How Laura won 11 new partnerships in 2 months

As the weather gets more autumnal, I’m guessing your charity is probably working on plans for some special fundraising activity this Christmas.

In case it helps, I’d love to share one of my all-time favourite fundraising success stories. It was primarily a corporate campaign, but fundraisers from other disciplines have told me they’ve found it helpful.

The Challenge

A smart corporate fundraiser named Laura Webb wanted to make use of the increased desire in her city to be generous at Christmas time.

The challenge was, with limited resources and time, how could she create something genuinely attractive for companies, AND which generated valuable funds for her hospital charity.?

In summary, Laura created a brand new campaign, Sponsor the Sparkle, which achieved these results:

• It inspired 22 companies to partner?
• It raised ￡35,000?
• 11 of the companies had never donated before! They were brand new partnerships.

How did she do it?

The previous year Laura had taken part in the Corporate Partnerships Mastery Programme. When she shared the story of this campaign, she fed back that the programme had helped with not only corporate fundraising techniques, including some that helped in this success, but also with her confidence to make bold things happen.?

Here are three of the key reasons why this campaign was so successful:?

• She managed to make a proposition that was genuinely attractive to companies! They saw the value in getting involved and were proud to let their customers and staff about it.
• The proposition was incredibly simple and easy to say yes to. This is such a valuable principle I love to help fundraisers to implement.
• There was buy-in and brilliant team work in the charity. Laura found a way to inspire lots of her colleagues, in a range of teams, to help make the campaign a success. (I know this can often be the hardest part. This is why one valuable element of the training Programme is we help fundraisers with the skill and confidence to persuade colleagues to get truly behind partnerships fundraising.

If you’d like to find out more, including seven valuable lessons from Laura’s successful strategy, click below:

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We really hope you find this story and these insights helpful. Do let us know what you think!