Sponsors are crucial for nonprofit organizations and events. They help you reach new audiences, enrich communities, promote your cause, and reach your fundraising goals. As a nonprofit organization, you must learn how to get a corporate sponsor and how to keep them. Maintaining long-lasting relationships with your sponsors is vital to maximizing your events and reaching your objectives.
An event sponsor offers nonprofits financial support or in-kind donations to help a nonprofit meet their fundraising goals. In return, the sponsor receives benefits like improving their brand image, reaching and engaging with new communities and audiences, and achieving their business objectives.
Sponsorships are essential for maximizing your nonprofit events because they provide financial support and resources to reach your fundraising goals. Sponsorships can also help your organization build relationships with like-minded businesses and engage with new communities, enhancing visibility and awareness for your mission. Here are some more benefits of sponsors for your nonprofit event:
- Financial support:ÂSponsors can provide you with the money to cover your event expenses, helping you create successful and memorable experiences. For example, sponsors can make charitable donations, send you items to put up for auction, or provide food and refreshments. Sponsors can also help manage and underwrite event expenses.
- Reach and visibility:ÂWorking with sponsors offers exposure to their market and communities, helping you raise awareness for your event and cause and reach your fundraising objectives.
- Credibility:ÂCommunities might be more willing to support your event and share your message when reputable companies sponsor you. These businesses can impact your event’s credibility and improve your organization’s reputation and trustworthiness.Â
- Access to resources:ÂWhen you work with sponsors, you can access their connections and partnerships, providing additional collaboration, branding, marketing, and donation opportunities.
- Community enrichment:ÂOne of the most significant benefits of sponsors is enriching your community or charity. The impact of sponsorships can be invaluable for your cause — with their assistance, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can achieve for your community. Sponsors provide you with the support to make actionable changes and continually help others.
- Long-term partnerships:Â Collaborating with sponsors enables you to build long-lasting partnerships and secure support for future projects. Retaining these relationships can give you peace of mind for future initiatives and help you progress with your mission and reach your organizational goals.
An essential step to enhancing your nonprofit sponsorships is finding suitable donors. Here’s how to find corporate sponsors for your nonprofit events:
Identify past prospects
Your contact list from previous events is an excellent place to start looking for sponsors and attendees. Previous guests might own or be part of a business that aligns with your goals and missions, offering great sponsorship opportunities. If you have your previous guests’ contact information, start going through it and listing potential prospects.
Research companiesÂ
Task your event committee with researching new sponsors. Online databases, the internet, and news articles are excellent sources for discovering potential prospects. Research corporate websites and review their values and mission statements to find suitable matches for your organization and event.
Reach out to networking contacts
This is an excellent time for you and your event committee to tap into their contact list and capitalize on previous networking acquaintances. These connections can help your event or cause or know other influential prospects.
Search your donor database
Consider your previous donors — there could be some you haven’t collaborated with in a while or others who contributed to a recent event. You might also discover sponsors with businesses aligned with your event objectives. If you have them in your database, chances are they’ll be willing to work with you again or for the first time.
Your ideal sponsors or donors could be in your community. Identify community members and businesses who might be supporting similar causes to yours. These prospects could make excellent sponsors, especially if they have significant community influence.
Connect with organization vendors
Business suppliers and partners you work with might be interested in helping sponsor your event. Since you already collaborate with these vendors, they likely understand and support your organization’s goals, making them excellent prospects.
Now that you know your ideal prospects, recruiting them is the next step. Here’s how to get sponsors on board with your event:
Your sponsor pack is a comprehensive document with an overview of and pitch for your event. This pack must be detailed and well-designed and include essential event information to inform and persuade prospective businesses to sponsor your initiative. Your sponsorship package can consist of the following:
- Goals and mission:ÂProvide a summary of your organization and event goals to help the sponsors identify if their brand and goals align with their mission.
- Target audience:ÂDetail your target audiences, including demographics like age and region. Businesses might share the same market or be interested in reaching your audience.
- Incentives and benefits:Â Outline what companies stand to achieve or earn from this sponsorship. Benefits can include new customers, enhanced brand image, positive publicity, and opportunities to reach business goals.
- Custom options:ÂList various sponsorship tiers or levels and incentives businesses can choose from, providing them with a personalized and attractive option.
2. Send out your proposal
Have your event committee send your sponsor pack or proposal to your prospect list and their contacts. The more people they reach, the better your chances of securing enough sponsors.
Make a list of definite sponsors and send personalized confirmation messages, updating them on your event and thanking them for agreeing to come on board. Regularly communicating with your donors until your event day is also essential. Communicate details like time, programs, and changes to reaffirm your commitment to your sponsors.
3. Prepare an acknowledgment plan
Once you have your confirmed sponsors, start drafting your acknowledgment plan. This proposition can include engagement and awareness opportunities during and after the event. You can pitch benefits like showcasing your sponsor’s names on banners at the event, meet and greet opportunities, and question and answer sessions with event attendees. You should also create a thank-you letter or message to your sponsors after your event, highlighting your gratitude for their participation.Â
Building successful partnerships with your sponsors can ensure their ongoing support for your events and organization. It can also have a significant impact on achieving your fundraising goals.
