Overview

• Manager: Director of Philanthropic Partnerships 

• Visa sponsorship: UK national or visa holder preferred, but not a dealbreaker.

• Background checks: Due to the non-partisan nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history, and right to work. To ensure we maintain high standards of political neutrality, we also perform media and social media checks.

• You can expect to hear from us, no matter the outcome, by:  28th August

• Salary expectations: We aim for transparency on salary bands. If our range is misaligned with your expectations, we’d welcome an open conversation as early as possible.

About Apolitical

Apolitical's mission is to make governments smarter for people and the planet and we reach over 40 million public servants through our partnerships with governments globally. We are the largest global network for governments, used by 500,000+ public servants in 170 countries to find and share best practices and gain skills on critical topics from AI to climate change to emerging technologies.

Governments use Apolitical to solve public sector transformation challenges - from AI augmentation to reskilling. We offer governments five interoperable components - research and analysis, workforce productivity tools, customisable training, vibrant learning communities and high impact convenings. Everything we do is powered by our unique global network and real-time data.

Apolitical is trusted by 60+ governments and leading organisations that work with governments. Governments include schools of government, departments, ministries and government adjacent bodies in the UK, Canada, India, EU, UAE, Brazil, Ethiopia, Singapore and more. Global foundation partners include the Bezos Earth Fund, Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, who view governments as key stakeholders in achieving systemic change.

Apolitical’s corporate partners include organisations such as Google, AWS and Microsoft who work with us at scale with governments and public sector bodies worldwide. 

Our Government AI Campus and our Government Energy and Climate Campus are examples of our success in bringing together corporate and philanthropic intent with great technology to deliver impactful government learning and capability building on a global scale.

About the Role

We’re entering a new phase of growth and looking to bring more structure and storytelling power to our commercial efforts. As we deepen our work with corporates, foundations and governments, we need a Senior Commercial Partnerships Manager who can combine sales energy with critical thinking, and brings a strong track record in how to pitch, persuade and build narrative in a way that sharpens partnership and commercial strategy and accelerates momentum.

This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who combines commercial judgement with exceptional communication and critical thinking. You’ll help shape how we tell our story to diverse partners, leading the development of compelling commercial narratives and representing Apolitical confidently with government, philanthropic and corporate partners. You’ll contribute across the commercial funnel, with a particular focus on the top half, from pitch deck design and proposal writing to CRM rigour, insight generation and improving how the team works.  

Impact on our mission

Apolitical exists to equip public servants with the tools and skills to solve the world’s hardest problems. Revenue from these partnerships enables us to scale our work, deepen our impact and accelerate the shift toward smarter, more effective public institutions. Your work will directly influence how we engage new partners, strengthen existing relationships and shape what the future of government transformation looks like.

Tasks and remit

• Craft tailored narratives for government, philanthropic and corporate partners, helping shape how Apolitical positions itself across audiences

• Prospect new funding partners for Apolitical, initiating outreach and generating new revenue leads

• Independently lead multi-stakeholder proposal development, including through partnering with funders and delivery teams to design core program parameters for proposals, communicating them effectively, and ensuring timely and compelling submissions

• Analyse commercial performance and pipeline data to generate insights that inform commercial strategy and improve conversion

• Develop and continually improve sales materials including pitch decks, partner proposals and one-pagers

• Improve sales processes including CRM workflows, contact tracking and follow-up protocols to increase efficiency and visibility across the team

• Contribute to business development activities by identifying opportunities, scanning the market and supporting strategic lead generation

Onboarding milestones

Within one month, you will:

• Shadow commercial team members to build context on our pipeline, partners and priorities

• Familiarise yourself with our CRM, pitch materials and proposal archive

• Identify opportunities to strengthen our commercial materials, processes and ways of working

Within three months, you will:

• Lead the development of pitch decks and proposals for strategic opportunities

• Track and synthesise key market developments to inform partner conversations

• Own and maintain core commercial collateral

Within six months, you will:

• Be a trusted commercial partner, independently representing Apolitical in partner conversations, leading complex proposals and helping raise the quality of commercial materials and processes across the team

• Run defined sales processes such as weekly CRM reporting or proposal coordination with increasing autonomy

Success looks like…

• Demonstrating ownership of complex commercial initiatives, exercising sound judgement and representing Apolitical confidently with external partners

• Building trusted relationships with internal and external stakeholders, representing Apolitical professionally and confidently in partner conversations

• Driving process improvements across CRM workflows, proposal development and partner communications, raising standards for the wider team

• Producing high-quality sales insights, dashboards and reports that support business decisions

• Collaborating cross-functionally with Customer Success, Product, Learning, Events and Marketing, influencing work beyond your immediate remit to support revenue growth

• Communicating clearly and consistently, using Apolitical’s tone of voice in all partner-facing materials

About you

This is a great fit if you:

• Have experience in sales, consulting, commercial strategy, partnerships or business operations, ideally in fast-paced, impact-oriented environments where you’ve taken increasing ownership of complex work

• Love crafting clear, persuasive narratives and communicating confidently with senior stakeholders

• Have an eye for operational detail such as pipelines, processes or CRM systems

• Thrive in cross-functional environments where influence, judgement and collaboration matter as much as formal authority

• Are energised by mission and the opportunity to shape something that’s still evolving

Let us know in your CV if you have:

• Experience supporting partnerships with government, foundations or corporates

• Worked on RFPs, procurement processes or institutional grant proposals

• Knowledge of HubSpot, Salesforce or other CRMs

This likely won’t be the right role if you:

• Prefer to work on a single project at a time. This is a juggling role

• Want a clear-cut specialism. This role requires breadth and generalist thinking

• Expect a traditional sales or marketing funnel structure. We often build as we go  

Don’t meet every single expectation? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. Apolitical is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Application Process

Apolitical uses Applied in our recruitment. Applied aims to overcome unconscious bias in recruiting. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test skills needed for the role. The answers are then anonymised, and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. 

The Applied platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application.  These answers are never visible to the hiring team and don’t affect your application in any way. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.

Using AI in your application answers

At Apolitical, we embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work. AI helped us write this job advert! However, as AI becomes more prevalent, it can be difficult to distinguish between machine-generated content and the unique perspectives of candidates. We’re excited to see how you use AI tools to structure and refine your answers, but we value your unique insights above all else. Ensure your application reflects your voice and how your skills align with our mission.