Picture From: www.dojiggy.com
Over the last couple of months I’ve been working a great deal with fundraising for our school and community youth leagues. The economy has made it even more difficult to not only maintain the costs of operating these education and youth sports programs but also continue to see positive results in fund raising. While we have seen an increase in profits, most organizations in our region have not. Much of our success can be attributed to the support of our community and the hard work and dedication of our volunteers but that can only carry an organization so far. Realizing this, we have been attempting to find new, creative opportunities with more options and diversity in our fund raising.
While many of the education and youth leagues are still only considering sales from catalogs to sub sandwiches as fund raising methods, many forget the idea of looking to local business to help support their cause as sponsors. Yes, we see names of businesses on the back of t-shirts or signs in the outfield of summer youth leagues, but what about the rest of the year and what are the businesses getting out of sponsorship? In an interview with Full Sail University, Kathy Kopacz, sports marketing consultant in the sports industry for more than 20 years, gave these recommendations for obtaining successful sponsorship: Make sure that the goals and objectives of your organization is in line with your potential sponsor, look at the sponsorship as a partnership, and follow-up and deliver results. Although this may be more directed to the larger sports industry, some points can be taken away to help in smaller organizations as well.
For example, because sponsors of community organizations will most likely be on the local level, it may not be as important to show statistics or financial results from sponsorship but appeal to the business’s sense of pride in supporting something bigger. Local businesses are usually aware of the benefits of sponsoring the communities they provide services to. If the business is supporting a youth sports team, give them a game schedule with a special invitation to attend and send pictures and updates of the team’s season highlights. For school events, have students write thank you letters or make a poster to sign. Many times, all that is needed to gain and retain sponsorship is the simple acknowledgement of appreciation.
As the economy continues to hit families, organizations, and businesses hard, it will become even more important to ensure that the investment being made by sponsors is found to be worthwhile. The question is, is your organization looking for unique, creative, and different ideas to present to your community and potential sponsors?
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