In this episode of the Nonprofit Founders Club, hosts Vanessa and Antoinette discuss how nonprofits can expand their sponsorship revenue by thinking beyond traditional naming rights. They outline a wide range of unconventional sponsorship assets—staff jackets, swag bags, misting or water stations, parking lot signage, stage segments, golf holes, head wraps, branded cups, activation stations, and more—showing how each can be offered to sponsors. The conversation stresses the importance of tailoring sponsorship packages to a sponsor’s specific marketing goals rather than using a one‑size‑fits‑all approach. They advise pricing activations to include a profit margin, ensuring the sponsor’s investment also benefits the event and attendees, creating a win‑win scenario. Before pitching sponsors, they recommend building a solid audience foundation (website, social media, email list) so sponsors see value in the reach. Finally, they encourage listeners to start planning early, scout other events for asset ideas, and promote Antoinette’s nonprofit‑startup program with a call‑to‑action to nonprofitfoundersclub.com.
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Hey, hey, hey! This afternoon for some of us, and some of us it's morning time, and some of us just anytime.
Yes. So today we thought we'd spend a little bit of time since we're talking about sponsors, um, and we've been talking in the Founders Club, Nonprofit Founders Club, how to get sponsors interested in, you know, taking a financial role in your event. And, uh, this month we've been kind of exploring— or this week anyway, just kind of exploring, um, how to sell your assets.
Yeah.
So what kind of assets do you have at your event that you could sell to the sponsor?
So yeah, because, because, uh, an event is like— it's a buyer's and a seller's market. So the sponsors, they want to buy something. It's like, but what do you have to sell that's so different and so unique that they can— that they want to buy? Because they're buying because they want to be able to have access to your audience. And so it's like, what do you have to offer them? So that's some of the things we're going to talk about. It's like, what do you have to offer? So as soon as I do this with my jacket, I'm like, hmm, maybe we can have— you can have jackets there and you can have the sponsor's name on your jackets for all your staff. So you can say, you know what, We're having this huge event. We want all of our staff to have a certain jacket. Would you be the sponsor for these jackets? Because you can sell anything to them, but you want to make sure that you're tailoring it specifically to their need. You know, I see a lot of people doing sponsorship, and I know you've seen it too, Antoinette. People do a sponsorship and they have just these plain old packets, the same packets. For $10,000, you get this. For $5,000, you get this. And for this. But one size does not fit all. And that's what a lot of us do, is we do one size fits all. When we come to sponsor. And that's how it used to be in the past, but now, right now, it's like, mm-mm, we don't, we don't want that anymore. We want things that's tailored to our company. So let's talk about some of the assets that you could possibly sell at an event.
Yeah, so I think you, you hit on one when you said jackets. Most of us always go to an event and there are bags, swag bags. So those sponsors could you know, have their names. They could provide all of those bags that, you know— and also, I think— and you correct me— but what we're not saying is it's only the sponsor's name. It's your name, but the bags are sponsored by, and then it's the sponsor's name.
Yes, you can have a bag with multiple sponsors or just one sponsor, but you want to tailor to them. So say you're having an event and it's hot. You could have someone sponsor a misting tank, a misting station, a water station. You could have someone sponsor a cell phone station. If you're having an event and you have a parking lot, someone could be like, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you $5,000. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sponsor the parking lot, and I want a big banner outside that says whatever the name of your event is, parking lot courtesy of, and I want my nonprofit, my, my business name on there. So that means everybody that comes into this parking lot, they know who sponsored. And if you're giving them a parking ticket, the name is on that parking ticket of who sponsored it. But then everybody else who drives by gets to see their name. So that's getting a lot of traffic. Sponsors love to see they're making an imprint and they're getting lots of traffic and people are knowing them.
Yeah, one of, one of my favorite ones too is if you have a stage and you have presenters, you have um, entertainment. Each one of those activities can be sponsored by a different person, you know, or you make a huge packet and the one person can sponsor all stage events. But, um, each, each one of those items can be, uh, sponsored. Classrooms— you have a classroom on a certain subject. You, you know, Vanessa and I earlier were talking about golfing. And, uh, I remember, um, the organization that I sat on the board for, one of them, we used to do a golf event. Every hole was sponsored by someone.
Yeah, 18 holes.
Yeah, 18 holes, 18 sponsors. Um, then we had a hole-in-one sponsor, um, and that was usually something huge like a car. So do we get the local car dealership to put a car out and say, if you hit a hole-in-one, you get, you know, this car? So all of those, right? Each one of those things. If you have a concession stand, you know, you can have that area be sponsored by someone. And the way that that would kind of work too— well, one of the ways that that could work is if the vendors are— if you're doing a community event and you want people in the community to come out, so you're not selling tables, then you can have the whole area sponsored by someone. So, uh, and that's when we kind of go back to make sure that your sponsor matches your event. So, um, you, you just want to make sure you keep that.
