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Finding Sponsors

Sponsors are an important aspect of hosting successful events and achieving charitable goals. Entry fees alone may not cover all the costs of the event, so sponsors can help cover expenses and raise additional funds.

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How Do I Decide Who to Ask?  

  • Create a list of potential donors
  • Do some research beforehand
  • Form a strong relationship or connection with potential sponsors before making the ask
  • Ask potential sponsors if they know of anyone else who may be interested in getting involved
How Do I Make the Ask? 

  • Choose someone who is invested in the project and comfortable asking for money to approach potential sponsors
  • Meet with potential sponsors on their own turf
  • Be prepared and concise in explaining the event's goal, the BYU connection, the charitable results that will come from a successful event, and how sponsors can make a difference
  • Provide a nicely printed flyer or letter with all the details
  • Be direct and specific
  • Explain what the sponsor will receive in return, whether it's exposure or anonymity
  • Be prepared for rejection and provide options for potential sponsors
  • Say thank you more than once and be appreciative and gracious to those who accept sponsorship.
How many sponsors can/should we have? 

  • The more sponsors there are, the greater the financial base you’ll have.
Potential Sponsors: 

  • Individuals 
  • Companies – Sometimes they would like to sponsor in kind.  Rather than money donated, they donate the dinner, or goods, etc. 
  • Family Foundations   
Sponsorship Perks – Suggestions: 

  • Acknowledgment of their sponsorship everywhere that is appropriate – on a welcoming banner, in the advertising, have them be acknowledged at the closing ceremonies, etc. 
  • A special sponsor-only hat, jacket, or shirt 
  • Be creative
Sponsorship

Video Transcript

  • Kellie: Seth Killingbeck of the Nashville chapter has done a great job with sponsorships, and he is going to talk to us about some of the things he’s done. So, Seth, can I turn it over to you? And you can unmute yourself and show your face if available. And then let me know when you want me to play the videos.

     

    Seth: Great, thanks Kellie. Thanks for having me on here. I have to disagree with you on that, I don’t think I do a great job on fundraising, and I know there are a lot of you that probably do a much better job than I do. But I will confess I’m surrounded by some really good people out here in Nashville and I will share with you what we have done collectively. And we also welcome your ideas

    And so, I’ve divided this into just a couple of sections here and I don’t have a lot of time, and I won’t take a lot of time. But the first thing is identifying sponsors, and I think, you know, it’s probably obvious we try to start with business owners, or executives, preferably those with BYU ties. (Time Stamp 1:11)
    And then sometimes alumni or friends will recommend other people who may not have BYU ties but would be willing to help us out. So we go after that. Once we’ve identified them and approach them, kind of just like missionaries, we ask for referrals. I’ve heard it said that misery loves company and so we’ll ask them a lot of times if they’re donating money. They say, “oh man, well you got to hit up somebody else” or they’ll hit up somebody else for us to donate as well. I do not like asking people for money. I’m not good at it. But there are people who are very good at this. Identify your good schmoozers in your chapter. And let them go and use their talent, you know? Those people that know everybody that have no problem asking for anything. Not in a tacky way but just have no qualms about doing that. Let them use their talents for that. And we’ve got a couple in our chapters that are really good at that, that’ll just call up whoever and ask for help with fundraising activities.

    Something we’re doing this year. We have a big fundraiser, a Gala that we do in the fall that we did last year and we’re repeating it this year. And we’ve put together a prize. (Time Stamp 2:22)
    We have just for example, we have a football helmet that’s been signed by Jamal Williams and Tayson Hill. And so, we’ve offered that as a prize for the person who raises the most for our Gala this year. And so, there’s some healthy competition there. People wanting that helmet.

    Offering tiers of sponsorship, you know, there are people that can afford to donate more and people that can afford to donate significantly less. And so, we have tiers. We’ve identified our tears as platinum cougar, gold, cougar, silver cougar. But you can obviously do whatever you want with that. For example, like Café Rio BYU Alumni Golf tournament. We haven’t gotten to that point yet but I know some other chapters that have done that and I think that’s a great idea. With the lower tiers, you know smaller level donations often encourages individual people to donate individually.

    The other thing is in-kind sponsorships, people who may not be willing or able to donate money but have services that they can donate. (Time stamp 3:33)
    At our blue and white gala that we do our big fundraiser annually. This last year we had a music sponsor who came and set up all the music equipment and DJ’d for us. We had a graphic design sponsor who was willing to do all our invitations and create the design in the logos for that. Got a printing sponsor. A catering sponsor who provided some amazing cupcakes at no cost. And then those who donate to silent auctions and things if they can’t make a financial contribution, but they’re willing they have something they can offer that we can use to raise funds through a silent auction. And that went very well last year. So that’s how we go about identifying our sponsors and how we’ve don’t that.

    The second thing, like I said, I don’t like to ask for money, but I’m willing to try to make a deal with somebody. Try to give them value for what they’re giving us. Something, I can’t take credit for this because one of the other chapters, I head of at the chapter conference, maybe two years ago was talking about doing this. And I love the idea and that was to invite some of the sponsors to be on the replenishment grant selection committee. Whether those are current sponsors or perspective sponsors and so we implemented that this year. And we had a current sponsor as well as a prospective sponsor someone who would like, groom into a sponsor. And I got them on the committee so they can see where that money goes and often, I think they’ll see maybe there’s a lack of funds and maybe be more willing after they read some of the applications to be a bit more generous with what they have.

