To really grow your program, grow your fundraising, and make your events and initiatives more interesting, you will have to work and collaborate with businesses and community partners. Developing these relationships is not easy and will take some work, but the reward can be very beneficial.
What You Can Get
Who to Reach Out to
How to Reach Out and Meeting
Important Tips
- Never overask
- Be nice and respectful to your partners
- Be prepared with any information they may ask for
- Make sure you steward your partners. Check the stewardship section for more information
- Be prepared to provide something back in exchange for their help (i.e. shouting them out on Instagram, handing out flyers at your event)
- Be sure to Steward your sponsors and partners! Check out the Stewardship Resources for more information on that.
Vocabulary
- Sponsor: Marketing tactic that involves a business providing financial or in-kind contributions to help fund an event, institution or other project
- Donor: A person who donates something, especially money to a fund or charity
- Asset: Elements that are of worth to a sponsor that you can sell to them to achieve their goals and objectives
- Stewardship: Thanking a donor or a sponsor to hopefully result in a long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship.
- Monetary donation: Money donation
- In-kind donation: Instead of donating money, the goods and services themselves are given