Visit this section regularly to find a wealth of information by marketing, event, and corporate sponsorship strategist Gail Bower. Topics include:
Assets & Revenue | Corporate Sponsorship | Events & Festivals | Experience | Future | Marketing | Strategy & Change
If your corporation is like most, you’re inundated with funding and sponsorship requests from nonprofit organizations. While these ties may be ideal marketing vehicles to support communications initiatives, partnerships that are poorly selected or structured waste money, have no impact, or, worse, yield repercussions.
Is this the right time for your brand to partner with a non-profit or cause?
So what motivates a corporation to work with your non-profit organization or festival/event, and how can you be sure that you’re able to compete with a valuable offering?
Changes in the media landscape signal an interesting opportunity for non-profit organizations and other properties with high-value corporate sponsorship programs.
In your work with the corporate sector, are you frustrated when most corporations select the least expensive level of support for your event? Do you struggle to engage corporations at higher levels? Do your organization’s calls to corporate leaders often go ignored?
Every year at the JVC Jazz Festival, Newport (originally the Newport Jazz Festival), I was reminded of the power of corporate sponsorship in my collaboration with our sponsor Mercedes-Benz.
If your business has avoided exploring corporate sponsorship and cause marketing, thinking your marketing dollars are better spent on social media or traditional advertising, you're missing sales opportunities.
If you lead an organization as its executive director or CEO or as a board member, you may be charged with hiring a sponsorship staff member and not know how to evaluate candidates. Or, perhaps you’re considering a career transition from the for-profit to the nonprofit sector, and sponsorship is an area you’re considering.
Here's a list of the top 10 skills and characteristics:
I can scarcely think of a worse sales pitch than, “We’re broke, and we need your money to pay our bills.”
Time for true confessions: have you ever secretly or publicly expressed frustration that board members aren’t assisting your sponsorship development efforts? If yours is like most organizations, the answer to that question is a resounding YES! (That would be a “yes” shouted.) (If you’re like many individuals who serve on nonprofit boards of directors, you’ve probably experienced your own frustrations or felt mild pressure to support an organization you cared about, but you found yourself unable to take action.) Chances are, there are good reasons for these related experiences, and until you uncover the answers and resolve them, nothing will change.
For Sponsors