Soapbox Engage Blog

Donors are critical to a nonprofit's success as they financially fuel the mission. But individual donors aren't the only people who can make your fundraising events a success. Corporate sponsors are for-profit businesses that provide money, goods, or services to a nonprofit event or program. They can be a great asset to your nonprofit!

Sponsors can take your fundraising event or campaign to the next level by providing financial and promotional support.

Whether you're planning a summer fundraising campaign or a year-end fundraising event, corporate sponsors can bolster your fundraising efforts. Let's take a quick dive into understanding why and how to attract sponsors for your next fundraising event or campaign.

Table of Contents

1. Nonprofit Fundraising Sponsor Essentials
2. How to Recruit Corporate Sponsors
3. How Soapbox Engage Helps You with Sponsorships

Nonprofit Fundraising Sponsor Essentials

Corporate sponsors can add a lot of money to the bottom line of your next fundraising campaign or event.

What is a nonprofit event or campaign sponsor?

A sponsor is any individual, group, or company that provides something for free (or low cost) to increase the value of your event. This might come in the form of money, goods, or services. Depending on your needs or fundraising goals, some of the most popular sponsor partnership gifts can include:

• Financial support
• Volunteer support
• Fundraising campaign promotion
• Pro-bono services
• Matching gift funds

The nonprofit often provides the sponsor with recognition in the form of marketing or other promotions.

Sponsorships should benefit everyone

The obvious benefit that sponsors bring to your fundraising efforts is financial backing. Sponsors also provide promotional and marketing benefits.

What's in it for the sponsor? Healthy sponsorships aren't a one-way street. Everyone should benefit from the arrangement. It's critical to identify the benefits you can offer a potential sponsor. Access to a difficult-to-reach audience, an opportunity for values alignment, or opportunities to build employee morale are common benefits that sponsors look for.

Companies are also looking for opportunities to attach their names to programs and initiatives that align with their core business. This "corporate social good" helps build customer loyalty and benefits the company or sponsor long after the event or campaign is complete.

Part of the strategy of attracting excellent sponsors is to make the agreement enticing. Offer promotions and marketing, access to your event guest list, or other expected benefits:

• Free registration to your event for business members
• Resource tables at fundraising events
• Adding logos and names to your marketing materials
• Opportunities to present or speak at your events
• Links back to sponsor websites from event pages

What makes a good fundraising sponsor?

Great sponsors will not only offer financial benefits, but they are committed to the success of your event. They'll help you promote your campaign or event, fill their sponsorship seats, and genuinely value the partnership.

When looking for sponsors for an upcoming event or campaign, look for businesses with a good brand and strong reputation in the community. Quality sponsors also desire to support your nonprofit overall and want to invest in the community.

What do sponsors look for in an organization?

Businesses or individual sponsors want to invest in quality nonprofits or campaigns. While sponsorship is a type of financial donation, it's also a business transaction. There are some aspects of your nonprofit that you should highlight when looking for potential sponsors.

A valuable audience: Potential sponsors want to see that you have a strong donor and volunteer base that will be a valuable audience for their sponsorship. Maintaining a good website and active social media pages and sending regular newsletters and mailings demonstrates that your nonprofit has an active and engaged audience.

Clear evidence of your nonprofit's impact: It's reasonable that a potential corporate or individual sponsor will want to understand your nonprofit's impact on the community. Success stories, metrics, ROI details, and annual reports are valuable in demonstrating your impact.

A plan for the sponsorship arrangement: Perhaps the most critical thing you can bring to a potential sponsor is a detailed plan for how you'll use the money, products, or services. This is where it benefits nonprofits to operate and think like a business. Show your potential sponsor how you'll use their support and the ROI you expect to receive.

How to Recruit Corporate Sponsors

While bringing in sponsors is a bit of an art and a science, you can undoubtedly take specific steps to recruit high-quality sponsors for your next event or fundraising campaign.

1. Set a sponsorship goal

Before you begin recruiting sponsors, take time to assess your specific needs. What are the financial needs that you plan to meet with these sponsorships? Are there non-financial needs you hope to meet?

When you understand your needs, you can create specific and measurable SMART goals for your sponsorship recruitment. This will help your team have a clear vision of the task at hand and allow you to communicate clear expectations with potential sponsors.

Businesses want to clearly understand what you need and what you'll accomplish with the sponsorship. You may write a sponsorship goal like, "Our nonprofit will recruit three corporate sponsors totaling $3,500 by June 10 for our summer fundraising event. These sponsorships will cover marketing and venue reservation costs."

2. Create sponsor packets detailing levels and benefits

Now that you have your goals, it's time to create a polished document you can share with potential sponsors. It's worth spending a little extra time and money to ensure it's a polished document that's easy to glance through.

Your sponsor packet should outline sponsorship levels, costs per level, and the benefits a business can expect to receive from each level. You should also include all the essential details about the event and your contact information.

