Amy, a music teacher, wants to fund scholarships for low-income students. Evan Carmichael says target donors who already love music, partner with a registered charity for tax receipts, use student video testimonials to show impact, and calculate the exact cost to sponsor one child per year so donors see concrete results.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question about getting sponsorship for a music program from one of my readers, so let's take a look. So this question came in from Amy. Thanks for the question. So, Evan, congrats on all the hard work you put into your videos and all the success we've had. 'Your website just popped up.' I said, 'We help entrepreneurs. I hope you can help me.' 'I'm never gonna run a million-dollar business, but I do hope to help others. My name is Amy. I'm a music graduate, and I maintain a studio for private and group musician instruction, which basically means I make very little money. However, I'm currently in the process of establishing a music scholarship program for low-income and disadvantaged families. I'm seeking sponsorship, donors, sponsors in behalf of these prospective students. I know very little about business, I just want to help those less fortunate to be able to do something everyone should be able to do, take music lessons. What I hope to do is gain music donations, donations for scholarships, and set up something that will be self-sustaining and ongoing, allowing new students to be scholarshiped each year. So thanks for the question, Amy. It's a great initiative, congratulations on wanting to set that up. I think a part of any business should be to also contribute back to the community around you. It not only makes your community better, but it also makes you feel good and you know you're doing some good in the world. So in terms of getting Now when it comes to getting sponsorship, this can be a tough challenge. There's a lot of competition that you're going up against. I think to make this work, what you want to do is find people who have an interest in music. So why would somebody want to put money into this instead of another charity, right? You're going up against some big dogs and people are used to donating a certain amount of money to certain charities. Every year. One thing that may be a challenge is that you're, you know, probably not set up as a charity, so to be able to accept donations, then you want to be able to give tax receipts. People expect to be able to give tax receipts, so, you know, it's another incentive to want to give money. So if you're not able to do that yet, you may want to partner up with another charity or have them act as what's called a fiscal agent. So they're your fiscal agent, and they basically allow you to create tax receipts in total legal ways. You partner up with the charity and they're going to give you the money. Donors give the charity the money and then the charity gives you the money. That might be a big hurdle that you'd have to overcome to try to get people to give you money for it. What I try to do is tell the story too. So talk about some of the people who you have helped or the people who you want to help and you can see the impact that you're having. So if you're already giving some lessons or if you're doing some for free on the side just to start helping out, See if you can even do a little video clip to have them on camera and say, "Here's how music has changed my life, and I've come from here and I've gotten to here because of music, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else." You want to have a story that kind of tugs at the heartstrings because your competition's all doing it, right? All the other charities are doing something similar as well. But hopefully by doing that and then reaching out to people within your community, you're probably going to find sponsors from people who are in the local area instead of kind of national or international. Although, you know, you never know. You can look at projects like Kickstarter, which raises money for these types of initiatives. Some are, you know, just funding for different projects in the arts, and some are actually to set up a business. But you can check out Kickstarter.com, and if you had a video that clearly explained what you're doing and shows the emotional and real impact that you're having, then that will make it a lot easier to be able to convince somebody to be able to give you money. So I look at a couple resources. Again, just to recap, look at places like Kickstarter.com, look at your own local community, and I'd also try to find a fiscal agent to be able to accept charitable receipts for me so I can be, be a charity and not just be a regular organization. Apart from that, you want to figure out definitely how much you need. So establish as part of your marketing to know How much does it take to sponsor one child for a year? Right? What's it going to cost me to be able to do this? So I can get a clear understanding of the impact that I can have and how much it's going to cost. So hopefully that helps. It's a great question. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you. And I'd love to hear if you have a comment on this video, some extra suggestions that you might want to give. And also, if you have a question about your business, I'd love to hear it. Please leave in the comments below. It makes me, uh, always makes my day when I see comments coming in. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.
