In the last month I have had conversations with four organizations about sponsorship and what it means to their organization today and in the future. Of the four organizations one was a brand and three were properties. For each of them it was a question of whether or not they should be in the sponsorship game.
Each organization said they want the revenue but their culture does not allow for it. They said their board / council / senior management don’t want to play in the sponsorship game and to go down that road. They claim it would be a major transformational change for them… a big pill to swallow! Each of properties felt that selling their assets / putting price tags on things like building naming or program association was a “dirty practice”.  They felt that user fees and donations would carry them forever and companies had an “obligation” to support them.
I had to tell each of them they already were in the game and just did not understand it. What they needed was education of those decision makers about where they presently are and what the future looks like for them.
For each of the properties (two charities and a municipality) they needed to understand that they were already selling “stuff”. They were allowing rink boards and banners in their sports complexes; they had companies associated to their walk / run / bike or gala; they sold advertising in their program magazines or publications or website. They were already transacting and “selling their assets”, it was just that they were doing it poorly in an unorganized fashion off the corner of multiple people’s desks with no collaboration and working from silos. They didn’t like to hear that, but all agreed it was the truth.
So what did we talk about next? Why was this transformational change to understanding and embracing sponsorship critical for success for them in the future? Here are some of the bullets we discussed:
- Sponsorship is different from donations, user fees and grants – it is a whole separate bucket of money… sometimes if you want more money you need to go to different buckets!
- In most cases organizations are already “selling their assets” but they don’t look at it that way. Get over it; putting a name on a building or allowing a sponsor to promote themselves to your patrons / donors / audience with an ad in your program, speak from the stage for 2 minutes or their logo on your website is advertising and when done in a bundling format with audience interaction and engagement is sponsorship
- Donors are donors – they will continue to support you if they love you and believe in you – but they are individuals
- Businesses on the other hand are not human, their staff are but as companies they have no heart or emotion. If you have the favor of a person at the company that is great until that person is no longer there (be they an employee or owner who sells or transfers / family succession) their company ownership
- Business have shifted annually for the past 7 years at a rate of 52% to 56% from charitable giving to corporate sponsorship. That means the money that they gave you this year in a gift they want to give you next year, but you need to help them build brand awareness, affinity, sell product, make their employees feel good etc. if you want that money. If you cannot do that (or choose not to do that) they will allocate that money to another organization. The world is changing
- We talked about the fact that 10 years ago most organizations were not focused on legacy giving / bequests and such; today most organizations have a dedicated staff for legacy giving and it is a budgeted revenue line – times have changed
- 12-15 years ago if someone told a charity that 50% or more of their donations would come from online giving they would have laughed in your face. They would have said “we won’t ever set up online giving” … guess what? Over 50% of most organization’s revenues now come from online giving! Yes, the times have changed and continue to change
- For municipalities, over 60% of your peers are in this game and successful municipalities are finding alternate revenue channels (which corporate sponsorship is one of them) as citizens are tired of escalating taxes and user fees
- Darwin once said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
- Where will your organization be when it comes to survival? Transformational change is not easy, but sometimes necessary and those that stick their head in the sand today will be looking at a pretty vast wasteland around their organization when they finally come up for air.
You probably are doing sponsorship in some way in your organization just like these three organizations. And just like these three organizations you just aren’t doing it well or effectively. And the reason you are not doing it really well to its true potential is that it is easier to go with the status quo and not be successful than to engage change and make a difference long term for your organization.
Next week I will tell you about the brand I referenced at the start of this TMC.
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