This week, I am in Winnipeg and I am really looking forward to it. I am here to attend the Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators (CAMA) conference (Canada’s chief administration officers of our municipalities) today, and then Thursday through Sunday, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference. This latter is Canada’s elected municipal officials—mayors and councillors. I am sitting on a panel .at FCM and really looking forward to it. I believe this is more of what we need for certain sectors of the sponsorship industry—greater dialogue. As the industry leaders and sponsorship thought leaders, we are proud to be part of these discussions.
At FCM, it is a unique panel discussion. It will include a moderator, two elected officials from Canadian municipalities involved in corporate sponsorship, a brand involved with sponsorships in municipalities, and me as an industry leader involved with sponsorship, and specifically with municipalities and sponsorship. The moderator will ask some questions of the panelists, but really the session is about delegate engagement—Q&A and best practices. The moderator will open the floor from the beginning so that mayors and councillors from across the country can ask questions. They can inquire about how procurement is affected, how they ensure that they are being fair to all companies with opportunities, what it takes to run a sponsorship program, etc. This “town hall” approach to engaging conversation is key for our elected officials to better understand what sponsorship is and is not, what it means or does not mean to their communities, and what their peers are doing and saying. It will be fantastic, and we are proud to present the session and be part of it to move the ongoing discussion and education forward.
Kudos to FCM for recognizing this need for discussion. I truly believe that such discussions need to take place in other sectors at this level of participation as well—with ultimate decision makers. I think they need to move from the AFP level of fund raisers being part of the discussion to the charity and non-profit CEOs and executive directors. I also see the need for this within our post-secondary institutions, not to mention our school boards across the country. I envision our amateur sport organizations and their operating boards needing to host such events and discussions. All these organizations want the money, but have little or no strategy or best practices in place for their industries. Perhaps it is time to engage conversation in all these sectors. We are excited to be already talking with many of them to see how we can help them engage the conversation just as we have with FCM and its members.
I welcome your input to see how we can help to take this to your sector, by direct email as well as your opinion in our public forum through a blog post, Twitter, or LinkedIn. We need to engage the conversation now for the future success of these organizations.
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