation could achieve. As Michelle says, though this partnership does not have a financial value attached, it is actually “priceless”.

‍Our best opportunities are with current partners

‍SolarAid are celebrating the success of a recent £15,000 donation from a premium watch company. Jamie McCloskey, Director of Development, said, “As this company was an existing small partner we took on board the 'Remarkable Way’ and it really worked for the growth of this partnership. We began by brainstorming our shared purpose and building an exciting and bespoke activities. We also built a strong relationship with our key contacts, which gave us the opportunity to engage them on an emotional level. We also secured time to pitch our compelling, commercial opportunities. We were also tenacious in our follow-up, with quality account management throughout, which enabled us to build trust and understanding of the impact of our work.”This partnership demonstrates that our best opportunities are with current partners. We often engage our prospects with more excitement and joy than our existing partners, but the biggest opportunities are often right under our nose.

‍The power of patient persistence

‍Six months ago, the Blue Cross corporate partnerships team had a brilliant partnership idea perfect for a major sofa company. In the last fortnight, the partnership was agreed.Natalie Pawaleck, Partnerships Manager, said, “We found a perfect fit with a company and industry we previously had never worked with. We knew that the fit was just too good not to share with the company. So I emailed the CEO, who put me in touch with the marketing team.In the second meeting, we adapted the offering based on some comments they had made around employee engagement in the first meeting and focused on the ideas that had received positive feedback. But the real key was patient persistence. It took six months from the first email to actually get the yes.”Here, the Blue Cross team show us the power of patient persistence. Often when approaching a company, there will be weeks – if not months – when they do not respond. It can be easy to get down hearted and interpret this lack of response as a “no". But this partnership shows us there is hope. Even during busy times, a strong shared purpose is undeniable. So keep following up that prospect.

‍The power of a phone call

‍Recently, Deafblind UK were asked by a high street retailer to verify some Deafblind manual and braille that was to be included on a product. Which of course they were happy to do, but they also sensed there was a greater opportunity.Zoe Beattie, Community and Business Partner, said, “We saw this as an amazing opportunity, to speak to the organisation and find out more about how this product had come about and what was the reason behind the launch. So rather than just send an email, I gave them a call."This simple approach has led to them asking for our support with a much bigger campaign and the potential to work together in the coming months. This campaign is also being championed by an ‘A list' celebrity."Great things can come out of a simple conversation!”This example from Deafblind UK shows the power of a phone call. By speaking to the company on the phone, Zoe was able to use her excellent relationship skills and passion about the cause to uncover a bigger opportunity. If you sense an opportunity like Zoe did, we recommend you call first and email later.If you're a corporate fundraiser, working from home, it can be easy to get discouraged if you don't feel you're making progress with your prospects. That's why we chose to share these five wins, to demonstrate to that corporate partnerships success is possible right now. We hope these lessons fire you up to think more strategically about your current partners and to re-engage your prospects with renewed confidence and excitement.If you want to turbo-charge your account management skills to secure more wins from existing partners like SolarAid and the Felix Project,check out our account management crash course.

£40,000 - £45,000 per annum.
Part-time or full time. (21-35 hours per week).
Job is homebased. Location is flexible.
We particularly encourage applications from minority and under-represented groups.

The pandemic has been one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime. It has hit companies and charities hard. And that shared struggle has made corporate-charity partnerships more vital than ever.

We are in a new era of purpose-driven partnerships. This means there has been a significant increase in demand for Remarkable Partnerships’ services, because we exist to improve the world through purpose-driven partnerships. Therefore, we are expanding our team.

We are recruiting two new roles:

• Partnerships Manager (Charities)
• Partnerships Manager (Companies)

Both jobs will involve delivering our high value-add services, managing client relationships and securing new ones. Because we can deliver value to both sides of the partnership, the first role will focus on charities and the second will focus on companies.

Both roles will include consulting, networking, facilitating workshops, training, coaching, pitching and writing proposals. Our ideal candidates will have excellent experience of securing and delivering major corporate-charity partnerships. You will believe in our purpose and be excellent relationship builders, strong communicators, team players and target driven.

Successful candidates will join a high performing and motivated team who are passionate about the power of partnerships to create a better world.

To receive a job pack please email: jonathan@remarkablepartnerships.com

No recruitment agencies please.

Application deadline is Monday 19^th April

1^st Interviews will take place w/c 3^rd May

With the new season of Formula One starting this weekend, we have been reflecting on the ways that the world of corporate-charity partnerships is similar to the world of the race-track. We’ve come together to share the five key lessons Formula One can teach us about corporate partnerships.

The power of testing

The ethos of Formula One is continuous improvement. Teams are always looking for ways to improve performance. Engineers work on upgrades for months before they make it onto the car on race day. And they are always testing. In wind tunnels, running race simulations and pre-season testing. It’s not until you actually see the latest improvement out on the track that you know it’s making a difference.

Corporate partnerships professionals can learn a lot from this approach. We can practice our pitches in front of our colleagues and test new products with a focus group of business experts. Both of these audiences will provide us with incredible feedback to improve our performance.

The importance of your team

As corporate partnerships professionals, like formula one drivers, we have a tendency to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We can easily fall into the trap of believing that the success or failure of the partnership totally depends on us. When actually, we are just the face of the partnership. We are completely reliant on the team around us to build and deliver the success we need.

Formula One drivers continually emphasise the importance of the team. The pit crew and engineers back at the factory. Whenever a driver wins a race you immediately here them acknowledge the team.

Corporate partnerships professionals should do the same. You need to ensure that your internal partnerships are as tight as possible. Involve your colleagues from the start and show them the vital role they have to play. By doing this you will transform your ability to win.

Return on investment

For the most part, the Formula One teams that invest the most in their car, drivers and team are the ones who win the most races. This enables them to secure the best engines, drivers and lead the way on innovation.

Corporate partnerships are the same. The charities that invest the most are the most successful. This means investing in vital areas such as training your current team, developing powerful propositions and recruiting new team members. It is unrealistic to expect continuous growth if you don't grow your team.

Purpose-driven brands will surprise you

Formula One is made up of ten teams, including some of the biggest car manufacturers in the world - such as Ferrari and Mercedes – and Red Bull, the energy drink brand. You might expect Red Bull to be at the back of the grid, but they have actually won eight world championships (four drivers and four constructors).

Taking part in Formula One makes sense for the team at Red Bull. Their mission statement is “giving wings to people and ideas”, and their brand values are all about excitement and energy. The pace of the sport, the exposure to their target market and the opportunity to stand out from their competitors all come together in a way that make Formula One too good an opportunity to miss.

How can you package your partnership opportunities in a similar way? What extraordinary partnership opportunity can you offer to a company so they can demonstrate their purpose?

Bouncebackability

We love this quote from Lewis Hamilton, “What people tend to forget is the journey that I had getting to Formula One. There were plenty of years where I had to learn about losing and having bad races.” So even though he is the most successful driver in the history of F1 he has experienced plenty of failures.

So much can go wrong in F1. Brakes, engine, tyres fail. Not to mention collisions with opponents and other forms of driver error. Even if you’re the best in the business, success isn’t guaranteed. This means that F1 drivers and teams need to develop incredible bouncebackability. So you didn’t finish the Italian Grand Prix? You need to suck up the loss and dust yourself down, because the Dutch Grand Prix is in a week’s time.

Success isn’t guaranteed for corporate partnerships professionals either. In fact failure is ineveitable. But it isn’t really failure, it’s just a company that isn’t ready to partner with your charity right now. So, dust yourself down and focus on the next opportunity.

If you’ve enjoyed this blog and want to get yourself race-track ready, consider booking yourself onto our Corporate Partnerships Masterclass this April: https://www.remarkablepartnerships.com/event/corporate-partnerships-masterclass-april2021/

When the first lockdown hit in March 2020 the wave of uncertainty that followed led to many organisations adopting a ‘batten down the hatches’ approach so they could ride out the storm that was coming. This inevitably threw many relationships, including corporate-charity partnerships, into question. As a result, my friends at Remarkable Partnerships spent April-June running free workshops to help breathe belief back into corporate partnerships teams. Their message was clear: if partnerships are purpose-driven, there will always be a place for them. And, with everyone being threatened by the same challenges, the role of partnerships would be more essential than ever – as people recognised the power of the mantra ‘together we can achieve more than we can apart.’

A year on, the ‘ride out the storm’ attitude has been replaced by a ‘more from less’ approach. While these words imply cost cutting, I think it is a more nuanced phrase than that. The 2010 HBR article Roaring out of Recession, described four different approaches to responding to global crises. These approaches are: prevention focused; promotion focused; pragmatic and progressive. And I believe the phrase ‘more from less’ takes on a different meaning depending on which of these approaches your organisation, or your partner, is adopting.

In this blog I am going to focus on the two most polarised approaches – prevention and progressive.

What Can You do with Prevention Focused Partners?

For organisations that are prevention focused, more from less will mean reducing cost and reducing risk. It will also usually mean stopping activities that do not explicitly address the company’s main priorities and goals. 

So, if your corporate partnership doesn’t seem to deliver against these priorities or goals it will most likely be cut. Partnerships that feel like nice to do activities, rather than being essential to delivering the purpose, have very little chance of surviving. Persuading them to continue to support the partnership financially is likely to be very hard to do. This is because their defensive attitude is unlikely to be open to new ideas – unless these are seen to substantially reduce risk for the business.

So, my advice is to present what you do as a risk reduction advantage. What business risks can your partnership help to minimise? It could be loss of talent or loss of customer loyalty, for example. However you pivot, make sure you plan for the moment when their priority shifts away from prevention to growth 

What Can you do with Progressive Partners?

For organisations that are progressive, more from less will mean delivering more value with less effort. Cutting cost is not the driver. Extracting more sustainable value becomes the focus. To do this progressive companies stay close to their customers and find new ways to satisfy their needs with less effort.

Progressive companies are much more likely to be purpose-driven than prevention-focused organisations. And it is focusing on the Purpose that drives them to take a proactive approach to create a sustainable future when the going gets tough. That doesn’t mean they won’t cut cost. They will if the cost no longer seems to satisfy changing customer needs.

