What we do

We are an agency focused on helping charities tell the story of their organisation.

Our core offers are:

1. Shape your emotion-led approach

We’ll work with you to create your emotional, logical and credible way of explaining why an individual or organisation should support your charity. We work with you to identify your strongest individual stories, and how you go from telling one person’s story to telling the story of your organisation.

This often involves building a template pitch deck, a proposal template and a report with recommendations to ensure your fundraisers have access to fresh, high quality stories. It can also be charity-wide storytelling training, which we love.

2. Ignite your corporate pipeline

We’ll work with you to identify the organisations that have the power to change the ending for your charity. We work with you to run a network diving exercise – understanding who your colleagues, supporters and service users might be able to introduce you to. We then work to whittle this longlist down to the highest impact and most realistic supporters.

This usually means we create a pipeline of qualified corporate prospects, a corporate engagement plan and a clear set of testimonials from potential corporate allies.

3. Price your partnerships offer

Two of the hardest questions to answer in corporate partnerships is ‘what should I offer, and what should I be charging?’ – this service helps you answer those questions with confidence. We’ll work with you to create your corporate partnerships ‘menu’, and then look at how you can value those partnerships accordingly.

We’ll most commonly build a template partnership menu with ideal and minimum pricing, your charity’s way of handling negotiations and a live example of a well-priced partnership.

4. Create your corporate model

5. Provide bespoke training

If you need a combination of the above services, we’ll help you create your charity’s way of creating, selling and delivering corporate partnerships. We’ll work with you to identify your own internal guidelines around how many prospects you need, how you find them, what you pitch, how you deliver and when to walk away. We’ll bring behavioural science and best practice from the sector; you’ll bring the knowledge of your organisation that ensures the end result really works for you.

We’ll usually work with you on a corporate sales model document, a strategy in your own words and a number of live examples that’ve been created in your own way.

It’s worth noting we have a lower cost option of this called ‘the Firestarter Kit’ which is our go-to product for smaller charities.

We’ll work with you to provide training on your charity’s needs – from writing skills for fundraising, through to the behavioural science of how budget holders make decisions.

If you’re interested in exploring any of the above, contact our director Andy on andy@firesidefundraising.com

Work we don’t do

1. Fundraising forecasts or feasibility studies
While we’re happy to help charities dip their toe in the water of specific income streams, we don’t offer forecasts or feasibility studies. We find these to be largely academic exercises where a significant amount of work goes into a document that is read once. The best way to test your corporate potential is to try it, so our sales model work usually achieves the same results in a more action-orientated manner.

2. Interim services

Due to limited capacity within our team, we don’t offer services in which we are your corporate fundraising team. We do, however, offer an ‘on-job training’ service where we work with your existing team a day a week for six months. This allows us to co-create your partnership approaches, pitches and proposals, giving your team the confidence and momentum they need to fly. This is a great way to bring a new fundraiser (whether entry-level or a career changer) to the level you need quickly.

Note: we are currently at capacity for this ‘on-job training’ service until July 2024.

If you’ve got questions about this, or would like to explore something together, contact our director Andy on andy@firesidefundraising.com