Head of Sponsorship

An exciting opportunity to lead the fast-growing sponsorship income stream at a leading climate NGO, working across a growing portfolio of impact led international events, including Climate Week NYC – one of the largest climate events in the world.

Our client is looking for an experienced business development lead to maintain income growth from long term sponsor relationships with leading companies, as well as driving activities to bring new income into the pipeline. The role will also be responsible for overseeing seamless sponsor delivery through the Sponsorship, Events and Communications teams. This role will maintain and develop a holistic approach to sponsorship that balances multi event income generation and delivery with strong relationship and project management – working with senior stakeholders at the world’s largest companies to secure impactful partnerships and positive progress to net-zero. This is a full-time, fixed term contract for 14 months.

The role sits in the Fundraising Directorate, within their London Head Office (Tower Bridge) and reports to the Executive Director of Development. The successful candidate will have three line reports, and work closely with all teams and international offices.

Key responsibilities include:

Income generation

• Lead and deliver the annual sponsorship business plan to meet our income generation targets, additionally laying the foundations for future years’ strategy success
• Develop and successfully grow the pipeline of sponsors funding regional, thematic and government & policy work, developing and launching new products as required
• Develop new products that blend sponsorship with other types of corporate support, in collaboration with the Climate Group’s Commercial Strategy Lead and in support of the overall Climate Group commercial strategy
• Lead a rigorous due diligence process for sponsors, ensuring strong alignment of sponsors with Climate Group values
• Lead a highly motivated, high performance sponsorship team, ensuring wider teams are appropriately resourced to meet Sponsorship’s needs.

Event development and delivery

• Continue to evolve and grow Climate Week NYC as the world’s premier international summit for corporate action on climate change
• Continue to evolve and grow our other flagship events such as the US Climate Action Summit, Climate Group Asia Action Summit, and our sponsored activations at COP29
• Liaise with events, communications and marketing functions, contributing to and informing their annual strategy development
• Partner with legal and compliance team to ensure contracts and agreements are optimised to achieve commercialisation goals
• Ensure full delivery of sponsor contracts, across all delivery areas
• Effectively communicate and report on progress, targets achieved, and key risks
• Support colleagues in all global offices as the organisation’s go-to lead on corporate sponsorship and partnerships.

Essentials:

• Significant experience of building and managing sponsorship or related programmes with corporate stakeholders
• Experience and confidence in negotiating and closing high-value sponsorship deals (e.g. six figures and up) with international clients
• Exceptional written and verbal communications skills in English with ability to present complex information in an accessible format for major supporters
• Skilled at working across teams to identify, research and develop new sponsorship business opportunities and design products that can meet organisational and sponsor goals
• High degree of organisational skills and significant experience in managing complex projects and multiple workstreams under tight deadlines
• Confident relationship builder and stakeholder manager, with experience of managing relationships at all levels and successfully forging new relationships through strong interpersonal skills

If you would like to hear more information regarding this role please contact: James@f1recruitment.com