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!