Head of Partnerships in London

The Earthshot Prize is the world’s most impactful and prestigious environmental award. At the heart of our mission is a simple equation: Urgency + Optimism = Action. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s moonshot challenge, The Earthshot Prize is designed to mobilise a decade of action for the planet. We identify, celebrate, and back ambitious climate leadership from every corner of the globe. From Indigenous communities to city leaders, entrepreneurs to governments, they are all working to solve our planet’s greatest challenges.

We focus on five key Earthshots: Clean Our Air, Fix Our Climate, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Protect and Restore Nature. Each year, we select a group of 15 Finalists and award 5 of them £1M each to help advance or replicate their work and recognise their achievement and potential. The Earthshot Prize is about more than recognition; it’s the world’s most ambitious network connecting innovators, funders, businesses, and communities to back climate leaders and restore confidence in our ability to save the planet.

This is an exciting opportunity to join our ambitious and successful Partnerships Team. This role will focus on securing new Strategic Funding Partners, our Founding Partners, developing proposals, and ensuring the Prize has a strong, and regularly updated prospect pool. Founding Partners are key strategic partners of the Prize, providing essential support that enables the full breadth of our work, including high-level (£m) funding as well as bringing expertise, networks, talent, and passion to support both the Prize and our Finalists. This role will suit someone who is creative and ambitious when building new partnership proposals, an excellent communicator, and confident working with senior stakeholders. You’ll need to be proactive, flexible, and excited about joining The Earthshot Prize at a critical point in the decade.

The role will support delivery of our funding strategy by identifying new strategic funding partners. Working collaboratively, the postholder will partner with colleagues across The Earthshot Prize and, where appropriate, our Trustees. As new Founding Partners are secured, the postholder will also manage and deliver selected key relationships. The focus will be on identifying new prospects and establishing high value, multi-year relationships with new Founding Partners. These partnerships will be genuinely collaborative with Earthshot, delivering shared goals for both the partners and the Prize and bringing expertise, networks, and talent to support both the Prize and our Finalists. The postholder will additionally secure sponsorship or other funding for key annual events or special projects that provide sponsorship opportunities throughout each year.

Core Responsibilities:

• Lead on the development of Earthshot’s Prospect strategy to ensure TEP has a strong prospect pool to deliver income and partnership goals to 2030.
• Work with the CEO, the Chief Partnerships Officer and Head of Founding Partnerships to activate this strategy to secure exciting new Founding Partners for the Prize.
• Develop strong partnership proposals to secure high value multi-faceted partnerships for The Earthshot Prize, leading approaches to the Prospect pool.
• Manage and deliver a small group of new Founding Partner relationships alongside the Head of Founding Partners to deliver maximum benefit for Earthshot whilst delivering individual Partner goals.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues across the Prize and Impact Team to deliver Finalist opportunities within the Prospect Pool.
• Work with the Trustee Board to activate their networks and contacts.
• Ensure accurate record keeping is maintained for all prospect engagement.

Relationships (Internal and external):

• The wider Partnerships team, the CEO, the Prize and Impact team, our Regional Directors, and other key members of the Earthshot Prize.
• Key players from our Founding Partner organisations and within prospective future partners.
• Other key Earthshot Prize Stakeholders, including our Board of Trustees, where and when appropriate.

Person Specification:

The Earthshot Prize is a high-profile organisation, and the successful candidate will appreciate the importance of discretion and confidentiality and have a mature and professional approach. This role is ideal for a self-motivated, responsive, and well-organised individual who thrives on prospect activation as well as building and managing donor and partner relationships.

Key skills and Competencies:

• Proven track record of building a strategy to secure high value multi-faceted, multi-year strategic funding partnerships.
• Track record of relevant prospect identification.
• Experience of Partnership management and delivery.
• Able to deliver exceptional and accurate work at a fast pace in complex environments, balancing many different stakeholders and priorities at once.
• Attention to detail.
• Exceptional team player.
• Excellent written, verbal, and online communication skills.
• Excellent presentation skills and confidence to take the lead on conversations with high-profile organisations.

Experience and Knowledge:

• Demonstrable experience of building a partnership prospect strategy to support the identification and activation of a diverse prospect pipeline.
• Demonstrable experience of developing ambitious and successful strategic partnership proposals which engage funding partners to deliver funding whilst supporting the delivery of programme aims and objectives.
• Demonstrable experience of working with high value strategic funding prospects and partners.
• Excellent network and interpersonal skills, able to build and maintain senior relationships.
• Considerable experience managing high-value and high-profile partners and responding positively to challenging circumstances.
• Aptitude to maintain confidentiality and always exercise the utmost discretion.
• Experienced using Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and CRM database systems.
• Experience and knowledge of climate change and the environmental sector is a plus.

Practical Elements:

• Available to work beyond standard hours and to travel in/outside the UK as needed.
• Able to work from London Offices 3 days per week.