Advice with Sponsors?

[BlacksmithWoods]

I am looking for anyone from the CD community for advice on how to get corporate sponsors. Our team is short on money this year, and any help will be greatly appreciated. I'll post the letter we send out to companies as an attachment, maybe someone can revise it?

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by BlacksmithWoods

I am looking for anyone from the CD community for advice on how to get corporate sponsors. Our team is short on money this year, and any help will be greatly appreciated. I'll post the letter we send out to companies as an attachment, maybe someone can revise it?

If youre short on money at this point, corporate probably isn't the way to go. Chains like, for example, home depot will just give you the runaround and probably take longer then you'd like. But, it is still worth it to try it, you never know.

We were in the same situation the past few years, and most of the money we scraped together actually comes from local businesses. We literally googled "Technology companies near <city/town>" on google maps and built a list of about 100 places and sent out letters. Use other keywords as well, you never know what you'll find. If you have local clubs like Elks, Knights, ect, we've found that they give as well. Also see my other post here about events that can be done at local grocery stores.

Hope all goes well!

[MARS_James]

Ok where to start (I am opening this in word 2007 so if you are seeing something different then ignore some of my statements) These are the things that work well for us

Add your teams logo somewhere on the sheet even if you don't think you should trust me it adds personality to your request.

Have different levels of sponsorship with different benefits for each level.

I am attaching an old sponsorship packet that has served us well 2011-2012_Fundraising_Letter.pdf and 2011-2012_Sponsorship_Packages.pdf

[pandamonium]

http://penfieldrobotics.com/team/fundraising.php

We have tons of resources on the fundraising section of our website that I think you will find very valuable. We call this our "Patron Drive". We have been doing this fundraising approach since our first year in 2005 and have had great success with it. Other teams have used these resources and have built there own successful programs as well. Feel free to use any and all of these documents and you can even reach out to me or the team for more support! Best of luck!

[SarahBeth]

I would modify that letter a bit so you can use it with both corporate and local companies. We send our kids out with the attached that they can take when they go to restaurants, shops, etc, even to drum up donations for our calendar.

[BlacksmithWoods]

Originally Posted by SarahBeth

I would modify that letter a bit so you can use it with both corporate and local companies. We send our kids out with the attached that they can take when they go to restaurants, shops, etc, even to drum up donations for our calendar.

We actually have a separate one for local companies and family/friends.

[MrTechCenter]

Also, I recommend beginning the letter with information about your team, who you are, and what you do, how well you did last season, etc. THEN, ask if the company is able to assist you. If possible, make the letter usable for both large corporations and small, local businesses (as mentioned before me). If you'd like, I can send your our team's sponsor letter to give you an idea.