Hi guys,
Has anyone had the opportunity to actually get sponsors for his/her company?
Well my experience with this bit was totally crazy. I had to find potential sponsors for my company's up coming event in November. my company is a not for profit organisation therefore sponsors come a long way. And for this particular event, i had to find as many sponsors as possible as they rely on sponsors to help them pay off alot of the expenses to come in the event.
Anyway, i had to research on different companies, and the most interesting thing about all this is, i actually had to do it in real life. You know how in exams we would just list down companies without really thinking through what big impact they would really have on the company we are asked about, so for this experience i had to learn to ensure that each company i select actually has an impact on the event. e.g food companies would come in handy in terms of bringing food for participants after the races and all, or a water company for the bottled water, or getting media coverage on that particular day to create awareness about the whole event and also invite more people to come along for it. Such tiny details did not really matter during assignments or when doing exams but in the real world they actually do play a big part. So this is one area am finding very interesting.
Also when getting through to the companies themselves, i had to call each company to ensure that they would be ok with me sending in a sponsorship package to them. This was a tough thing to do in terms of actually making the phone calls, the companies are not mean or anything but the whole idea of having to actually ring them up hoping to get a nice person to speak to that will not put you down or just disregard your proposal. At first it was annoying when I would call up and some companies would reject the offer coz of the financial crisis, actually when a company would reject my offer, i would get so tensed up to ring the other companies incase of another rejection, whereas when someone actually accepts the offer, then i feel fired up to call more and more companies.
Very interesting experience but it taught me alot especially on confidence and awareness in the company.
1 comment:
Hi Miriam,
It’s a surreal experience, applying what we’ve learnt in uni to the “real world”. I’m also completing my placement at a not for profit organisation, Make-A-Wish Australia, and the importance of establishing relationships with sponsors has definitely become prevalent.
For an upcoming event, I’ve also been sourcing sponsors and took on the same approach as you. I first contact the company, cold calling can be slightly daunting but being well prepared is the key. I have however found that people may sound interested over the phone but they’re just being polite and simply don’t want to decline as we’re a charity!
I’ve been following up with personalized emails containing documents outlining the organisation, the event, and an angled benefit for the approached company.
I received my first donation on Friday, a meal to the value of $150 and it made all the effort worth it.
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