A Jump Start for Your Stalled Sponsorship Program
Festivals and events across the country are feeling the impact of the recession on their sponsorship programs. You may be, too. Worse, you may not know what to do next.
One crucial but perhaps counterintuitive next step is to deepen your commitment to your existing sponsors. Now is the time to strengthen the ties and all the ways your two organizations are interconnected and enrich the sponsorship program for your partners and for your own organization.
How to strengthen your ties to sponsors
Take the time to develop an understanding of what your sponsors face in their respective industries and markets.
These methods are all excellent ways for you to collect information that you will be able to use in your discussions with sponsors.
Here’s what you’re looking for:
Keep files of this information and pay attention to particular trends or notions that resonate for you. What seems important? What seems like an opportunity? What seems troublesome?
Next, Talk To Your Sponsors
With this newfound information, contact your sponsors and schedule time with them, preferably in person. Your primary goal is to listen. Find out what’s really going on with your client’s company and with your contact.
Your conversations should happen on two levels: with your primary sponsor contacts and among your two organizations’ senior leadership. The president, executive director, or executive producer of your organization or festival should meet with your sponsors’ senior management. If you are the executive director, invite the support of your board chair and/or key members of your board. The conversations are similar in nature to your conversation with your key sponsor contact, and the goals are to demonstrate regard for your partners’ best interests, to better understand the business climate, and to uncover opportunities for your sponsorship program to make a difference and effect some change or improvement for your corporate clients.
Your goal here is to strengthen the already existing trusting, collaborative, and mutually beneficial relationship with each of your sponsors – organization-to-organization and person-to-person. Your efforts should demonstrate that you value their investment in your event or program, and that you’re a worthy partner who is willing and able to be flexible and nimble for the benefit of the long-term sponsorship relationships.
New Ideas
Use these conversations to learn about your sponsors’ current priorities and how your sponsorship program can help them address those priorities. Work with your sponsor to develop ideas and program modifications that address your sponsor’s new strategies and business objectives.
Now it's your turn. In comments to this post, provide your best success stories for preserving your current sponsor relationships in this economy. Everyone who shares a tip/success story, will be emailed a free complimentary white paper drawn from my new guidebook, entitled How to Jumpstart your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times.
Gail Bower is President of Bower & Co. Consulting LLC, a firm that assists nonprofit organizations and event/festival producers with dramatically raising their visibility, revenue, and impact. She’s a professional consultant, writer, and speaker, with nearly 25 years of experience managing some of the country’s most important events, festivals, and sponsorships and implementing marketing programs for clients. Her blog is http://www.SponsorshipStrategist.com.
For Gail Bower’s new guidebook, entitled How to Jump-start Your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times, visit http://www.GailBower.com/jumpstart.