So, my advice to non-profit organizations is to be proactive, as this matches their approach. Show how you can help them forge much closer emotional bonds with their customers because they see sustaining relationships as key to their long-term success. And, if you can help them to innovate, or to be seen as an innovator, this will be valued too.

Of course, the moral of this blog is that focusing on purpose-driven partnerships will deliver sustainable success for both sides of the partnership. In the meantime, I recommend you:

1. Assess the behaviour of your partners
2. Assign them to one of the two approaches above
3. Adapt your approach to be in sync with their new drivers
4. Review their priorities regularly and adapt accordingly.

Finally, I see the more from less attitude as a huge opportunity for charity-corporate partnerships because it is forcing organisations to focus on what they really value. By making your charity essential to delivering that value, you will create successful and sustainable relationships.

This guest blog is written by Crispin Manners, who is a communications and leadership expert and author of 'Grow, build, sell, live.'

We’re incredibly excited to be joining over 235 corporate partnerships professionals at the first ever Corporate Partnerships Everywhere conference tomorrow. This conference will give us all the chance to step back and draw inspiration from those around us. It will also give us an opportunity to learn some new techniques, and to master the basics of corporate partnerships.

With that “mastering the basics” in mind, we thought we would share three of our favourite blogs from the last year that will help refresh your corporate partnerships approach in the next week. Grab yourself a cup of tea, let yourself breathe out, and remind yourself of how far you’ve come with our blogs on seizing the pandemic partnership opportunity, sealing the deal and securing organisational buy in.

Seize the pandemic partnership opportunity

This hasn’t been the start of the year that we’d hoped for. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and many countries across the world are in lockdown.

If you are a fundraising director or CEO of a charity, you could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t much of a corporate partnerships opportunity right now. After all, many companies are really struggling. So perhaps you shouldn’t invest in corporate partnerships at the moment and maybe you should put some of the team on furlough.

Our response is don’t do that! There is a glimmer of light in the middle of this darkness. Because the corporate partnerships opportunity is ENORMOUS right now, for reasons that we explain here.

Seal the deal – 5 tips to convert prospects into partners

We’re often told that one of the hardest steps in corporate partnerships is ‘sealing the deal’ – converting a hot prospect into a formalized partnership. We know that securing that first meeting with a prospect is a crucial first step, but the journey between that meeting and a formalised partnership is less documented. Large partnerships can take between six months to two years to form, and it can feel like we’re operating without a roadmap. So the Remarkable Partnerships team have put together five recommendations on how to get your prospects over the line.

Five recommendations to secure organisational buy-in

Probably the greatest factor determining your corporate partnerships’ success is your ability to involve your internal colleagues. However, because these are relationships with your colleagues, you can easily fall into the trap of believing that they should automatically partner with you. In our experience these strong relationships don’t occur naturally, they need to be earned. So here are our five recommendations to secure organisational buy-in.

If you’ve enjoyed these blogs, we’d love to hear from you – and we hope to see you at the conference tomorrow!

To be a successful communicator, we first need to understand ourselves. Then we need to understand others, but how?

Insights Discovery shows us that we all have a preferred style when it comes to communication and it’s split into colours.

Have a look and see which colour is most like you:

Cool Blue

• Prefers to work alone
• Analytical – process driven
• Cautious
• Precise
• Deliberate
• Questioning
• Formal

Fiery Red

• Prefers to lead others
• Positive – results driven
• Competitive
• Demanding
• Strong willed
• Purposeful

Earth Green

• Prefers to work 1 on 1
• Focuses on others
• Caring
• Encouraging
• Sharing
• Patient
• Relaxed

Sunshine Yellow

• Prefers to work in groups
• Focus on motivating
• Social
• Dynamic
• Demonstrative
• Enthusiastic
• Persuasive

Put a tick next to the words that best describe you. This will give you an understanding of your preferred style when it comes to how you see yourself and how you see others.

We are all made up of all the colours, however its which one (or sometimes two) is our preferred style that shows how we communicate.

This was a game changer for me, it made me want to know more about the different styles and how their personality traits affected their communication with others. Once you can identify the preferred ‘colour’ of your colleagues, corporate partners and prospects, it really does open up a whole new dynamic!

You can even look back on specific interactions and pinpoint why they turned into a disagreement or an important win. You will also see why you instantly ‘click’ with some people and not others.

So next time you’re in a meeting and there’s someone who is doing all the talking and they are really taking over they are probably ‘Yellow’ in their energy and want to be involved.

That person who is sat quiet taking notes, they are probably ‘blue’ and analysing all the facts, to ensure they understand the process logically before they start what is expected of them.

“Come on team, lets make it happen” there’s your ‘Red’ colleague, focusing on the result.

“Is everyone ok with this, do you need any support?” This is your green colleague making sure everyone is working in harmony.

Applying insights to corporate partnerships

So how can we use this information when we want to engage a corporate prospect or strengthen a current partnership?

Read the emails they’ve sent to your or their messages on social media to pick up clues on what ‘colour’ the person is. Then you want to  mirror their style.

So if you want to secure a meeting with a ‘Blue’ it’s important to talk facts and figures, remember they are analytical in their thinking, don’t expect a quick response as they will need to consider all the options.

With a ‘Green’ it’s important to focus on your shared purpose and what you can do as a partnership. What are the benefits for both of you? It’s all about feeling.

With a ‘Yellow’ expect to talk about a few subjects before you get down to the matter in hand, they will want to talk about anything and everything! Once you have their attention make sure you follow it up in writing, so they don’t forget.

Finally, ‘Red’ they will be precise and decisive, so using facts and getting straight to the point will get you an instant answer to your request.

Insights Discovery is a really powerful tool for anyone that wants to communicate with others more effectively. Think about the preferences of your colleagues, corporate partners and prospects and how you can better match their style to strengthen your relationships.

This blog is a guest post by Zoe Beattie, Community & Business Partner, Deafblind UK.

At Remarkable Partnerships, we love being connected to so many passionate individuals working in this sector. There is so much potential amongst the community, but sometimes we know that partnerships professionals are weighed down with the pressure of their long to-do list, rather than giving any time to their own professional development.  

If that sounds like you, and you want to build a successful career in corporate partnerships, here is our advice on how to do exactly that: 

It all begins with your purpose 

As you may know, we are passionate about purpose driven partnerships, but have you ever considered your personal purpose?  

If you were to write your personal mission statement, what would it say?  

Your personal purpose will help you define your unique drivers, and will help you focus on which role, charity and culture would be right for you. You may even want to consider articulating your personal purpose in job applications. This will help you stand out from the crowd.

Find your passion 

We all have our own passions, and the emotional nature of some causes speak to us more as individuals than others do.  

Laura Solomons, Head of Donor Relations at the Sutton Trust, says “My top recommendation for building a successful career in corporate partnerships is to find a charity and cause-area that matches up with your skills and passions. Corporate partnership roles can vary vastly across different charities. You might need to try out a few different roles before you find the best fit for you personally - and that's OK as you'll learn lots along the way.”

So why not take 10 minutes out of your day today, to list out the causes that really appeal to you? Like any list, we recommend keeping it short and focused, then you can keep it front of mind when considering your next move. For example, knowing that you are particularly passionate about homelessness or international development will help you focus on roles in those charities when they become available.

If you don’t feel a burning fire inside you for the cause you currently work for, focus on re-igniting that passion by connecting with your cause once again – engaging with the people, environment or animals that you cause helps can often be the key to this.

Take a moment to read stories, watch your own content, and speak to the services team to get motivated again. 

Set career goals 

By setting a goal, you can then create a plan to achieve it. A goal, without a plan, is just a wish!  

It is worth stepping back, to look at the role you are shooting for, and identify the steps you need to take to achieve it. One of the best ways of doing this is to look at the job description of the next role you are aiming for and see the skills and experience needed. By delivering against those key skills, whilst in your current role, you will have strong examples to take to that interview when it comes up.

Our recommendation would be to set a time in your diary each week for personal goal setting – set the goal, check in where you are at, make a plan, and visualise the success. You can do it!

Build your professional networks 

Especially in current times, building your professional network can feel like a challenge, but it is one of the most important factors in building a successful career in corporate partnerships. Relationships are the focus of partnerships, so why neglect this skill for our own benefit?

Updating your Linkedin profile, and connecting with current contacts and past colleagues can often be neglected, but Linkedin is truly the best tool for you to represent yourself externally. It is worth spending time updating Linkedin to articulate your purpose, passion and skills.  

Don’t forget to take up the offer of (virtual) coffees to do networking, and keep in touch with past colleagues. Past colleagues will often be the ones to advertise roles to their networks, and even if 10 years has gone by, you will still be remembered for your expertise.  

Skills match 

We recommend you spend time on your personal development – speak to your line manager about what training budget there is for you to develop your skills. Pick a course that strengthens your weakest area of knowledge, or pick a course that helps you become a specialist in a certain skill. 

Laura continues by saying “Have an honest conversation with yourself about how you enjoy spending your time - is it making calls, is it putting together project plans, is it motivating a group of fundraising employees, is it compiling a comms pack, is it thinking creatively about how a company might solve your charity's problems? Or is it a combination of all the above? If you can either find or shape a role to spend your time doing what you love, you'll be well on your way to success and - in my experience - smashing your income targets will follow.” 

As Laura says, find or shape a role that can mean you spend your time doing what you want, and the results will follow.  

So keep up the good work, but don’t forget to focus on your future. Take 10 minutes each day to undertake a small action that will help you progress your career in this fantastic sector! 

If you want to hear more on this topic – you are in luck! At Corporate Partnerships Everywhere on the 25th February 2021, Georgina is hosting a panel discussion on this exact topic. Laura Solomons, will be sharing more, along with Ghalib Ullah, Head of Commercial Partnerships at Parkinson's UK, and Christopher Mann, National Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, City Year. Early bird tickets are available until the 15th February.

This hasn’t been the start of the year that we’d hoped for. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and many countries across the world are in lockdown.

If you are a fundraising director or CEO of a charity, you could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t much of a corporate partnerships opportunity right now. After all, many companies are really struggling. So perhaps you shouldn’t invest in corporate partnerships at the moment and maybe you should put some of the team on furlough.

