From my extensive travels in the Sport and Recreation sector where I worked with over 150 clubs, I would say not many associations or clubs find sponsorship and growing sponsorship easy.
In fact, the club role of ‘Sponsorship Coordinator’ is usually the last role to be filled. I guess the thought of having to cold call and the fear of rejection is something most people really don’t get into volunteering for.
Additionally, most clubs have not been great at a) coordinating sponsorship benefits and b) promoting the benefits of being involved with your Club. In other words, if a small business owner and potential sponsor asks you "what can you do to grow my business?" – what would you say?
Growing sponsorship is really easy on one condition – your club can help grow the potential sponsors business. If you can do that- many businesses big and small would love to hear all about your club.
If you have a significant enough sized club – say 100 players, the goal should be to try and work out how big your community can actually become. Most players will have a partner, family & friends and numerous work & social media contacts. A club database could easily grow from 100 players to 1,000 supporters. These are the sorts of numbers small businesspeople want to hear- especially if you can demonstrate you can influence their purchases.
Using COZ App you would be asking this community - access Sponsor offers and support these sponsors where possible.
Say you want a $1,000 sponsorship from a local lawyer and over a 12 month period the lawyer picks up five new customers linked to your 1,000 club supporters – I can guarantee you your $1,000 partnership with the lawyer will be the first bill paid each year as they have probably made over $10k from your five supporters (knowing how lawyers charge).
Whenever I advise clubs regarding sponsorship- I suggest creating a couple of sponsorship categories – Gold, Silver and Bronze is a pretty easy approach with Gold being companies giving the most, Silver being middle of the road and Bronze can be considered entry level sponsorship used to get businesses involved with your club and to start building a fruitful relationship.
COZ App is the perfect tool for attracting Bronze / entry level businesses to your club and if you can demonstrate you can connect them to your supporters (say by bringing them five new customers), they will happily sign on as a sponsor and may even be open to moving to a Silver or Gold level partnership.
I have identified 36 different categories of sponsor that each club should have at least one of each on their books. You'll be surprised once you start tapping into your community and talking more about business development (as opposed to a donation) how many local businesses higding under your nose will be keen to partner with your club.
