Newsletter: Join Me at the Corporate Partnerships Conference 🤝 ; The Sponsorship Game Switches from Reach to Credibility 🏟️ ; Should You Just Ungate Everything? 🚪

I'm excited to be speaking again at the ​​​Corporate Partnerships Conference (CPC26)​​​, an online conference for partnership pros.

👉 Here are four reasons you should join me at CPC26 on Thursday, March 26.

🌎 Corporate partnerships are now global. They’re no longer just local, regional, or national—they’re international. CPC is the only truly international conference focused entirely on corporate partnerships, bringing together nonprofit and brand leaders from around the world. If you want fresh ideas, you have to look beyond your own backyard.

✍️ I’ll be debuting a brand-new presentation: From Pitching to Proof: A Smarter Way to Build Partnerships. Nonprofits spend far too much time pitching and not nearly enough time building proof. In this session, I’ll share a three-stage framework that helps organizations create partnership proof, turn it into credibility, and use it to attract and close prospective partners. This talk focuses on mindset, structure, and execution—not tactics or trends.

🏆 CPC is packed with actionable sessions. Check out the sessions and programme (gotta love that British spelling) on the website. The lineup this year is excellent.

🤑 The price is wicked affordable. And when you enter SELFISH15 at checkout, you’ll save an additional 15%.

That’s the lowest possible price to attend—it won’t get cheaper than it is right now.

Hope to see you there. If corporate partnerships are part of your job, this is one conference you shouldn’t miss!

✍️ Partnership Notes

Two partnership insights that matter.

🏟️ ​The sponsorship game is shifting from reach to credibility​. A new analysis from SponsorUnited highlights a growing trend in sports marketing: brands are investing more in community-level sponsorships instead of chasing only national visibility. The reason is simple—local partnerships offer deeper engagement, stronger authenticity, and more opportunities for real activation than a logo on a national broadcast. For nonprofit partnership teams, this is a signal worth watching. Community sports already sit at the intersection of families, local businesses, and civic pride, making them natural platforms for partnerships that feel credible rather than transactional. The partnership insight: as the sponsorship market evolves, brands are discovering that community proximity often builds stronger partnerships than national reach.

🎶 ​Again, retail partnerships win through rhythm—not one-time campaigns​. Just a week after writing about ​Club Car Wash​ raising $1.5M through recurring promotions, another retail example reinforces the pattern. Jersey Mike’s Subs is aiming to surpass $30 million this year through its long-running partnership with Special Olympics during its annual Month of Giving. The lesson isn’t just the size of the total—it’s the structure behind it. Like Club Car Wash’s $14 Tuesday, Jersey Mike’s program runs on operational rhythm: a full month of engagement that culminates in a single Day of Giving across thousands of locations. These programs work because they’re built into the business model, not bolted onto it. The partnership insight: when giving becomes part of a brand’s operational cadence, results compound dramatically!

🤑 Marketing Your Cause

Two moves you should steal.

🚪 ​Some marketers ungate everything. Should partnership teams follow?​Last week, I wrote about ​experimenting with gated proof​ on partnership web pages. Now, a CMO interviewed by the Content Marketing Institute is taking the opposite approach—removing gates entirely to maximize reach, authority, and trust. The logic is simple: in a world where buyers research everything upfront, hiding your best content behind forms can slow momentum rather than accelerate it. For partnership teams, this creates an interesting test. Should case studies be partially gated for lead capture—or fully visible to demonstrate proof earlier in the decision process? The marketing insight: the right answer may not be choosing one approach. It’s designing a system where proof is easy to see but deeper assets still capture interest—a balance I think about a lot in the Flywheel stage of the ​Partnership Proof System​.

🍋 ​People remember what they do—not what they’re told​. A viral social media trend called the #BiteTheLemonChallenge is helping raise awareness for endometriosis by encouraging people to film themselves biting into a lemon—a simple way to symbolize the pain many patients experience. The reason it works isn’t just the message—it’s the format. The campaign turns awareness into a visual, participatory moment that’s easy to replicate and share. That’s a useful lesson for nonprofit marketers and partnership teams alike. When campaigns give people something simple and symbolic to do, rather than something complicated to learn, they spread faster and stick longer. The marketing insight: participation often communicates a cause more powerfully than explanation.

😎 Cool Jobs in Cause

Find your next adventure.

🤝 Director, Partnerships, ​Care​, Atlanta

🤝 Manager, Corporate Partnerships, ​Goodman Theater​, Chicago

🤝 Manager, Individual Giving & Partnerships, ​Illinois Action for Children​, Chicago

🤝 Partnerships Specialist, ​Christian Healthcare Ministries​, Barberton, OH

🧠🍌 Brain Food

One thing that's feeding my thinking.

🎁 ​AI rewards the organizations asking the smartest questions​. Stanford innovation expert Jeremy Utley argues that the most effective leaders using AI aren’t treating it like a search engine—they’re treating it like a thinking partner. His advice: be the prompt. The quality of the question determines the quality of the insight that follows. That idea has big implications for partnership teams, especially as the partnership funnel collapses and prospects increasingly self-educate. The nonprofits that win won’t just publish more content—they’ll frame better questions about where business value and social impact intersect. The brain food: in an AI-driven world, the organizations asking the smartest questions will discover the best partnerships first.