Corporate Sponsorship Assistance

Hello Verena: In the way I see it, responses to the second question must come first. That is, to determine if the “someone” to solicit sponsorship funds for the arts festival comes from (1), an advertising/marketing/PR agency (2), an individual professional broker/fund-raiser (paid solicitor) (3), an official from the non-profit organization itself---ideally a board member or other volunteer having influence and stature in the corporate community.

Employing any one of the three possible methods of presenting the sponsorship opportunity to corporate prospects, the festival, first and foremost, must have a proven or expected potentially widespread promotion and publicity capability. The attendant expenses to produce a festival of that stature in those ways would be significant. Those costs have a much better chance to be met when the sponsorship solicitation is made with image and marketing as major---if not sole---considerations, and the sponsorship money is given with the expectation that it will engender positive feelings on the part of a large segment of the public toward the corporation and be good for its business. Here, you have the additional opportunity to attract sponsorship support from a corporation having no prior connection to the organization---even one geographically distant, and having no interest until now.

If that is the setting, then I believe it’s best if you can partner with an advertising/marketing/PR agency where its account executives’ roster of corporate clients will allow for a much wider and deeper reach to potential sponsors than the other two solicitation methods. A potential sponsor will see its support to be more of a business quid pro quo arrangement than philanthropic, thus the organization can set out to “sell” its sponsorship with the agency’s extended resources.

If such a determination to engage an agency or freelancer (paid solicitor) was made with none, or little, of the above potential for widespread and significant promotion and publicity, and was made because the board of trustees will not, or cannot, work to themselves raise what would be mostly philanthropic sponsorship funds, then I suggest it be a mistake to take the agency and especially the freelancer course. The agency would not see the visibility and publicity value necessary to attract its clients, and there is no reason to pay an outside stranger to raise what would be mostly charitable funds for your organization, and to see most of any money raised going into the pocket of the fund-raiser. Fund-raising is the job of the board of trustees.

There is a wide threshold between those sponsorship situations (quid pro quo and totally philanthropic), and it’s important (in my opinion) to know exactly where you should or should not engage a bona fide agency broker, hire a paid solicitor, or have the volunteer leadership do the job.

Let us know where this particular sponsorship opportunity fits regarding the asking for the money, and we will be happy to provide suggestions to bolster going in that direction. However, for me, that could only be if a true ad agency broker having corporate clients, or an organization’s engaged leadership going after the sponsorship. There are good reasons aplenty either way. I would never engage an outside fund-raiser. There are a whole host of good reasons for not going this way.

Cheers,

Dear Verena

I don't have direct experience of this, but have come across a few names in the course of the last couple of years. There are firstly a couple of agencies who work in this area:

Kallaway
[url]www.kallaway.co.uk[/url]
Anna Burns - Development Director
020 7221 7883
Founded 1972, clients include Transco, Barclays New Futures, BBC Choir of the Year

Sponsorship Consulting Ltd
[url]www.sponsorshipconsulting.co.uk[/url]
Wendy Stephenson - Chief Executive
020 7582 0994
They broker sponsorship deals from the corporate side - currently working with BP, Corus, ECCO, Shell, Siemens - quite a good list!

New Philanthropy Capital
[url]www.philanthropycapital.org[/url]
020 7785 6300
Nigel Harris - Chief Executive

A 'wild card' one - they don't act specifically as a broker, but advise donors on giving strategies (so could be useful for major donor work, too). They assess charities in terms of their effectiveness. They say they will often point donors towards smaller, less well known charities that they think are making an outstanding contribution, so that it's not always the usual suspects getting the funds.

Then depending on where your organisation is based, I do know a consultant in Leeds who was the former Fundraising Director at a major arts organisation in the city, and has experience of raising sponsorship. I would be happy to give you her details.

I guess the one cautionary note I would sound and I am sure others will say this too, is that a critical business relationship like sponsorship can't be wholly outsourced (apologies if I am teaching you to suck eggs here!)
The Board and senior management of your organisation will need to be very clear that they can allocate enough resource to service a potential sponsor in the way that they are expecting, if the relationship is to be long-term. From what I have heard, the problems that arise within sponsorship are usually associated with a mismatch between the expectations of the charity and the sponsor further down the line. They will need to have a lead person in place who can champion the sponsor's needs within the charity and negotiate tactfully with the sponsor to ensure the sponsor's needs don't swamp the charity's core purpose. Ideally that process should be owned by the organisation, so that if the freelancer/agency moves on, it doesn't mean that the relationship does, too.

Hope this is of some help!

Adrian

Adrian Salmon
Head of TPR Education
[email]adrian@tpreducation.co.uk[/email]

0871 663 1970