Knowing how to cultivate these solid and long-lasting relationships is essential. You can keep donors coming back and maximize your event sponsorships in the following ways:
Offer tangible benefits
Sponsors expect rewards in return for their support, and making those benefits tangible to their business and goals is a great way to keep them invested. When strategizing benefits for your sponsors, ensure they align with their company objectives and aid them in achieving those goals. If businesses continually recognize or get perks from their sponsorships, they’ll be more likely to partner with you on future events or initiatives.
Deliver on promises
Fulfilling your promises is essential for fruitful and long-lasting partnerships with sponsors. Failing to uphold your end of the sponsorships can impact your credibility and trustworthiness and cost your donors.
Detail all the benefits and responsibilities for you and your sponsors to help manage expectations. Ensure you update your sponsors on circumstances preventing you from honoring these agreements to maintain open and transparent relationships.
Regular communication
Building trust with your sponsors is crucial for improving your partnerships. One way to do this is by regularly communicating and engaging with your sponsors. Update them on your event progress, success, and attendee feedback.
Highlight their impact and reach to help them measure return on investment and decide if their contributions were worthwhile. You can also ask them for feedback on your event, including what you could do better next time. This input can make your sponsor feel valued and appreciated.
Memorable experiences
Making your events more worthwhile for your sponsors and their audiences is a great way to keep them invested. Consider engaging and unique participation like interview sessions, exclusive presentations with attendees, post-event talks in community forums, and branded giveaways. Increasing your investment in your sponsors shows that you care about their contributions, experiences, and goals.
Express gratitude
While it might seem simple, gratitude can majorly impact your future partnerships. Sponsors appreciate organizations who value their support. It makes their investment more worthwhile and lets them know they’re making a valued impact.
A personalized thank-you message goes a long way, but you can also publicly promote your sponsors by detailing their efforts and impact on your event and cause online. This way, sponsors and their organizations get positive recognition and exposure.
Remember to put your sponsors on your next guest list to show that their presence and participation are invaluable.
Nonprofit sponsorship packages are vital for helping you successfully plan and execute your event. They also provide guidelines for sponsors and important details like marketing budgets and expected expenses, providing oversight of your plans and expectations.
Well-executed sponsorship packs can make your event more attractive to potential sponsors. Here’s how to create attractive sponsorship packages for your nonprofit events:
- Align sponsorship packages with your event goals: Pitching the objective of your event is the best way for companies to identify if they’re an ideal match or if your initiative can benefit their goals. For example, suppose your event is for environmental awareness. In that case, companies offering programs and initiatives related to that cause can benefit from knowing leaders in environmental sustainability will be attending. Businesses might also be more persuaded to sponsor you if you have event offerings like branded banners showcasing and creating awareness of their brand at your event.
- Design sponsorship package levels:ÂCreating different sponsorship package levels and tiers for nonprofit events can give businesses a customized option and make your sponsorships attainable for companies of all sizes. For example, you can group unlimited digital ad placements, branded banners, and exclusive presentations in one package, and selected ad placements and branded products in another pack.
- Create a menu of package offerings:ÂCreate documents with one to three package options, enabling companies to analyze each offering and decide on the best choice. This strategy can help businesses make an informed and worthwhile investment.
Offering benefits is essential to impress your sponsors and get them on board with your event. Here are some benefit ideas to inspire your next sponsor pack:
1. Unique experiences
Offer sponsors value-added engagements like coemptions, fun activities, interactive classes, and live shows to provide them with an enjoyable and memorable experience.
2. Donation matchingÂ
One way to increase positive publicity and brand image is through donation matching. Whatever money you raise at your event, offer your sponsors the opportunity to match this contribution. You can get them to announce it on social media to maximize publicity.
3. New business leadsÂ
Reaching new markets and attracting potential customers is an excellent selling point for many businesses. To help companies reap the benefits of their sponsorship, you can provide them with a list of attendees or warm leads for them to follow up with.
4. Branded swag
Giving out free products is a staple of nonprofit events, and you can involve your sponsor by giving out their branded products. If you have a virtual event, you can mail branded products to attendees on behalf of the sponsors. This initiative goes a long way in creating brand awareness and highlighting a company’s commitment and appreciation for attendees.
5. Online profile features
Use your website or platform to advertise your sponsors and help your market get to know them. You can place your sponsor’s company banners, social media links, and bios on your platform, driving audiences to their website and business.
6. Ongoing engagement opportunities
Hosting post-event forums, competitions, polls, and question-and-answer sessions is an excellent way to keep your sponsor engaged with your audiences and raise awareness for their business.
7. Data and analytics
One of the most valuable benefits is providing your sponsor with event insights like their reach, visibility, and conversions to help them measure their investment return and make informed future donations and contributions. You can provide your sponsors with these data analytics to update them on the event and their performance.
Attracting sponsors for your nonprofit is only one part of hosting successful events. The real challenge is retaining them. When you have the right tools, impressive offerings, and convenient solutions, you can entice new sponsors and keep them coming back for beneficial partnerships.
At GiveSmart, we know the value of securing sponsorships for hosting successful nonprofit events. We provide comprehensive solutions to help you enhance your events and maximize sponsorships. Whether you want access to virtual auctions, contactless check-ins, mobile bidding campaigns, or something in between, we have you covered.
Our digital fundraising software is designed to help you successfully run events, minimize errors, and improve your partnerships with sponsors, fostering long-lasting relationships and helping you reach your mission and goals. Schedule a free demo today.