So yes, it really is. And like, say for instance, I was speaking with someone yesterday, I was like, you know what, you could do almost anything. And she had this beautiful head wrap on. You know, I, you know, I love my head wraps. I haven't been rocking them lately, but I love my head wraps. But the beautiful hem— can you imagine you having an event, a cultural event, right? And you have the head wraps, and then you have a tie, and then at the back of your head, right, everybody has somebody's logo on it. A sponsor, right? And so somebody can sponsor the wraps. You know, people— there is, there's an unlimited idea, but you want to talk to the sponsor. Don't just go to a sponsor and say, this is what you get. It's like, what is it that you need? What would you like to do? There may be some activation stations that you want to sell. I want to sell an activation station. So say, for instance, you have a sponsor who wants to come in, and the activation is like they get to be there and they're selling something. You know, they are saying like, say for instance, I have a, um, a spa company and I have this new spa that's coming up and I want people to get it for the summertime. I may bring my, my spas there, send them out and let people test them out, let people test the jet speed. And, and so they get to activate at that time and be able to— so you may have a station that they may, um, be able to participate in on that. But one thing I want to say, regardless of whatever you do, I want you to think about something, and we go a little bit more in depth in this in the membership club, is if you have, if you have a sponsor who says, I want something special, not something special that's outside of what you would be doing at your event, and you're like, oof, that's going to cost X amount of dollars, that's fine because they will pay for that. Plus you can get an extra, add a little extra money onto that so you can make a profit, because remember, we're doing fundraisers, okay? So don't just say, okay, that if I come and I say, well, you know, I want you to build me a special platform because I want to, I want to display my car on this special platform. And you're like, okay, it's going to cost $2,000 to build that platform, so I'm going to charge you $2,000. No, you need to charge them a little bit more. And then you also want to think about, is this particular activation or what they want to have added to our event, is it going to benefit the event and make the event better, or is it going to benefit the participants, is going to make their experience better? And those are things that you want to talk about. So remember, all money is not necessarily good money, right? But you can always make it so it's a win-win situation. So you want to make sure it's always a win-win situation, but really think totally outside the box when you're thinking about doing sponsorship. And I know today, Antonia, we didn't touch on the same— we didn't touch on the regular things like naming rights, presenting rights, you know, we didn't, we didn't talk about those because those are regular. So we really want to talk about some things that we sometimes we just don't think about, you know. You have your websites, you have your social media site But if you are thinking about doing an event and you haven't done it yet and you're a new nonprofit, this is what I'm going to encourage you to do before you really get started. Make sure you have your website and you're getting traffic there, your social media, and you're starting to get social media there, that you have some type of following. People know who you are because when sponsors are coming out looking, they're looking at all the assets you have to sell. Yeah, their goal is to get access to your audience. If you have a small audience, they may be like, um, check back with me in a year. So if you're a new nonprofit and you don't have any of those set up, or if you're a seasoned nonprofit and you've been so busy doing the work and you haven't really gotten social media, I'm gonna recommend you get into social media. You have to get your email list going, your websites, your social media. So, um, I can go on and on because there's so much to selling events versus saying, hey, I got my nonprofit status, I'm having an event, give me, give me some sponsorship money. It goes deeper than that. It's about building those relationships too.
Yeah. And I think I just want to piggyback on what you said, and that is, um, think of— think outside of the box. Think of the things that you have that you can sell at that event. So I mean, and just about anything to everything. If there's a soda fountain, you have cups. You put— you allow the company to put their logo on the cup. So, um, you know, so that's just us encouraging you to think outside of the box. Think of how you can increase sponsorship by giving sponsors what it is they want. So create unique packages for them based on their desired way of reaching your market.
That's it, that's it. So this is good, we can go on and on, but we don't have a lot of time. So next week we're going to touch on how to really find and identify leads. We're not talking about sponsors yet because we have to find leads. And where do we get our leads from to turn them into prospects, to turn them into sponsors? So next week, that's what we're going to talk about, is how to find leads for your event. But in the meantime start thinking about your event if you haven't thought about it yet. Go visit other events and start looking at, um, what assets they have and what assets that you can have at your event. So even if you're not doing your event for a year away, it's never too early to get started on thinking about that.
All right, all right, thank you.
So we look forward to— and oh, one more thing, for those of you— I'm going to put this out there— for those of you who have not started your nonprofit, if you're thinking about starting your nonprofit Antoinette teaches a phenomenal step-by-step process on starting and building your nonprofit. Starting it, it's like getting all your legal paperwork done. So when you're scratching your head, you're like, I don't understand all this legal mumble jumble, she's got you. She's got you through the step-by-step process. So if you're ready to start your nonprofit, go ahead, hit us up at www.nonprofitfoundersclub.com. Get your nonprofit started, get your nonprofit rocking and rolling. We'll see you later.