    We try to plaster their logos, Kellie if you can show that the first photo, it’s the golf tournament t-shirt. Thank you for doing that, Kellie. I’m not very tech savvy so Kellie is helping me out a ton with this. I’m not even on a computer. We did a golf tournament a couple years ago and we had the t-shirt, and those of you who run rases or do golf tournaments know its common to put sponsor logos on the back and so we did that. And that hadn’t been done out here before, so the sponsors were excited about that. They were excited to have their logos on the shirts that people were still wearing around town. And so, we try to plaster their logos, we have banners and posters and sponsor boards at our events. We invite them to out flyers highlighting what they do. We try to recognize them verbally as much as we can when we have our activities. And thank them in public so that they feel like they’re getting advertising in return for their generosity. We let them advertise themselves typically at our fundraiser events and we’ll do goodie bags for all the participants. (time stamp 6:16) And sometimes our sponsors will put in coupons we had a golf tournament where a local chiropractor who had a sponsorship, printed his logo on golf tees and gave those out to all the participants. And they’ll put flyers and brochures cataloged about what they do, and we’ll put those in the goody bags and just try to circulate them. And like I said and Kellie this may be the reason she asked me to do this if for nothing else. We did a couple of promo videos promoting our blue and white ball last year. And we asked the sponsors to be in those videos and to promote it and have fun with it. And so I think if Kellie if you could just show a couple, there’s one from Sonic and then there’s one from Jamba Juice.

     

    Kellie: The sound is a little iffy, it will get loud and quiet so be prepared.

    [Sonic Sponsor Video]

    *BYU Cougar roar sound*

    BYU Hat guy: So, you getting your, uh, tickets to the blue and white Gala?

    Suit guy: mmhmm I’ve got them. But I hope you’re not going dressed like that, for real.

    BYU Hat guy: Why? What’s wrong with this?

     

    Kellie: And then do you want me to do the second one too?

    Seth: Yeah, if you could play the Jamba Juice one too, that’d be great. Thank you. And also these were both filmed on iPhones with minimal investment in technology.

    [Jamba Juice Sponsor Video]

    Boy: I still can’t believe you’re wearing that to the blue and white ball. You’re going to stand out. Everyone will stare at us.

    Boy: Out of all the things you could have worn to the blue and white ball you chose that, something red.

    Strawberry Girl: You know this is my favorite color.

    [slow dance music]

    Banana Boy: Your outfit does have a certain ap-peel.

     

    Seth: Anyway, thanks Kellie for showing those. You know we had fun with this, we put them on our Facebook page. We emailed them out. And just again we had fun with it and tried to advertise our sponsors a little bit more. We have a Bentley Maserati and Rolls-Royce dealership here in town that sponsored this for a couple of years. And when we approached them about making a video, given their clientele, they wanted to do a much more classy video and so they had a professional video that they put together. It had a drone flying over and some great cinematography and great production with that. And we did some others that you can check out on our Facebook page, BYU Nashville. An you can see some of the other videos that we did, if you’re interested. But we again, we just tried to give them value for what they did. We tried to show them or give them an opportunity to advertise for themselves.

    The last thing, and Kelly mentioned this, is showing appreciation and gratitude for our sponsors. Big believer in thank you cards. A handwritten thank you card from someone on the board. Thanking them specifically for what they’ve done and telling them a little bit about where their funds were used. When we send out our scholarships or replenishment grants. We sent them a letter afterwards, kind of highlighting the recipients and letting them know where the money went. The ‘Y’ things that Wendy did, that she showed us Last fall. We loved those and we begged Wendy, and she was wonderful, and she was able to help us out with securing some of those light up ‘Y’s and the cool gift bags. And we gave those out to our sponsors at our Gala and we’ve given those out to a few other people from time to time when they’ve gone above and beyond. To our platinum cougar sponsors. Those are the highest-level sponsors that we have. We gave them all autographed BYU … autographed by the coaching staff. We found a local vendor here that makes collegiate logo camp chairs, coolers and that sort of thing, and they were having a clearance sale. And so there was not a huge demand for BYU out here in Tennessee so we were able to get them really cheap. And I gave some of our sponsors these as Christmas gifts. We found out in January that the football coaches are here in Nashville for a coaching conference that they do annually. And they were looking for an alcohol-free venue to watch the national championship football game. And we were able to set that up at a member’s house here in Nashville. And then last minute, we invited some of our main sponsors to come and watch the national championship game with ‘High Denver and Reno Mahay?’ and their families and some of the other coaches, and that was cool, and you know we try to say thank you and show our appreciation for what they do.

    The last thing I think the last picture that Kellie has is, a t-shirt that someone did, a graphic designer in our chapter put together. Just a Nashville BYU logo as a guitar pick and the cougar. And we went through the BYU Licensing office, and they were super easy to work with. We got the t-shirts approved and printed them and we’ve just been handing those out to some of our sponsors and selling them as well as for a fundraiser. But handing them up to our sponsors and saying thank you. And so again I don’t know that we do a great job but those are some things we have done to try to identify sponsors and try to give them something in return and really just show our gratitude.

    End