Our response is don’t do that! There is a glimmer of light in the middle of this darkness. Because the corporate partnerships opportunity is ENORMOUS right now, for reasons that we explain below:

It’s time for purpose

This is the age of purpose. Purpose-driven business was important before the coronavirus arrived, but in the middle of the pandemic, it is more important than ever. That is because companies who have been saying that they are good corporate citizens and care for their community and employees are now under the spotlight. The following quote from McKinsey & Company sums it up brilliantly:

“the opportunity for businesses to make a… mark with human support, empathy and purpose, is greater than it has ever been.”

There are some brilliant examples of companies making an extraordinary response to the pandemic, such as Bloom & Wild’s inspirational new partnership with Carer’s Trust which is aiming to raise £150,000 over the next 12 months. Now is the time for companies to make a genuine and meaningful impact and a partnership with a charity is the perfect way make that happen.

Charities can help solve companies’ problems

Throughout the pandemic, companies are largely falling into two camps: those who are thriving (such as food delivery, gaming, technology and home fitness) and those who are struggling to survive (such as clothes retailers, travel and hospitality). Though we may think to focus our efforts on those companies doing well, there are significant opportunities with the struggling camp too.

These companies have major problems that your charity can help solve. For example, the pandemic has accelerated the move to digital as so much of our entertainment, communication and purchasing is taking place online. Many companies have a poor digital presence and they need to solve that problem quickly. However, social media posts about their products and services are likely to be quite boring, whereas partnering with a charity who shares their purpose could provide them with inspiring stories and meaningful content which will be much more engaging.

Business leaders want to make an extraordinary response

The first wave of the pandemic brought home to us how connected we are as a community – which led to individuals going out of their way to help others, country-wide claps for the NHS and the individuals at the top of businesses providing an extraordinary response to those in need. One of the best examples we saw was Gym Shark supporting Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital with their #SweatySelfie campaign. To date, it has raised over £180,000, and enabled hundreds of people to feel involved by making a difference.

Now we are in the second wave of the pandemic, it is vital that companies continue continue to respond. Charities are facing a huge challenge, because there is a rise in demand for their services and yet many fundraising activities have been cancelled. And many people can see that there are those who are worse off right now, so they feel a deep desire to provide support. These people include business leaders, who really want to provide an extraordinary response in the pandemic. But they have to be given the opportunity. So, we urge you to identify those companies who share your purpose and approach them with an inspiring opportunity to partner in the pandemic. Give them the opportunity they are looking for.

Employee engagement is vital

Employee engagement isn’t just a priority for business. It is THE priority. If your people are motivated and inspired they will be more productive, they will stay with you longer and they will promote your organisation as a great place to work. In fact, MIT research shows that companies with a highly rated employee experience achieve twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25 percent higher profits than companies with a low rated employee experience.

Keeping employees engaged can be a challenge at the best of times, but now so many people are working from home it is even more difficult. A partnership with a charity can be a really creative solution to motivating employees. Raising money or volunteering to help good causes can have a transformational effect on an individual and teams. And if this is instigated by the employer then it will remind employees why they feel proud to work for that company.

Businesses are actively looking for new opportunities

Especially as we enter a new year, business leaders are looking for ways to stand out from the competition. The question on every leader’s mind right now is “how do I ensure that 2021 is a positive year?”

Your partnership could be the answer they need. By helping them realise that it’s time for purpose, by solving their problems, by engaging their employees and shaping their response to the pandemic – there has never been a better moment. Businesses need charities right now as much as charities need businesses. So we recommend you act now to seize the enormous partnerships opportunity in the pandemic.

If this blog has inspired you and you want more knowledge, tools and ideas to seize the pandemic partnership opportunity, we recommend you attend Corporate Partnerships Everywhere on the 25th February 2021.

“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
- Robert Schuller

2020 has been a year of constant surprises. On 1st January no-one expected that their year would be turned on its head by a global pandemic. Nevertheless, we have been overwhelmed by how humanity has responded.

We're seen game-changing partnerships built and delivered. We’ve seen communities come together and we’ve all felt the need to build a better future.

This year has been a steep a learning curve. So we thought it appropriate to share our 5 five significant learnings from 2020.

New business is a team game

Being responsible for creating new corporate partnerships can be quite a lonely experience even in an office environment. Often, you’re expected to conjure partnerships out of thin air, with limited support from the rest of your charity. One partnerships manager described their experience as making chips – “everyone wants the chips, but no-one wants to help me peel the potatoes."

This year, we have seen that the best corporate partnerships approaches have been creative, considered and tailored for the prospect. This work is much easier to do in groups, or even in pairs, so we strongly recommend you book in brainstorms with a colleague or volunteer every week to keep those creative juices flowing.

By having more hands peeling the potatoes, you’ll be able to make many more chips! See more guidance from Remarkable Partnerships on how to secure internal partnerships here.

The importance of goal setting

When Tom Daley was just nine years old, he drew a picture called “My Ambition”, showing himself in a handstand on a diving board, with the Olympic rings on either side. Nine years later his ambition became a reality at the London 2012 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal which included a dive starting from a handstand. It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the importance of goal-setting, which has become one of our most important themes during the pandemic.

Keeping focused on what is possible has never been more important. We have a WhatsApp Group of over 100 corporate partnerships professionals. Every Monday, we ask our WhatsApp group of 100+ corporate partnerships professionals to share their goals for the week. On Friday, we ask everyone to share what they’ve achieved. Nothing lifts us more than seeing people make little steps every week that often result in big wins. With all this uncertainty around us it is so empowering to realise that when we take time to write our goals down and our plan to achieve them, we can blow even ourselves away.

The power of authenticity

2020 has been the year where we have all seen into each other’s homes. No longer can people keep up their purely professional work image, when in the background your children are causing havoc. It has been the year of authenticity, where being your true self was the only way to be. This has brought huge value to the relationships that we have with colleagues, partners and prospects. We would strongly recommend that even when we are back to seeing each other in person, that this authentic relationship building continues. Ask questions, and truly listen to the responses.

Relationships are built on trust, and only when we give some of ourselves away, do we open up for the other person to share their true authentic selves. One of the positives that has come from this crazy year is the chance for you to be you. Whatever role you are in, however senior, none of that matters when we are just people, connected around a common goal.

There's light in the darkest times.

Wolverhampton is a city close to our hearts, and their city motto is “out of darkness cometh light.” This feels like it could have been written especially for the pandemic.

There has been so much sadness in the last nine months. Shocking reports from care homes, not being able to see our families and friends. So much of which we’ve taken for granted is no longer a possibility.

And yet there have been so many positive stories, including Jo Wickes, Captain Tom and Marcus Rashford. Deep in the darkness people want to make a difference, because they realise there are always people worse off than them. It is psychologically proven that people look to give, and that giving makes us happy.

Our job is to give people to the opportunity to make the difference they want to see in the world. So despite the fact that Covid-19 has hit business hard, we are seeing corporate-charity partnerships being formed quicker than ever, such as the inspirational partnership between GymShark and Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Out of darkness cometh light indeed.

The enduring power of stories.

We’ve always believed in the power of stories to connect people to your cause, but that has never been truer than it has been this year. Every single charity that we spoke to throughout the year had been impacted by COVID-19, and this created a new sense of urgency that came through in their stories.

One of our favourite examples of this came from Save the Rhino International. They told us that one of their longest standing rangers had said that due to the impact of coronavirus on their conditions, they were starting to wonder if they may be better off as a poacher. They had dedicated their life to protecting rhinos, but they were starting to wonder if that was enough. In a single sentence, this crystalised the importance of supporting Save the Rhino right now, and this story led to an incredible partnership with an outdoor equipment company focussed on International Ranger Day.

As charities, we are rich in meaning and stories are our greatest weapon. We strongly recommend taking forward a passion for storytelling through into 2021 – you’ll see your results transform.

If you want to start 2021 with some key learnings of your own, we’re delighted to announce that there are still some places on our New Business Crash Course – check it out and book your place here.

At Remarkable Partnerships, we love reading around our subject. It makes us better at what we do, because it enables us to reflect on our approach and draw on the wisdom of those who came before us.

With the holidays coming up, we wanted to share three of our all-time favourites to help you wind down in the weeks ahead. Each of these books is a treasure, with their own unique method and we couldn’t recommend them more.

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
Number one on our list is The Go-Giver. We first read it years ago and we picked it up again at the beginning of the pandemic in March.

Though it can be read in just a couple of sittings, the key messages stayed with us for a long time and now it helps define our corporate partnerships approach. Sharing an easily understood way to build success – including the value of generosity, the importance of connection and the power of authenticity – the Go-Giver has become our play book for building major partnerships, especially during the pandemic.

Many of the messages from the Go-Giver feel familiar, but they are expressed in a more articulate way than we have ever seen before. If you buy yourself one gift this winter, we recommend the Go-Giver above all else.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
In this extraordinary book, Kamal Ravikant tackles probably the most important question of our lives. This question is at the heart of how we relate to others, both professionally and personally. It underpins how confident we are – and we know that confidence is one of the biggest factors to professional success. The question is: how can we create a loving relationship with ourselves?

What could be more fundamental? If we can learn to truly love ourselves than we can go for our dreams without abandon, and without undermining ourselves. As corporate partnerships professionals, our relationships are everything – and our most important relationship is with ourselves.

This book is an inspirational quick read, with the author sharing his personal story in just 56 pages. If your New Year’s Resolution is to do with self-esteem, this is a must read.

Time To Think by Nancy Kline
We all know that we should become better listeners, but do we truly understand why it is so important? And even if we do know it’s important, do we know how?

In her sensitive and insightful book, Nancy Kline answers both questions. And she does it brilliantly. One of the things we love about this book is you feel like you are having a personal conversation with the author herself.

It's also full of great advice and useful techniques. We use some of them in our team meetings, in coaching sessions and in pitches, so it is particularly useful for leaders and line managers.

The book is useful for everyone, though. After all, listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to another human being. Better listening will enable you to create stronger partnerships, deliver more on your promises and build a higher performing team. If you’re looking for a book that will change your approach to communication for the better, Time To Think is for you.

