How Your Organization Supports Sponsors' Goals
So what motivates a corporation to work with your non-profit organization or festival/event, and how can you be sure that you’re able to compete with a valuable offering?


Visit this section regularly to find a wealth of information by marketing, event, and corporate sponsorship strategist Gail Bower. Topics include:
Assets & Revenue | Corporate Sponsorship | Events & Festivals | Experience | Future | Marketing | Strategy & Change
So what motivates a corporation to work with your non-profit organization or festival/event, and how can you be sure that you’re able to compete with a valuable offering?
Changes in the media landscape signal an interesting opportunity for non-profit organizations and other properties with high-value corporate sponsorship programs.
In your work with the corporate sector, are you frustrated when most corporations select the least expensive level of support for your event? Do you struggle to engage corporations at higher levels? Do your organization’s calls to corporate leaders often go ignored?
If you lead an organization as its executive director or CEO or as a board member, you may be charged with hiring a sponsorship staff member and not know how to evaluate candidates. Or, perhaps you’re considering a career transition from the for-profit to the nonprofit sector, and sponsorship is an area you’re considering.
Here's a list of the top 10 skills and characteristics:
I can scarcely think of a worse sales pitch than, “We’re broke, and we need your money to pay our bills.”
Selling sponsorship can be tough. Like the 1978 voiceover intro on ESPN’s predecessor, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, used to say about sports, selling involves both “the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.”
On particularly down days, it’s easy to feel powerless, as if you have very little control over the fates of your sales. But if you put yourself in the shoes of a buyer — through your imagination or the actual pathways of your career — you’ll quickly reconsider that notion.