The Alzheimer’s Society corporate partnership team has had a good start to the year, scoring one of the most sought after retail partners in the field.

Tesco today announces that Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland are to be it’s charity of the year for 2011; a partnership that the charity and supermarket hope will raise £5m towards Alzheimer’s work. The Society was also the Tesco charity of the year in 2002, and the retailer generally does not return to past partners for charity of the year-style partnerships.

The charity has also picked up the first ever charity of the year partnership with the Yorkshire Building Society. The building society will engage its staff and customers in activities from raffles to sponsored events throughout the year under the campaign slogan ‘Who Cares?’. Target for this partnership is £100,000 which will be directed to a new programme for carers developed by the Society. Further Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation has pledged to make a “substantial donation” to the appeal at the end of the fundraising year.

Jo Swinhoe, director of fundraising at Alzheimer’s Society, told Fundraising that her regular contact with senior staff at Tesco about the issues of dementia since she took on her position in 2005 were critical to the relationship which has now resulted in the multi-million pound partnership.

The general successes of the corporate partnership team, she said, can be traced back to a change in strategy four years ago.

“We absolutely made a commitment four years ago that we would not be focusing on some of the more traditional things, but that we would go for the large corporate partners with wide public reach. We believed that would do two things; the first is that it would raise very valuable funds, the second is that it would get the cause of dementia out,” she said.

“It’s not just fundraising. We don’t think in straight lines. Everything is around the holistic approach to what the society is trying to achieve.”

She added: “At the end of the day, it comes down to what was always required, which is the proposition which appeals to your corporate partner, delivered by a team who can credibly deliver what is required irrespective of the size of your corporate partner, and that you’re going to respond to the things that they need. It certainly needs to respond to their CSR agenda and it needs to provide a certain amount of PR.”