We hope that your personal development is enriched by one, two or all three of these special books. Also we’re excited to announce that Bob Burg, the author of the Go-Giver, will be speaking at our upcoming conference, Corporate Partnerships Everywhere, which you can find out more about here.

We know real, human relationships are at the heart of successful fundraising, particularly when it comes to high-net-worth individuals gifting large amounts. And we know that companies and charities are more than just organisations - they are a collection of people.

Yet often we categorise someone in technical terms as a major donor relationship, or as a corporate partnership, sometimes before we’ve even met the person. In reality there is a significant crossover/link and people can’t always be pigeon-holed. Most major donors have after all made their wealth through business, and when we initially speak to a company leader we often don’t know whether they’ll become more involved and support our charity  in a personal capacity or through their company.

COVID-19 has thrown considerable professional hurdles at fundraisers and partnerships professionals (never mind the personal ones!) These include not being able to hold face to face events which might attract new major donor supporters, and the challenge of securing meetings with companies when they might be in survival mode.So it’s vitally important that corporate and major donor approaches are joined up. When they are you will raise more large gifts, and create more ambitious partnerships.

This isn’t exactly a revolutionary approach! Some charities are joined up and see the benefits. But in others divisions are strong between corporate partnerships and major donor fundraising,  embedded historically in the fundraising team structure or in the charity’s culture.

Surely now is the time to start doing things differently!

Does it matter which budget line it’s coded to?

A CEO I was coaching submitted a £600k proposal to a City firm during the first wave of Coronavirus. He was introduced to the company founder through a long-standing major donor. At the first (virtual) meeting with the company founder, it turned out he knew about the charity’s services for rough sleepers in the City and really wanted to help them do more through their company.

 I found myself thinking of the discussions this would provoke at some charities:
Whose ‘target’ should this donation go towards?
When the money comes in how should it be coded?

Will there be soft-crediting?
Should the company founder be managed as a ‘corporate partnership’ or as a ‘major donor.’?

One way to avoid this and focus on the person, the supporter, is to have a joint corporate and major donor target. If objections come up because “we’ve always done it like that” or “the trustees like to see the separate return on investment of each fundraising team” let’s remind everyone that this is 2020!  Get together with your colleagues and remind leadership why this is important. List the benefits of having that joint target and build a culture where you’re led by relationships not by an income line. (There are just too many benefits for fundraisers and supporters to list here – but the main one is it unites you around the opportunities for your charity with the external contacts you meet, regardless of whether those opportunities end up with a personal major gift or a corporate partnership.  

Are you really listening?

A Director of Fundraising and I were convinced that a venture capitalist would give a large financial gift. He had a close, personal connection to the cause through his father, he was time poor, very wealthy and had shown a real desire to do more at a recent event. We’d developed the relationship to a point where we were planning on asking in a face to face meeting.

Did he give a large gift?

Well no, not then. Were we disappointed?

No. Because instead he offered to introduce us to the Chairs of some key FTSE 100 companies that were a priority for the charity. In our meeting it transpired he had high-level contacts at nearly all of the FTSE 100. I’d argue that this was just as valuable – if not more valuable in the long run - than a financial gift.  We listened to how he wanted to be involved, and saw the value in his offer for the whole charity, not just viewing it through a major donor lens.

And he did then go on later that year to make a five figure personal donation (through his company! Another example of how intertwined things can be!). I’m fairly sure if we hadn’t listened to him and had asked for a personal gift at that meeting regardless, he not only wouldn’t have given, but he would have been more reluctant to make the introductions he was so keen to focus on.  

If we keep an open mind between corporate partnerships and major donor fundraising, and focus on people we will build better partnerships, and raise more money for our charities to make an incredible difference.  And surely that’s what matters most.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” In other words, it’s essential that you and your team have the right tools at your fingertips.

The right tools increase efficiency, enabling you to seize opportunities quicker. They also make your job much more enjoyable. So, we want to tell you about five apps we recommend, to help you secure and build major corporate partnerships.

Mural
This has been our best discovery during lockdown. When we’re brainstorming ideas for partners and prospects, we love to get out our Sharpie pens and Post-it notes and stick them all over the wall. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work online. So, we use Mural instead. You can create a Post-it note with a simple double-click. You can change colours, size and shape in seconds. The end product is an inspiring display of all your ideas and so much more rewarding than writing text in a Word document.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an old favourite of ours. But it’s so important we couldn’t leave it out. The main reason we use it is to find the right person to approach in a company. We recommend approaching the CEO or Marketing Director and LinkedIn is the place to find them. Once you’ve found them you can discover the posts they share and where they have worked before. You can also make an approach by sending a LinkedIn message or asking to connect.

Rocket Reach
Once you’ve identified the person you want to approach, then Rocket Reach is a brilliant way to find out their email address. It always amazes us how few people have heard of this incredible app, because we use it all the time. In our experience Rocket Reach helps us find the right email address 80% of the time – and people are spending more time at their desks right now, meaning emails are more effective than ever.

Unsplash
Once you’ve secured your meeting you want to make sure that you create a powerful presentation that knocks their socks-off. Inspirational images are so important, and we’ve often spent money on buying images in the past. But now we’re saving our cash using Unsplash. The images are beautiful, free and it’s simple to use.

Pipedrive
Your prospect pipeline is one your most important tools to win major new partnerships. That’s why we were delighted when Paul Moore, Associate Director of Fundraising at Winston’s Wish, recommended Pipedrive. He says, “I use Pipedrive for managing my pipeline and really recommend it - all the info still sits in our database, I just find Pipedrive much more efficient for overview purposes.”

We hope these recommended apps help you increase your corporate partnerships success. We’d love to hear which apps you use and recommend. You can email us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com.

The coronavirus crisis represents one of the greatest challenges of our lives. At the time of writing 1,158,825 people have died from the virus. It’s scary, tragic and horrible.

At the same we have seen the inspirational growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. This global human rights campaign is compelling us all to fight racism within ourselves our companies, charities and society.

If you take these two enormous factors and then add climate change, you have an incredible set of forces which are causing purpose to become hugely significant. The dictionary definition of purpose is, “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.”

These factors have created a Purpose Pressure Cooker which, as we describe below, is cause for hope.

Purpose-driven business was already important
Purpose-driven business was already important before the coronavirus and the George Floyd protests in May 2020. There are a number of reasons making purpose important. This includes millennials wanting to work for companies and buy brands who have a greater purpose. In fact, 88% of millennials want to work for a company whose values reflect their own (PWC, 2018). This is such a key factor for companies, especially when we realise that millennials will be 75% of the global workforce by 2025.

A great example of a purpose-driven company is Unilever, whose purpose is “To make sustainable living commonplace.” They see purpose as a core driver of growth and differentiation. The evidence shows it’s working, because their purpose-driven brands are growing 69% faster than the rest of their business and delivering 75% of the company’s growth (Unilever 2019).

Indeed, one of its leading brands Ben & Jerry’s has consistently taken a stand on the rights of refugees. In a recent message on Twitter it said, “Let’s remember we’re all human and have the same rights to life, regardless of the country we happen to be born in.”

It’s time for companies to show their true colours
Companies are facing enormous challenges. In order for them to survive they have need to go back to their purpose in order to determine the way forward. Now it is essential that they innovate, put people first, support their community and respond to social issues.

Regardless of what companies have said about their values before, we are seeing their true colours now. There have been some inspirational examples, such as the retailer Morrisons, who took on 500 charity shop employees from Marie Curie and Clic Sargent to help older and vulnerable people across their stores. Also Nike released a powerful advert in support of Black Live Matter encouraging people to “be part of the change.” Incredibly this advert was supported by their rivals Adidas, who shared it on Twitter saying, “Together is how we move forward. Together is how we make change.” Quite rightly, these companies have been praised for their inspirational response.

If you’re still in any doubt about the importance of purpose right now, look at the generosity of hundreds of companies across the UK offering to supply free school meals in response to footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to end child food poverty. Even though many of these businesses are struggling to survive, they feel a deep desire to make a difference. That’s purpose in action.

Charities are also focusing on purpose
Charities are also being challenged to re-engage their purpose. The coronavirus crisis has dramatically affected their income with early estimates being that UK charities will miss out on at least £4.3 billion. That was back in March 2020, so the effect must be even greater now.

There is increased demand for their help, but it is harder to deliver traditional services in a socially distanced society. So they need to go back to their purpose and innovate. Over the last six months we have spoken with over 100 charities across the world. Nearly every one of them has shifted their support from face to face to online. A brilliant example of this is CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) who have launched the UK’s first virtual children’s hospice.

Earlier today Comic Relief has announced that it will stop sending celebrities to African countries. Sir Lenny Henry, co-founder of the charity, said, “Diversity and inclusion is important both in front and behind the camera. Times have changed and society has evolved, and we must evolve too. African people don’t want us to tell their stories for them, what they need is more agency, a platform and partnership.”

Seize the moment
We are in the middle of a 21st century war for humanity.
We are fighting a deadly virus.
We are fighting racism.
We are fighting climate change.

The glimmer of hope is that purpose has never been so important. This Purpose Pressure Cooker is a huge opportunity for companies and charities to create partnerships that tackle these enormous challenges. The place is to start is shared purpose. The time to start is now.

Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Isn’t it true that the reason we have corporate-charity partnerships is because the charity cannot achieve its mission without support. If a charity could solve all of its challenges itself, wouldn’t it have done so already? 

Once together, corporate–charity partnerships are just like any relationship, they need to be nurtured. On the surface it may look like two organisations coming together, however those organisations are made up of people who are responsible for maximising the potential of the partnership so it can thrive.  

However, sometimes relationships are neglected in pursuit of new opportunities (new business). At Remarkable Partnerships, we champion existing partners being shown all the attention they need, and offering them a 5 star experience. Maintaining and growing partnerships, should be a key part of your corporate partnerships strategy.  

So here are our recommendations for delivering that 5 star experience to ensure your partnerships go from strength to strength.  

Create a partnership growth plan  

Firstly, make a plan. Without a plan, how do we know where we are all going? From all the charities we interact with, we know the most successful partnerships are those built on solid foundations where the two organisations can come together and agree objectives, and how to achieve them. Why not consider having a quarterly partnership meeting, where you look at your KPIs and make a joint plan on how you are going to move towards them in the next quarter? Getting the partners buy-in will help them feel part of the team, and part of the journey to partnership success.  

