1 Business development manager jobs in Exeter, Devon

About the Role: GardenOfLove is a UK-based platform connecting individuals, verified charities, and businesses through giving, volunteering, and community. We're looking for a Partnerships & Business Development Manager to help us grow and manage those relationships as we expand across the charity, university, and corporate sectors.

This is a hands-on, relationship-driven role for someone comfortable moving between long-term trust-building and direct commercial conversations, often in the same week.

What You'll Be Doing

• Charity partnerships: identifying, approaching, and onboarding verified UK charities onto the platform, and maintaining strong ongoing relationships with them.
• University partnerships: leading outreach to universities for student wellbeing initiatives, campus Gardens, and pilot programmes.
• Corporate Gardens sales: managing the full sales process for our B2B CSR product, from first outreach through to signed, onboarded corporate clients.
• Sector networking: representing GardenOfLove at relevant events and conferences across the charity and corporate sectors.
• General business development: identifying new partnership opportunities, including with media, incubators, and adjacent organisations, and helping shape how we approach them.

What We're Looking For

• Experience in a partnerships, business development, or corporate fundraising role, ideally with some exposure to the charity or nonprofit sector.
• Comfort with both relationship-led conversations and direct commercial pitching.
• Strong written and verbal communication — you'll often be representing our voice directly to charities, universities, and companies.
• Genuine curiosity about, and comfort with, the mission behind the platform — this matters more to us than a perfect CV.

Before You Apply: We'd encourage you to explore our website and try the app yourself before applying. We'll ask about your experience with it directly at interview — genuine engagement will come through, and that matters to us more than a generic cover letter.

Compensation: Competitive salary, dependent on experience, plus standard benefits. 

Why This Role Matters: This isn't just another platform with a mission statement attached. Kindness staying free, verification-first trust, and community-driven giving are structural choices we've built the business around, not marketing lines. If that's a philosophy you'd genuinely want to represent, not just describe, we'd love to hear from you.