Corporate Partnerships Manager

About this role

About the role
£39,000 - £42,000
This is a chance to own and grow a portfolio of corporate partnerships worth around £1 million a year, backing the Indigenous peoples and local communities who are protecting rainforest. You’ll hold established relationships, including global brands, with real autonomy: leading a multi-year renewal with one partner, developing an employee engagement idea with another, or turning a £20,000 relationship into something much broader. It is a genuinely commercial fundraising role, and a strong step up for someone with corporate partnerships or account management experience who wants more responsibility.
Why this role, now
We have just completed a new five-year strategy. It commits us to getting more resources, and more decision-making power, to rainforest communities – and to doing it faster. That takes reliable, growing, multi-year income, and corporate partnerships are one of the main ways we will fund it.
There has never been a more crucial time for this work. Rainforest is still being cleared, and the climate and nature commitments business has made are being tested for credibility. Your portfolio makes a significant contribution to the sustainable income behind that plan, and there is real headroom to grow it: an established base, growing appetite from business for credible climate and nature partnerships, and partners who already know us well. Six-figure partnerships are the near-term ambition, and the longer-term prize is transformational partnerships beyond that – work you’ll help shape with the Senior Manager.
What we’re looking for
You’ll need experience of managing commercial relationships and the confidence to take a portfolio and run with it. That could come from charity corporate partnerships, commercial account management, CSR, sales or business development – we are interested in the track record, not the sector. In return you’ll be trusted with real income and senior relationships from early on.

• Experience managing corporate partnerships or client accounts, with income responsibility you can evidence

• A track record of renewing, growing or upselling relationships, not just delivering against them

• Confidence with senior stakeholders – you can hold a commercial conversation with a partner’s marketing, sustainability or leadership team

• A real interest in climate, nature and the rights of rainforest communities

What you’ll get from the role

• Ownership of significant income – a portfolio worth around £1 million a year, and the autonomy to run it

• Senior stakeholder management, negotiation and renewal experience with major brands

• Account planning, forecasting and budget management you can evidence anywhere, plus broad experience across Programmes, MarComms, Advocacy, Finance and Data

• Line management experience, with coaching, clear objectives, honest feedback and industry training behind it

• Exposure to transformational partnership development alongside the Senior Manager, and a collaborative team with flexible working

Taken together, this role gives you many of the building blocks for moving into senior corporate partnerships leadership in future.
What you'll be doing
Owning and growing your portfolio

• Own a named portfolio of corporate partners – their income, retention, renewals, growth, risks and overall health

• Write and run account plans for your priority partners: what good looks like, what growth looks like, and how you’ll get there

• Look for the growth in every partnership – upsell, multi-year commitments, deeper engagement, broader value – rather than simply servicing accounts

• Lead renewal conversations early and confidently, securing extensions and multi-year commitments

• Forecast your portfolio income accurately, keep the CRM sharp, and spot at-risk accounts early so you and the Senior Manager can act

• Manage the income and expenditure budget for your portfolio: plan the spend, keep within agreed limits, report against budget, and make sure the cost of servicing a partnership stacks up against its value

• Make sure accessibility, equity and inclusion are built into how we steward and grow partnerships

Leading and developing

• Line manage the Partnerships Officer/Executive: agree clear objectives and priorities, give regular honest feedback, and support them to produce high-quality work

• Work alongside our Trusts and Foundations Manager, sharing partner insight and joint opportunities

• Coach and develop the Partnerships Officer/Executive, with an agreed development plan and relevant industry training

• Work with the Senior Manager on the corporate partnerships strategy and annual plan they own, bringing the portfolio insight, growth ideas and partner intelligence that shape income targets and where we invest

Relationships that go deep

• Build relationships at every level of a partner organisation, from day-to-day contacts to senior decision-makers and the internal champions who make things happen

• Understand what each partner is trying to achieve, commercially and socially, so the partnership pays off for their business and for rainforest communities

• Run ethical and reputational due diligence on new and renewing partners – fit with our mission, greenwashing risk, wider conduct – and take it through sign-off with the Senior Manager, or the wider leadership team where the call is a bigger one

• Work closely with the Corporate New Business Manager: take on new partners at handover, share what your partners are telling you about the market, and pass back the warm routes they open up – networks, referrals and introductions

Bringing partnerships to life

• Shape and coordinate the activity that makes a partnership real: employee engagement, fundraising, communications, advocacy and partner fundraising products, all of it aimed at deepening the relationship, keeping it and growing it

• Pull in the right colleagues across Programmes, MarComms, Advocacy, Finance and Data to deliver what we…