Build relationships at all levels 

Partnerships can often go flat once a key contact moves on, and then it takes forever to build the same rapport with your new contact. Our recommendation would be to broaden your contacts as soon as possible. Are your CEO’s connected, and your marketing teams? The deeper and broader your relationships are, the better the day to day partnership experience will be for your partner. If a contact at your partner can talk to their peer at your charity, rather than always going via yourself as gatekeeper, wouldn’t that help everyone? They talk the same language, so encourage them to connect. 

Deliver on your promises 

Successful partnerships are built on trust. Trust is broken if you promise something and never deliver – it could be a certain document by a deadline, a video of one of your beneficiaries that is never sent, or as simple as the notes from a meeting that you promised you would write up. Little things like this can be frustrating for people working in a fast moving organisation. Make a personal commitment to always deliver on what you promise to a partner, then plan your time accordingly. They will value and acknowledge your excellent relationship skills, and then trust is built for bigger and better things down the line. Once you have achieved this, consider how you can occasionally over deliver – surprise the partner by going above and beyond for them to show how much your partnership matters.  

Show them the impact 

The greatest inspiration for a partner is to show them the impact they are making. It’s time to get creative about this subject, as with many restrictions on visits that people could make to see your work in action, now is the time to go digital. 

Some great examples and ideas we have seen: 

• SolarAid created a great thank you video, including in-country colleagues. They edited in photos and words of the impact their corporate partner had made and sent it to be distributed to all staff of one of the company.
• SOS Sumatran Orangutan Society have shared incredible photography of ‘before and after’ tree planting of forests funded by partners. ‘Before and after’ images can be really visually captivating and show the continued need for the partnership.
• Sharing a ‘story of the week’ with partners can be a great way to show impact little and often. Keep it simple and drop the story into their inbox and say “I saw this and wanted to share as it made me smile, thank you for all of your support”

Now is the time to seize the moment and creatively think about what would work best from your beneficiaries to your partners. How about seeking some gift in kind support from a designer that could help you create infographics about your work, or a videographer to edit together content you haven’t utilised yet? If you try this, let us know how you get on!  

Increase the breadth of your partnership 

Many partnerships start with one activity, such as employee fundraising. Our recommendations for providing a 5 star experience is enabling your partner to strengthen the partnership by adding another activity which helps deliver additional value for the company and your charity. So you could add an activity such as a cause-related marketing promotion or a joint digital campaign. Broadening and deepening your activity will increase the value and longevity of your partnership.  

Offer them a new opportunity  

New opportunities shouldn’t just be reserved for new business. Indeed, your greatest corporate partnership opportunities are growing your existing relationships. In order to identify these opportunities we recommend you hold a brainstorm with key internal colleagues. Start by clarifying your shared purpose, then understanding the company’s business priorities. One you have those established you can brainstorm ideas. We recommend you pitch your best ideas to your partner. Then if they are interested in taking them forwards you could organise a co-creation session involving relevant colleagues from both parties. In fact the process we have just described is how Age Concern grew their partnership with Innocent drinks from raising £20,000 in 2005 to £200,000 in 2007. And their partnership is still going strong today!  

In summary 

We encourage you to freshen up your current partnerships and ensure you are delivering a 5 star experience by following these recommendations. If there’s anything we can help with, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch by emailing us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com 

One of the defining features of our new working lives is “the coronacoaster” – the inevitable ups and downs that come from working through an incredibly challenging period. When faced with these circumstances, we are reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

So, the Remarkable Partnerships team have put together six recommendations on how to stay positive in the pandemic.

Be inspired by others’ successes

If we let ourselves, it can be all too easy to see the barriers to building major corporate partnerships and declare it an impossible task. But even over the last few months we’ve seen charities and business create incredible new partnerships. These examples are a source of inspiration and can be exactly what you need to get back in the zone. Two of our favourite examples from the last three months are:

• Sumatran Orangutan Society have built a new £20,000 partnership with a peanut butter company, building on their joint position on palm oil. This partnership will see an on-pack promotion and integrated marketing campaign launching soon.
• Soil Association have secured a new six-figure partnership with a garden centre chain, launching early in 2021. This partnership is built on the two organisation’s shared love of our planet and will create a ‘Soil Association approved’ range of products in-store.

Stay connected with your cause 

For many of us, as time whips past, it is easy go through the motions in our roles. We can lose our sense of purpose and be stuck in the small details of what we’re doing, rather than remembering the inspiration of why we’re doing it. Therefore, one big tip to staying positive at this time is to re-connect with your cause, and the people, animals or environments that it helps.  

We recommend speaking to your services team, reading back through stories of people your charity has helped or asking your colleagues or trustees why they support your cause. Feeling inspired by your cause will give you new energy and motivation, and help lift your spirits to know the work you are striving to deliver on a daily basis plays a part in achieving those outcomes. Take time to re-connect as often as possible.

Do what you say you are going to do

As human beings we have a tendency to set our expectations really high and fail to meet them. In our experience, this is often the case with daily to lists. At the beginning of the day we feel optimistic and write a long to do list. Then we do some work and maybe tick off a small number of items on our list. But it’s easy to get distracted by other things that happen during the day, so we finish with a list where the majority of tasks are still undone. This is counter-productive because it can lower our mood.

So, we recommend you start each day with a shorter, more achievable to do list. Perhaps one major task and three smaller ones. This gives you a much better chance of completing it. And there is nothing more satisfying than doing what you say you are going to do. It makes you feel good about yourself and increases your overall confidence.

Find your partnerships tribe

Gallup, the experts in workplace wellbeing, state that a big factor in how well employees perform is whether they have a “work best friend”. Their research shows that organisations where the majority of employees identify as having a work best friend, there is a 12% uplift in company profit. As such, we strongly recommend investing time in meaningful relationships with your peers – whether they are in your organisation or not.

 At Remarkable Partnerships, we run a WhatsApp group of corporate partnerships professionals to help facilitate these friendships. It is a sounding board for overcoming struggles, a tribe to share successes with – please email us on team@remarkablepartnerships.com if you would like to join this group.

Book your annual leave

Self-care comes in all forms, but with what 2020 has thrown at us, it is more important than ever to look after yourself.  
With global travel restricted, you may not yet have had a ‘proper’ break from work where you can rest. Even though you are working at home, you shouldn’t feel guilty taking annual leave when your colleagues and organisation may be stretched.  

Unless you are well rested and have the energy and perspective that a good break brings, then you won’t be bringing the best of yourself to the role. Go on, book that week long break, and switch off. Everyone will be better for it.  

Focus on what’s going well

As we go through our working day, we have a tendency to focus on problems. This makes sense because it’s our job is to solve problems and make things better. However, it can mean that we spend quite a lot of time in a looking at things from a negative perspective.

A great antidote to this is asking yourself (and colleagues), “what’s going well?” It’s a question we rarely consider and yet the answers usually lift our mood. At Remarkable Partnerships we often begin workshops and brainstorms with this question. Focusing on what’s going well gives us the opportunity to feel proud of what we’ve achieved, so we can bring more energy and positivity to our daily work.

In summary

As we move into another six months of working from home, we encourage you to stay connected to what’s possible as much as you can. If you have other tips on how to stay positive or if there’s anything we can help with, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch by emailing us at team@remarkablepartnerships.com

The Japanese strategy guru, Kenchi Ohmae, said, “Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.”

A strong corporate partnerships strategy will give your team greater focus. It will help you seize opportunities, avoid confusion and unite an organisation. Also, the world has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is vital that you clarify how you will respond by shifting your corporate partnerships approach.

So here are our five essential features of a corporate partnerships strategy.

Corporate Partnerships in a Coronavirus World
This is the new context for your strategy. It means that some companies are fighting for survival, whilst others are thriving. It might be hard to reach company decision makers, but they need you now, more than ever.

This is because COVID-19 has created a purpose pressure cooker. In the midst of the pandemic companies will show their true colours. Do they really care? We believe that most business leaders (who are people by the way!) want to provide an extraordinary response to this crisis. It is up to charities to engage them and show them what is possible.

How can you be part of their survival plan so you can both emerge stronger from the pandemic?

Competitor Analysis
To understand how to stand out in your market, you need an understanding of what other charities in that market are doing. Identifying three or four charities that have a similar mission or cause to yours and conducting some brief research into how they run their corporate partnerships programme can be incredibly useful.

We recommend you seek to understand the history of their key partnerships – including how they were formed and what they look like. It can also help to note how they talk about corporate partnerships on their website and social media. This exercise will provide you with vital insight that will enhance your strategy and increase your corporate partnerships success.

How You Build Corporate Partnerships
It is very easy to have a scatter-gun approach to building corporate partnerships. But the problem with this approach is you rarely hit the target. Therefore, your strategy is a great opportunity for you to write down how you build corporate partnerships. What is your method?

You can define your method by answering these questions below:

• What is our purpose for creating corporate partnerships?
• What makes our partnership offer unique?
• Who are our target industries (see below)?
• How do we make our first approach?
• How do we convert prospects into partners?
• How do we deliver a brilliant partnerships experience?

If you clarify your method in your strategy you will empower your team to deliver resuls, safe in the knowledge that they are following your recommended approach.

Involving Colleagues
As we mentioned in our previous blog, involving your colleagues in building and delivering corporate partnerships is probably the greatest factor determining your success. So you want to ensure you build strong internal partnerships with key colleagues.

Your strategy is the ideal place for you to describe your approach to building these internal partnerships. We recommend you include a table of “interdependencies” in your strategy. It should have three columns with the following headings:

1. Internal team
2. What you want from them
3. What they want from you

In column one you list all the teams who are essential for your corporate partnerships success. Then you write down what you want from each of them in column two. For example, this could be helping build pitches or attend prospect meetings.

The next step is to meet with them and share what you want. Ask them what they want from you in return and write this in column three. If you follow this through you are on your way to building strong internal partnerships.