The goal of these sponsor packets is to provide enough information for a sponsor to make an informed decision about partnering.

Include a signup form in your sponsorship package for businesses to fill out. This ensures their commitment is in writing and you have the appropriate contact information.

Be prepared for in-kind sponsorships: Savvy nonprofits also prepare to accept in-kind sponsors. For example, a local print shop might offer to print all the event content for free or at a discount. A local media team might be willing to provide sound and audio equipment.

Ask in-kind sponsors to estimate the cost of all the materials, labor, and other fees and include them in your sponsor lineup. After all, in-kind sponsors add to the fundraising bottom-line just as well as a cash sponsor.

3. List prospective sponsors

Get strategic rather than sending a generic sponsorship letter to everyone in the local chamber of commerce (though "spray and pray" is a popular approach). Personal contacts are critical when securing sponsorships, so creating a list of businesses and individuals within your network can be a very effective strategy.

Ask your event committee, staff, volunteers, and Board members who they know at local businesses. You may need to jog their memory to think about the people in their sphere of influence.

Scroll through your donor database to identify companies already supporting you and may be interested in sponsoring an event. Even businesses that made a small donation in the past or participated in a volunteer opportunity can be top candidates.

Run through your payables to consider vendors and businesses you spend money with. All vendors can be sponsor prospects, especially if you are a consistent and valuable customer.

4. Reach out to potential sponsors

Now that you've got your list of potential sponsors, it's time to reach out to your contacts. In situations where you know the business owner or decision-maker, it's best to schedule an in-person meeting or personal phone call to discuss a potential sponsorship.

A letter can be a practical first point of contact between your nonprofit and sponsors with which you don't yet have a personal connection. While letters are less personal, they can be a great way to introduce your organization and establish a relationship.

When writing the introductory letter, be sure to include the following details:

• Information about your organization and your immediate impact
• Specific sponsorship needs
• How you envision the business helping meet the need
• Request an in-person meeting or phone call

5. Follow-up is key

Once you reach out to your potential sponsors, follow up with your contact within two weeks of the first interaction.

If they decide to become a sponsor, send a thank you letter as quickly as possible to express your gratitude and outline their benefits.

It's good manners to send a thank you note to businesses who decline to sponsor your event, too. Thank them for their time and consideration. Ask if it will be ok to reach out with future sponsorship opportunities. Continue to build a relationship with the business. While they may not be able to sponsor your nonprofit at this point, that doesn't mean they won't be a great partner in the future!

Don't forget to send a thank-you note to all your sponsors after the event. Offer a detailed event recap that highlights the event's successes: attendance, fundraising statistics, press coverage, event photos, and other details you believe they would appreciate.

6. Sponsor care is just as crucial as donor care

Cultivating healthy relationships with your sponsors is as essential as with your donors. Many nonprofits dedicate someone from their team to cultivate and manage sponsor relationships. Treating sponsors well can keep them coming back year after year.

It can be quite a task to manage all the details that can go into sponsorship relationships. It's critical to deliver what you promised and maintain excellent communication, especially when managing multiple sponsorship agreements.

How Soapbox Engage Helps You with Sponsorships

Having the right tools and support is critical to the entire fundraising journey–including finding sponsors for your events.

The Soapbox Engage Forms app can make the process of signing up new sponsors a breeze and ensure you collect all the essential information.

Many nonprofits use a typical low-level sponsorship level to offer full table options for galas, dinners, and other fundraising events. The Soapbox Engage Events app allows you to provide ticketing tiers. It makes all kinds of pricing and grouping options a breeze.

You can also create discount codes to offer sponsors free tickets or other benefits.

In addition to a dynamic ticketing option, the Events app lets you create a custom event and campaign pages that feature your sponsors as you see fit. You can also add your sponsors' logos to your campaign or event donation pages.

 

Now that you're ready to attract some top-notch sponsors, here are three more resources to keep your fundraising going strong.

• How to Get a Corporate Sponsor by Understanding Cause Marketing: Whatever your nonprofit does, there's a pretty good chance a company will want to support and align with your mission by financially supporting your efforts. But corporate sponsorships are supposed to be symbiotic relationships. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to treat corporate sponsorships like a symbiotic relationship between a nonprofit and a business. Keep reading to learn how to cultivate a great relationship with ideal sponsors.
• The Google Analytics Metrics That Help Nonprofits Raise More Money: Google Analytics is a free tool that will help you understand who visits your website, what they read, how long they stay, and much more. This will help you provide detailed information to potential corporate sponsors and boost your proposal.
• 5 Marketing Strategies Every Nonprofit Should Implement: Many nonprofits shy away from the idea of marketing. They think of it as something for-profit businesses do to make more money. Quality marketing is essential no matter what kind of nonprofit you work for. Here are some practical ways to improve the marketing for your organization.