Nonprofit Sponsorship: A Key Ingredient to Your Fundraising Recipe
October 31, 2015
One of my leisure activities is grilling and smoking. For me, it all starts with the rub — a combination of ingredients I apply to beef, pork, poultry, or fish. Salt and pepper, garlic powder, paprika, brown sugar, and chili powder are all staples in my homemade rubs. I rarely use prepared rubs, as I like to experiment and discover for myself what works.
The same goes for my awareness-building campaigns: a bit of this, a pinch of that, a scoop of something else.
In past years, we used to call this the "media mix." Today, with the emergence (dominance?) of digital media, we've redefined this mix as multi- or cross-channel marketing. But at its core is what I have for many years described as a multi-arrow approach to marketing predicated on the idea that no single arrow hits the target every time. Rather, a mix of media/channels almost always is the right recipe if you hope to raise awareness and, ultimately, funds.
In the space where I spent about twenty years of my career — marketing and public relations for small and mid-size nonprofits — the organizations I typically worked with often had limited resources. So these multi-arrow options frequently were limited. Some options were eliminated early on, while others didn't even make the initial list of options. One such option frequently ignored was sponsorship.
Sponsorship as a Marketing Tool
While social media, advertising, promotions, and the like are on the short list of awareness-building channels, sponsorship usually isn't. This is because nonprofit organizations look at sponsorship almost always as an extension of fundraising: as a means to generate revenue. But there's the other side of sponsorship, the side that can expand an organization's reach to their audiences through:
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