Target Industries
Who you want to partner with is one of the most important strategic decisions a partnerships team can make. Therefore, spending some time looking at the industries that can really make a difference to your cause is an essential step in forming your strategy. To identify your priority industries, we recommend asking the following questions:

• Which industries can help solve your problems? Can they help you scale your services, reach new audiences or strengthen your virtual offering? Who has expertise that you need?
• Which industries have problems you can help solve? Do they want to increase to their employee engagement, reach new audiences or increase their diversity? Which industries would really benefit from your partnership?

Equipped with the knowledge above, your corporate partnerships team will be empowered to form corporate partnerships that genuinely contribute to your mission, deliver incredible partnership experiences and be fulfilled in their roles. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to write that strategy.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more, consider attending our upcoming Corporate Partnerships Strategy Training.

Probably the greatest factor determining your corporate partnerships' success is your ability to involve your internal colleagues. However, because these are relationships with your colleagues, you can easily fall into the trap of believing that they should automatically partner with you. In our experience these strong relationships don’t occur naturally, they need to be earned. So here are our five recommendations to secure organisational buy-in:

• Who?
  Most partnerships professionals are naturally people pleasers, and therefore we want to ensure that everyone is on board with our ideas before progressing them. However, there are often only two or three key stakeholders that make or break a decision – identifying who these linchpins are and make them your priority for building strong internal relationships.

• Shared purpose
  For everyone in your organisation, your ultimate goal is to deliver your charity’s purpose. Ambitious corporate partnerships can really help you deliver that purpose. So, we recommend you build your internal partnerships based on that shared purpose. Show your colleagues how companies have the resources to deliver incredible impact for your beneficiaries and you create emotional engagement and secure their buy-in.
  
• Involve colleagues in brainstorms
  Inviting colleagues to brainstorms on priority industries and prospect ideas will help them feel joint ownership of your partnerships approach. As Seth Godin says “ownership trumps buy-in”. The best way to involve key internal colleagues is include them from the start. Together you can create the game-changing partnerships your cause deserves.

• Create an ambitious goal
  If you can create an overall corporate partnership goal – such as Solar Aid’s “End the Darkness” campaign, where they are partnering with companies to bring 600 million people out of the darkness by 2030 – you will find it much easier to rally colleagues. You may even find that your corporate partnerships goal becomes the goal of the whole organisation, which will ensure that corporate partnerships are seen as essential for achieving your charity’s purpose.
  
• Share success
  Once you start progressing prospects and partnerships, we strongly recommend continuing to involve your colleagues by keeping them regularly informed of progress. This will reassure them that you appreciate their time and expertise and are acting on it. This will make them much more likely to say yes to being involved in the future. Most important of all, when you achieve success, such as booking a meeting or securing a partner, share that success with them. After all you couldn’t have done it without them.

All the experts agree that the quality of your external partnerships is hugely dependent on the quality of your internal ones. So, make it your goal to be brilliant at creating partnerships both inside and out – we know from experience that this will transform your success.

On the 1^st of July, we were delighted to be joined by 80 professionals from across the charity and business sectors for the launch of our new research – Anchors Away: breaking free of the barriers to ambitious charity-company partnerships. We heard from four incredible speakers and had some great comments in the Zoom chat, and we’re proud to share some of the highlights.

Barriers from the company side:

Jenni Berkley, Communications and CSR Manager of Belfast Harbour, started the event by talking about the barriers to ambition she’s experienced in the corporate secotr

“The problem is short-termism. Many people want to see something good happen in their timeframe or tenure. Something good even if it’s not the right thing.”

“I must get around 20 letters a week from charities I’ve never spoken to or maybe even heard of asking for money. It’s incredibly frustrating – they may get £100 if they’re incredibly lucky, but there needs to be an understanding of how our partnerships operate.”

“Charity-company partnerships are like finding your life partner… right down to wondering if you like the same films. You need to be compatible with each other from the superficial details all the way through to sharing the same ethos. It’s up to the charity to demonstrate that.”

Barriers from the charity side:

Then Ghalib Ullah, Head of Commercial Partnerships, spoke about the barriers he’s encountered and overcome through his career.

“The biggest barrier is structural. Our budget works on a yearly basis, so we are pulled back to achieving short term income, rather than achieving our more ambitious goals. We need to work as a whole organisation to overcome this.”

“Another barrier is organisational buy-in. We went through a process of identifying who internally was key to our success as a team. We understand that we’re pitching internally as much as we are externally.”

“Corporate partnerships is still in its infancy. How to achieve strategic partnerships is not as well understood as how to secure major grant funding. It is essential we invest in training as a team and as individuals.”

Background to the research:

We then moved to discussing how the research came about, before discussing some of the key recommendations.

“We defined ambition as the desire to create the most social value possible, then looked at what held people back from pursuing ambitious partnerships in favour of things like Charity of the Year or sponsorship models instead.” – Ian McQuillin, Rogare

One of the main things we found was the collaboration continuum, which we have adapted from Austin and Seitinedi. You can see the model that explains levels of ambitions below:

“Charity-company partnerships can make great changes in the world, so it’s a missed opportunity to be anything short of as ambitious as possible.” – Jonathan Andrews, Remarkable Partnerships

The importance of seeking value beyond money:

“The fundraisers label can hold us back. We need to be corporate value raisers, not corporate fundraisers.” – Jonathan Andrews, Remarkable Partnerships

“There are so many different ways partnerships deliver value – which are easy to overlook if money is the only or main measure of success.” – Crispin Manners, Onva Consulting

“I would recommend starting to report on added value, where it exists, as well as income. Don’t wait to be asked to report on it, just send out the results and examples you have as part of your normal reporting so that it starts to become embedded and better understood.” – Sophie Powell-White, Great Ormond Street Hospital

The importance of having a partnership north star:

“It is important that your projects excite not only your corporate team but your partners – they need to visualise the potential impact they could have on the world.” – Ghalib Ullah, Parkinson’s UK

“All the team have in their heads. That when we go into a conversation with a company what we are looking for is that ambition at the top of our partnership model. Which is an ambition that only us and that company can achieve… If you’ve got that ambition then all the levers for change will naturally fall out of it because it is so strategic to both sides…. In three years’ time what would the Sun newspaper headline say [the partnership] has achieved?” – charity interviewee in the research.

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To get your copy of the full report, download it here

We're often told that one of the hardest steps in corporate partnerships is 'sealing the deal' - converting a hot prospect into a formalized partnership. We know that securing that first meeting with a prospect is a crucial first step, but the journey between that meeting and a formalised partnership is less documented. Large partnerships can take between six months to two years to form, and it can feel like we’re operating without a roadmap. So the Remarkable Partnerships team have put together five recommendations on how to get your prospects over the line.

• Offer, don’t ask
  When framing the initial approach to a target prospect, we recommend that you invoke the law of reciprocity. This law of social psychology dictates that when we are offered something we consider valuable for free, we are compelled to give that person something back in return. Think about what you can offer to a corporate prospect that will help them with their business priorities. For example, blood cancer charity DKMS formed a partnership with the company that transport their donor stem cells. This enabled the company to selling their packaging as life-saving, rather than just packaging. DKMS used the law of reciprocity to secure the partnership.
  
• Look for value beyond money
  Especially during the coronavirus crisis, getting budget signed off for corporate donations can be tough. There is an old saying that goes, “if you ask for money, you get advice. If you ask for advice, you get money” – so looking for opportunities for companies to support you beyond just funding can lead to huge success. For example, a corporate partnerships manager was able to turn the challenge of their services team spending six figures a month on PPE into an opportunity for a company to solve that problem. This led to an initial donation worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in PPE and an ongoing conversation about where the partnership goes from here.
  
• Treat them as a partner
  We suggest you start treat a company like they are a partner before they have even said “Yes.” For example, you could invite them to speak at one your events so they can say why they are so inspired by your cause. By giving them this opportunity you give them the feeling of what it would be like to be a fully-fledged partner. In effect they are already living the experience. In our experience this approach significantly increases the chances of them deciding to partner with you.

• 7-11-4 your prospects
  Knowing when the conversation has been going long enough to make a formalised offer can be difficult. Research by Google suggests that a prospect needs 7 hours of interaction across 11 touch points in 4 locations to be ready to commit to a significant partnership. This means you want your prospect to spend 7 hours dwelling on your content, across 11 interactions such as emails and phone calls, over 4 different mediums such as your website, a phone call or by reading a report you’ve produced. Recently, the corporate partnerships team at SolarAid used these metrics to determine that it was time to formally pitch a partnership to one of their target prospects and asked to pitch to the chairman – the result was an instant yes.
  
• Focus on little wins
  Finally, we’d like to share a quote from entrepreneur and best selling author Daniel Priestley, who said that the key to success is to “focus on the little wins and stand by for the quantum leap”. By ensuring that you move your prospects closer to that yes, a little bit each week – by building their emotional connection with your cause, by building your relationship and by getting them to understand the commercial benefits of a full partnership. When you focus on moving them forward rather than securing the partnership, you’ll be surprised by how much more you enjoy it and how quickly they secure themselves.

If you’re responsible for creating new corporatepartnerships at a charity it can be quite a lonely experience. You’re expectedto conjure up partnerships from nothing and the new business target weighs heavilyon your shoulders. In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, because we’re allworking from home, these new business roles can be more isolating than ever.

Over the last two months, we’ve held over 90 freebrainstorms with charities on how to shift their corporate partnershipsapproach in response to the coronavirus crisis. One of the most importantmessages from these sessions, which keeps coming up again and again, is newbusiness is a team game. As Michael Jordan says, “talent wins games, butteamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Here are five important areas where we recommend you involveyour colleagues, so you get the support you need to succeed.

Discovering problems

Understanding the big problems that are preventing your charity from achieving its mission can really help create corporate partnerships. This is because you can take each of those problems to companies who are perfectly equipped to help you solve them, so they will feel compelled to partner with you. However, we speak with so many corporate partnerships professionals who tell us they don’t know what those big problems are. The reality is, they need their colleagues to share these challenges. For example, one of our charity clients discovered from a colleague that they needed food for their beneficiaries. On the basis of that conversation, they approached a company and that has turned into a new partnership. We recommend you ask to be involved in an internal working group so you can discover some of these compelling problems. If this isn’t possible you could organise a virtual coffee with colleagues who can help you find this information.

