Guest post by Barbara Cecil, Development Director at SOS Community Services | (Ypsilanti, Michigan), and longtime member of The Fundraisingology Lab by Moceanic.
Corporate Sponsorships for fundraising events are a time-honored way to make your events raise more money.
But they don’t just happen.
Here are some things I’ve learned about getting the most from corporate sponsorships in my years of doing this:
Sponsorship Tiers
Sponsorship tiers are not a “if you build it, they will come” type of thing. You raise the money from corporate partners first. Then you figure out your sponsorship levels based on a hierarchy of their giving.
If you set the sponsorship levels really high, hoping “somebody” will bite for that level, you will fail. Instead, look at the corporate gifts you’ve received in the last 12 months. The biggest one is your platinum sponsor. Then develop gold, silver, and bronze and slot your other corporate donors into those levels.
Then work on building relationships with your corporate sponsors — and the people who work there — over time.
My gala here in Michigan used to have $5,000 as the highest sponsorship level. That was the largest corporate gift we were able to get. Then, one year, a car dealer donated $10,000 to the event, so we created a $10,000 level. Some of our other sponsors increased their gifts because of his gift.
One part of what you need to figure out are the benefits for sponsoring at different levels. Here are the benefits of sponsorship for my gala:
- $25,000: 15 event tickets, a full-page ad in the event program, their logo on the event website, social media and e-news shout out, and announcements at the event.
- $10,000: same as above, but only 10 tickets.
- Below that, fewer tickets, the social media shout out goes away at $1,000. At $500, you get your name on the event website but not your logo.
In addition to these recognition opportunities, all sponsors are included in the event slideshow that runs before and after the event program.
We used to recognize our event sponsors in our donor newsletter, but we’ve stopped, because that undermines what we’re saying to our individual donors … how do you think $50 donors felt when they saw a list of local companies who gave amounts like $10,000?
Instead, all sponsors are listed in a print ad I take out in a local newspaper that is widely read by our major donors. The ad costs $800, but my event raises more than $600,000, so it is not an extravagant cost. The ad reaches more eyeballs than our donor newsletter, and it’s a better recognition opportunity for the donors.
How to reach out to potential sponsors
- Invite executives to chair your event and do their check signing events if they want them.
- Send media releases about their giving if they want that.
- If they want their logo on your website, see if you can do it.
- If they want to cobrand a product with you and you trust them, do it.
The fact they want to be affiliated with your nonprofit is a huge compliment to your leadership and your board.
Build the relationship
You’ll be best positioned to keep and upgrade corporate sponsorships by building connections with individuals at those companies. Here are some of the ways I have grown partnerships with corporate sponsors over time:
- Invite their employees to be on your board.
- Organize corporate volunteer days at your agency.
- Have them do in-kind drives for your clients.
- Attend their events.
- See if you can do a lunch and learn at their workplace.
Give them inroads to your mission. Make your charity the charity of choice for their employees. That will drive more participation from the company. Remember that your biggest gifts will come from individuals and most giving is done by individuals — not corporations. So you have a chance to engage individual donors through their workplace.
You will be surprised what these people do for your organization as the years go by and the relationship deepens.
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