Today is Halloween. The ghosts, goblins, witches, zombies, and other scary trick-or-treat seekers will be in abundance. But tomorrow, the scare will be over, other than perhaps the potential for cavities from all that candy. I did offer to sacrifice my teeth for my daughter and eat all the candies and chocolate bars she gets tonight just to save her from cavities! But I digress!

Back to the point. By tomorrow, the scare will be over. Unfortunately, in my world, there is an even bigger scare and it does not seem to be going away. It is in our industry. It is the failure of properties (those selling sponsorships) to understand that sponsorships are not handouts. They are not arm twists. They are not grants or donations. They are business transactions.

In the past few weeks, I have spoken one on one with eleven different organizations and wanted to pull my hair out (what’s left of it) by the time we finished our coffee meeting. These organizations varied in type. They fell into the categories of arts, causes/charities, amateur sport organizations/teams, member associations, and post-secondary institutions.

Typically, these meetings were introductory or early in our relationship. I was there to learn more about the organization and see how (if) we could assist them. When we spoke about their organization, they told me how they were doing, what their sponsorship program was like today, and where they wanted to go with it. The scary thing is that they truly had no idea what a true sponsorship or partnership really is. They were looking for money to make budget before year end and had no clue about relationships. Here are some of things I heard.

• Our board is really powerful. We could get lots of sponsorship dollars if only the board members would ask their friends’ companies to support us.
• We have a great set of packages that have different ranges in pricing and all have tickets in them. I don’t know why people are not interested
• We are short about $150,000 in the sponsorship budget and our year end is December 31. Do you know where I can find $150,000 in the next month or two?
• All the good sponsors are gone!
• I sent out over 300 emails with our packages attached about six months ago to the Chamber of Commerce email list and no one has responded. I am thinking they might not have gone out or got caught up in the internet. That is the only reason I can figure why no one has responded. (I asked if they had followed up. Guess what? The answer was “no!”)
• Six of our eight new sponsors from last year are not coming back. I haven’t talked with them since the event last year, but if they knew ten months ago that they were not coming back, you would think they would have had the decency to reach out and tell us and not wait until I pitched them now a month before this year’s event!

Now, isn’t that scarier than Halloween? Where have these people been sleeping? Under the proverbial rock? This is all about them and their needs, not about a partnership, not about delivering ROI. Maybe these are the same folks who are in the pumpkin patch with Sally and Linus awaiting the Great Pumpkin’s arrival. Candy for them… cash sponsorships for these other folks. Ugh!

And yes, I encouraged every one of those organizations to attend and send several staff and board members to the WSC – Alberta Forum so they can learn some industry best practices, hear from 20+ industry professionals, and hopefully get on the right track!

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