Partnership ideas

Creating an exciting idea that is tailored for your target prospect, dramatically increases your chances of securing a new corporate partnership. Have you ever tried creating one of these ideas on your own? It’s almost impossible because you don’t have anyone you can bounce your ideas off. But if you’re responsible for new business you might get yourself stuck, because you think that your colleagues are too busy to help generate ideas. And yet the truth is, they often want to be involved and getting buy-in at the start of a partnership idea is much easier than getting agreement at the end. Our recommendation is to organise a brainstorm and invite your colleagues. Get ready to be amazed by the quality and diversity of ideas you generate as a team.

Securing meetings

Securing a meeting is probably the most challenging and important step towards creating a new corporate partnership. You can try it on your own, by sending a cold email or giving them a call, but what if that doesn’t work? You could ask your colleagues, friends and contacts if they know anyone at the company because a warm introduction increases your chances of securing a meeting. If you’re unable to find someone who has a contact at the company, then you could brainstorm with colleagues to identify alternative ways to approach the company. Working as a team increases your chances of securing meetings. We recommend that you start by connecting with your colleagues, trustees and partners on LinkedIn so you can see if they have any direct contacts with your target prospects.

Prospect meetings

Early on in my career, I attended the majority of prospect meetings on my own. I thought it was much easier that way because I didn’t have to consult a colleague’s diary in before booking a meeting. I also thought I was saving myself time, because I didn’t need to brief someone else before the meeting. However, there was a pivotal moment when I was Head of Partnership Fundraising at Alzheimer’s Society when we decided to start involving colleagues from other departments in our prospect meetings. In particular, we involved colleagues from services, so they could give first-hand accounts of supporting people with dementia. This shift in our approach dramatically increased our success in securing corporate partnerships. Therefore, we recommend you involve other colleagues in your prospect meetings, particularly people from services or a senior colleague, so you can show the company how keen you are to partner with them.

Staying motivated

If you’re responsible for winning new business, it’s vital that you stay motivated and keep in touch with what’s possible. However, sometimes you get a “no” from a prospect or you can become despondent because results aren’t coming as quickly as you hoped. That’s when it’s really important to reach out to a colleague or someone in your network. In our experience, when you’re feeling low, conversations with others can be transformational. We’ve seen this in the brainstorms we’ve been having with charities over the last two months. One person said, “this is the best zoom call I’ve had since the start of lockdown.” Another said, “I feel hope for the first time in three weeks.” So we recommend you book in that zoom call or pick up the phone. Everyone needs a lift sometime.

We hope these examples are inspiring and useful to you. We know fromexperience that your new business success will increase when you involvecolleagues and work as a team. In other words, it's easier to create corporatepartnerships when we work in partnership with our colleagues - so go doit. Together.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seencharities of all types and sizes create new partnerships and grow existing ones– often in record time. We keep coming back to these examples as a source ofinspiration and thought we’d share a few of them to keep your mind on what’spossible in the weeks ahead.

ChangingFaces’ exciting new partner:

ChangingFaces knows that for people with a visible difference, lockdown could have a significantimpact. In particular, people with a visible difference have spent timebuilding up their confidence to be a part of society, but now this isolationcould set them back, so that when lockdown lifts, they fear re-enteringthe world again.

They took tonew business approaches with vigour. With one of their prospects – a leadingmake-up brand – they were able to go from a cold approach to an agreed partnershipin a matter of one email, two meetings and eight days. The partnership willinclude a cause-related marketing promotion and some really inspiring digitalmedia activity.

The teamreflected on the importance of approaching companies based on shared purpose(in this case, empowering people to feel confident about their appearance), andhow the compelling narrative of what coronavirus means for their beneficiariesenabled them to mobilise faster than ever before.

LandAid’s£700,000+ corporate campaign:

LandAidunites businesses across the property, real estate and construction industriesto build accommodation for young people facing homelessness. With somepredicting that these sectors will be the hardest hitby coronavirus, it’sall too easy to see why their corporate partnerships team may have held offfrom speaking to partners about continuing their support.

What their team did instead was get in touch with their sense of what was possible and pivot from capital campaigns to providing emergency support. With individual communication with each partner, including Savills, Landsec and Grosvenor Estate, they have been able to secure around £700,000 of support in just three weeks.

They said ifthere was anything they’d learned from their success so far, it was to neverunderestimate your partners’ capacity for generosity whilst being sensitive oftheir struggles. There are no easy wins in corporate partnerships at the bestof times, but if your partners are loyal, believe in your work, and your team,they may surprise you, even now.

RichardHouse’s problem-solving partnership:

Thischildren’s hospice was able to secure a partnership with a major UK companybased on a national, digital, pro-bono project. They approached the company withthe shared purpose of keeping families and nurses active and were able tomobilise content along the theme of that purpose in just four days.

By joining the company’s employees with the hospice’s Family Services Team , they are sharing content suited for seriously ill children, as well as their siblings and carers.. This will be of huge value now, but the team are also excited that this partnership could last a long time and go a long way to delivering the charity’s purpose in the years to come.

BirminghamChildren’s Hospital’s #NHSSweatySelfie:

Based on an inspiration of their frontline staff averaging 20,000 steps a day, Birmingham Children’s Hospital teamed up with training apparel brand GymShark for a consumer engagement campaign. Doing their bit to keep fit, for every person sharing a post-exercise photo with the hashtag #NHSSweatySelfie, GymShark pledged a £5 donation up to the value of £175,000.

This campaign, live until the 30^th of April serves to meet both the charity and the company’s purpose. By keeping fit, you are preventing illness, and they’re giving individuals an opportunity to align themselves with the values of both the company and the NHS frontline. This proves GymShark’s relevance and purpose even in uncertain times, creating that win-win partnership we are all looking for.

Thekey learning that we take from this partnership, is that when a company and acharity have a really strong fit, then the scale of the partnership is enormous.We also love that it demonstrates the power of a brilliant partnership idea.

All four teams listed above have doneincredible work, and we’ve spotted that they have three things in common:

1. They’ve spoken about what coronavirus meansfor the people they help
2. They’ve approached companies with a sharedpurpose
3. They’ve acted quickly

If you want support on embracing any of these themes or to hear more about any of the examples listed, get in touch on team@remarkablepartnerships.com

The coronavirus outbreak is likely to be the most challenging event any of us have dealt with in our working lives. We’re adjusting to a “new normal” so new tools are required. As such, we’ve put together this list of 5 essential tools for corporate partnerships success in the coming months.

1. A list of inspiring and innovative examples

The most important barrier to overcome is fear. We find ourselves listening to our anxiety – wondering if we should even be making approaches right now, let alone thinking about how. Our suggestion to overcome this barrier is to compile a list of current examples that inspire you. There are plenty of partnerships being shouted about in the media right now – save these news articles to keep you inspired. Three of our favourite examples are…

• Morrisons, CLIC Sargent and Marie Curie – Morrison’s, the mega-retailer, have taken on over 500 staff from CLIC Sargent and Marie Curie shops to support vulnerable customers.
• Psychopomp and Bristol Royal Hospital for Children – Psychopomp are a Bristol based gin distillery, who used their alcohol to make hand sanitizer and donated the proceeds to the children’s hospital.
• Scottish Gas and Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS) – a relatively new partnership, Scottish Gas pivoted their approach to donate mass personal protective equipment to CHAS’ frontline staff to keep their workers safe during the outbreak.

2. A narrative on how your cause links to the coronavirus

If your messaging doesn’t have some link to the pandemic, it might feel irrelevant. You need to have information about how the coronavirus is impacting your beneficiaries and what it means for your services. This will help renew your sense of urgency when approaching prospects and partners and ensure that you are as compelling as possible when you do speak to them.

This will also give you a sense of the kinds of strategic partnerships that would be of most use, right now – for example, it might be a technology company that can help set up digital services or people who produce a particular type of equipment you need right now.

3. Target list of prospects and partners that share your purpose

The strongest partnership approaches are based on shared purpose. Focus on why you do what you do, and why companies do what they do. This may be listed in their ‘about us’ or their ‘mission’ on their website. Identify companies that overlap with you, then generate ideas from that overlap. We recommend showing it as follows:

Laying out your stated purposes in this format can often help your brains engage. Going through this process should help you identify your list of 10-12 companies to approach – some of them may be existing partners.

4. Short, punchy email

If you don’t have a phone number, we recommend that you take advantage of the fact that your target prospects have never spent so much time in front of their computers. So send them a short punchy email including the following key elements:

• Acknowledge that they are wrestling with the coronavirus crisis
• State your shared purpose (make sure it is inspiring)
• Tell them you have an exciting idea that you believe is perfect for their company especially during this challenging time, so could you have just 30 minutes on the phone to share it

This should give you a good chance of securing a pitch meeting. We’ve seen this work incredibly well for our charity clients – one of whom got a response 30 minutes after their initial email, suggesting a phone call the next day!

5. Virtual partnership activity

So much of our traditional partnership activity relies on people coming together, but that’s not possible right now. We recommend you arrange a call with some of your colleagues and brainstorm ideas for virtual partnership activity. This could include digital marketing campaigns, online cause-marketing promotions or fundraising ideas that employees can do in their own homes. Whatever ideas you come up with, make them simple, unique and interesting.

Yesterday a 13-year old boy from Brixton died from the coronavirus. So far, he is the youngest person in the UK to have died from this dreadful disease.  He lived just one mile away from me and when I think of the effect on his family and friends, I feel so sad and any normal words just feel inadequate. 

The coronavirus crisis is shocking and tragic. It has hit us so hard and worse is still to come. 

And yet, even in the face of this human tragedy, so many people, charities and companies are responding positively. Last week over half a million people signed up in just 24 hours to help vulnerable people self-isolating. Also last week the UK came together in a mass applause to thank the NHS and care workers dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. 

Wise words from Victor Frankl 

It brings to mind a quote from Victor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who was imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. In his seminal book ‘Man’s search for meaning’ he wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” He wrote those words 74 years ago, but they have never felt so relevant. We cannot change this situation, but we can choose how we respond. 

