This is a great time to seek corporate sponsorships, even for for-profit businesses. Given the lack of live events in today’s environment, businesses that typically sponsor live events are actually looking for other ways to give money away and get the publicity that comes from such sponsorships. In this month’s SkillBites Show, Arline Warwick provided some tips for obtaining corporate sponsorships.
1. The easiest way to get corporate sponsorship funds is to plan an activity that will support your community, such as a food drive, or PPE collection drive. It’s a win-win-win: you get money to do a good deed for the community, so there is no or limited out of pocket expense for you, and you and the corporate sponsor get great publicity that gives you enhanced visibility. Corporate sponsorship funds can also be available for non-community activities.
- One client received $4,500.00 within 2 1/2 weeks of reaching out to local companies for sponsorships for her collection drive of stress relief bags for Covid medical workers. She is now moving on to the corporate levels of many of the companies that partnered with her.
- Another of Arline’s clients ran a charter fishing business. She got an in-kind donation from a local bait shop to test their lures; then she got another in kind donation from an outfit that provided fishing rods; then she wrote an article for a fishing magazine. The visibility and recognition she received form the article exposed her to sponsors that provided her with tens of thousands of dollars. This money was used to grow her business.
2. You need to figure out what publicity you can offer to the corporate sponsors so you do not have to figure this out on your own. Ultimately, the success you achieve will depend on the value you can offer the sponsor. Sponsors want to be seen as doing good, and they want publicity. Some ways you can offer publicity include:
- A logo banner
- Advertising
- Recognition, such as an award
- Social media
- Press releases
- Contests
One of Arline’s clients ran a food drive with the collection site at a local car dealership. That provided considerable traffic coming to the dealership, for which the dealership was happy to provide sponsorship funds.
3. Start local. Search for companies that may have sponsored events in the past, and contact them to ask if they would be interested in sponsoring something you are doing.
4. When reaching out to corporations, the department to contact varies. Sometimes the relevant person is in the marketing department, sometimes the person is in a “social responsibility” department, and sometimes the person is in a media department.
5. Try to come up with 3 or 4 levels of sponsorship, with greater value at the higher levels.
Arline provides training and consulting to businesses interested in seeking sponsorship funds. Her entry level offer includes a draft letter, phone calls to discuss a plan, a list of potential sponsors, a script for the client to use for calls to sponsors and templates for follow-up. Arline is offering a Do-It-Together, one day workshop on Nov. 14. Because this is a Beta workshop, it is offered at $257. The regular fee for the workshop is still a very reasonable price of $497. If you are interested in learning how you can receive hefty sums of money for corporations reach out to Arline at: info@findcorporatesponsors.com Her website is www.findcorporatesponsors.com.
Arline offered to members of the SkillBites audience a gift of a list of 100 corporations that provide sponsorships and their contact information. To obtain that gift, send an email to info@findcorporatesponsors.com and put the words SkillBites Podcast Gift in the subject line.