Charities responding creatively 

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) estimates that UK charities could lose £4 billion as a result of the coronavirus crisis. It also says that many charities are “facing imminent collapse”. And yet, there are so many examples where charities are responding quickly, positively and innovatively. For example, CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) have launched the UK’s first virtual children’s hospice to support children with life-shortening conditions and their families during the coronavirus outbreak and beyond. It will offer nursing, medical and pharmacy-related advice over the phone or via video call. They are also providing a storytelling service for children at home. 

Another inspiring example comes from Age Exchange, a dementia charity based in Blackheath (South-East London). Because of the coronavirus crisis they have had to close their café and community library, so they are sending ‘reminiscence’ boxes to 150 people instead. Each box contains arts, crafts and quizzes, and is specifically designed to improve the mental health of someone with dementia. 

Companies responding creatively 

Companies are also responding in extraordinary ways. For example, Psychopomp, a Bristol-based gin distillery, has used some of its alcohol to make hand sanitiser. They have sold the sanitiser to neighbours and members of the public and donated the proceeds to Bristol Children’s Hospital. 

Meanwhile Portview, the interior fit-out company based in Belfast, have donated over 2,000 face masks to the Northern Ireland Hospice. This will help keep the hospice’s nurses safe, enabling them to continue to support some of the most vulnerable people in their community. 

On a different scale, Morrisons has employed 5,000 colleagues from Marie Curie and CLIC Sargent charity shops. Both charities needed to close their shops due to the coronavirus epidemic, so these staff will now help the supermarket provide food for elderly and vulnerable shoppers and food banks.  

Stepping up together 

In the midst of this crisis people have never been so ready to make a difference. Charities, companies and individuals are stepping up and there is a wave of doing good spreading across the UK. But so much more is needed. 

So we want to challenge you. How can you respond to this situation in an extraordinary way?

The world is changing around us. The coronavirus hasprovided us with a new reality. If you’re a corporate partnerships lead at a charityyou are probably trying to work out how to respond.

We suggest the question to ask yourself is, “How can wepivot our partnerships offer in response to this uncertain time?” After all,the need for corporate involvement has never been greater. Partnerships aremore vital than ever.

Here are our recommendations to respond to the coronavirus

1. Focus on shared purpose

In times of uncertainty and fear it is companies with purpose, doing meaningful work, that will stand out. When you engage your corporate partners or prospects articulate your shared purpose. This is the powerful why that will inspire them to partner with you and do brave work that gets noticed.

2. Link your cause with coronavirus

How is your cause affected by the coronavirus? Does this represent a greater challenge for the people who need your help? Deafblind UK, for example, know that people who are deafblind already feel isolated and lonely. Imagine how they must feel when they hear instructions such as, “you need to self-isolate and you cannot meet up with your friends.” They are taking this message to their partnerships and prospects.

3. Strengthen your proposition

Coronavirus means that we all have much more time on our hands. So how can you use this time to articulate your partnership offer in a more compelling way? We suggest you organise a virtual meeting with your colleagues to identify compelling problems you face that companies can help you solve. Once you’ve got this information you can hone your proposition until it sends shivers down your spine! If you don’t feel the shiver, you need to keep on sharpening your message.

4. Shift your activity

Traditionally so much of our activity happens in physical spaces, but we live in the digital age now. So how can you make your partnership activity virtual? With so many people working from home we need to engage employees and consumers digitally. Suggest digital campaigns, online cause-marketing promotions and simple employee fundraising people can do remotely.

5. Be part of their survival plan

This is our most important recommendation. Right now, the main concern for companies is survival. They are having emergency meetings creating their survival plan. You need to meet that need. How is your partnership activity/opportunity going to help them sell more, reach more and keep colleagues motivated? You want to make your partnership opportunity part of their survival plan.

6. Prospect virtually

Engageyour corporate prospects via phone, email and social media. Hold meetings viaSkype/Zoom/Teams. It is totally possible to engage a prospect online if yourmessage is powerful, simple and based on shared purpose.

We hope these recommendations give you confidence and a suggested way forward. As Helen Keller said, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”

Every corporate partnerships specialist dreams of the day when they have an impressive portfolio of major partners that matches the ambition of their charity. But they also wonder how to create this success.

An innovative way to achieve this is to build a powerful movement of corporate partners focused on changing the game for your cause. It’s about inspiring target companies to become corporate activists. We see this as an ideal approach for the 2020s. This is because it seizes the rise of purpose-driven business and matches the aspirations of Generations Y and Z.

So we’ve put together 5 steps to do this below:

1. Frame your problem

Find the big, compelling problem that companies could helpyou solve. This could be described in terms of how many people you still needto help and the challenge they are facing. You can increase the urgency byincluding a deadline.

For example, SolarAid is aiming to End the Darkness, by giving 600 million people in Africa access to solar lights by 2030

2. Name the commitment

Articulate a simple and achievable activity that will make atangible impact on your problem. You could plan for the activity to take placeduring a relevant week or awareness day. This is what you are asking companiesto sign-up for. You should also give your movement a compelling name.

For example, Changing Faces’ Pledge To Be Seen initiative is asking companies to represent more people with a visible difference in their campaigns in the next 12 months

3. Identify your target audience

Identify a list of industry sectors and specific companies that would benefit by joining your movement. Ask your colleagues, partners and wider network who they know in these sectors. Identify the target contact in each company, this could be the marketing or human resources director, depending on your activity. Use this information to create your target prospect list.

4. Inspiring engagement event

Organise an inspiring corporate engagement event to fire up your prospects. The formula for a successful engagement event is a high-profile speaker and an exciting venue. In light of the current coronavirus crisis, you could make your event virtual. You could also give each attendee a pledge card on which they can register their interest to join your movement.

For example, Changing Faces’ First Impressions event was held at the London Stock Exchange and was hosted by Rory Bremner.

5. Tenacious follow-up

Select your follow-up team ahead of time. Your goal is tomeet for coffee with all the people who registered their interest and ask themto sign up. Once they’re onboard send them a toolkit and ensure they have abrilliant experience. Some of these companies are likely to become your majorpartners for the future.

If you have any questions about our process or would like to book a free review of your corporate partnerships performance, please email us on team@remarkablepartnerships.com and either Jonathan or Andy will be in touch!

There are somany traits shared by fundraisers across the board.  We are resilient, creative, and sociallyconscious.

However,I’ve observed over nearly 20 years in the sector that there are definitelytraits more common to some disciplines than others.

Now, I don’t speak on behalf of ALL trust fundraisers and I certainly don’t want to make assumptions or generalisations about my friends in corporate partnerships, and whilst I reckon that corporate partnership leads are AWESOME—like when I chipped in on that low-key virtual bingo drive with casino online Florida, where punters pledged per card and it snowballed into our biggest one-off haul yet—here are some suggestions for those of you who want to inject a little trust fundraiser magic into their work (if you’re not already doing these of course ????).

 Research and prepare

We trustfundraisers LOVE research.  Not just theobvious stuff in a funders’ accounts but also the wonderfully randominformation available widely on the interweb (Google – I’m looking at you).

Corporatesrequire a more sophisticated ask than trusts and there is a veritable spiderweb of options for reaching out to them and getting to know them better.  Much more so than the, write application,send application, get cheque (!) route taken by a trust fundraiser.

Next timeyou’re looking at a new supporter, go deeper than you normally wouldinto your research and spend some time mapping out:

• Company activities, geographic location,history, competitors
• Find their why – what is the problem they’retrying to solve?
• Who are their directors, shareholders, seniorstaff members?  Are they connected toanyone from your charity?
• Dig a little deeper to find out more about thedecision makers at the company.  What aretheir interests?  Which networking eventsdo they go to?   Have they written articles on LinkedIn?  What are their opinions?
• Do they work in partnership with anyoneelse? 

All of thisinformation will help you to form better partnership approaches and havebetter, more connecting conversations.

Outputs, outcomes, impact and speaking their language

Gifts fromtrusts often require more in-depth monitoring and reporting than those fromcorporates.   

Because somany trust fundraisers also have experience in grant fundraising, they areoften really good at articulating and quantifying the difference a gift hasmade.

During a recentBright Spot Members Clubwebinar, Tom Hall from UBS informed us that major donors (especially those whoare self-made) expect their gifts to act as investments with measurable benefits. 

Leaders atthe top of successful companies (and therefore the people that you’re seekingto work with) want this too because they are the same people.

To betterquantify the impact of your work:

• Spend some time with your project staff andfinance teams. 
• Work out how the benefits and impact of a gifthave translated in financial terms. 
• Seek to demonstrate that the return oninvestment you’re delivering is the best value it can possible be.
• Articulate it simply and clearly – get acolleague (a trusts and foundations colleague?) to check your work.

Focus not onthe activities but on the outcomes and the cost of delivering the work.  Rather than showing your prospectivecorporate supporter how they can ‘donate to a charity’, demonstrate how theycan ‘solve a problem’ or ‘change the world’.

Be clearalso on sustainability (loads of trusts are now asking this question). 

No onereally wants to fund projects in perpetuity and charities are being encouragedmore and more to seek forms on income generation to support their ongoing work(profit for non-profit). 

Be specific and a bit geeky when it comes to target setting

Trustfundraisers are often quite specific over their target setting.  Grant making trusts often provide quite apredictable stream of income and one on which many charities tend to leanheavily.  

Thepotential for repeat gifts from trusts is also high when you deliver on theirexpectations (same with corporates – think long term here!)

Know fromyour research and from your conversations with your colleagues at each companyyou’re working with:

• What their typical giving is (is their COYpartnership a set amount each year for example? What has their charitablegiving achieved in the past?  Don’tknow?  Ask!)
• What have similar relationships with othercorporates yielded for your charity in the past?
• How warm are each of your relationships?  How close are you to making an ask and howlong will it take for the cash to materialise (this depends on the methodyou’re using to fundraise)
• ROI for corporate fundraising is low at thestart but grows over time, £3 / £4 for every £1 spent is a good guide

Caroline is a speaker, online course creator andfundraiser specialising in capital appeals, trusts and foundations and majorgifts.  She runs consultancy LarkOwl with her partner Tony.

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To find out more about Trust the Process, LarkOwl’sonline programme for people new to trusts and foundations fundraising, visit here.