How to Get Corporate Sponsors for Your Nonprofit

Welcome to today's event, How to Get Corporate Sponsors for Your Nonprofit. It's my pleasure to introduce our wonderful expert today. David is great. Um, so I'll keep the intro short. David is the CEO and founder of Wow Digital, Inc. Um, does very experience in lab and digital solutions, architect, designer, and project management. So without further ado, I'll uh go ahead and stop sharing my screen and hand it over to you David. Welcome everybody. Looking forward to today's session. I am going to share my screen. Today is going to be probably a little bit of a different type of webinar. I'm going to say this is going to be like a webinar and workshop. So buckle up. All righty. We're we're here because getting corporate sponsors is one of the most effective ways for nonprofits and charities to raise funds and increase your reach, right? But we know that it can definitely be a challenging task, especially for those who might just be starting out or a little bit smaller. In the workshop today, we're going to be talking about strategies for attracting corporate sponsors to your organization as well as highlighting some real life examples uh of organizations who are doing this really really well and have been doing this very successfully. So, in terms of these problems, these are really the ones that hit home the most. Let me know uh in the chat. I've got it open here if this resonates with you. um you know, limited funding options. It's hard to make connections in the corporate world. Uh maybe you're unsure about how to actually be visible. But by the end of today, you're going to learn how to start connecting and attracting corporate sponsors, the next steps to building those relationships, and ways to actually start increasing your funding. And I've got six questions that I want you to think about as we go through today. Just kind of keep them in the back of your mind. You know, what is your nonprofit's current fundraising strategy? What are the types of potential sponsors that align with your organization's mission and values? What are the benefits of corporate sponsorships beyond financial support for your organization? How can your organization provide value to potential sponsors? It is a two-way street and we're going to talk about that as well. uh the importance of building strong relationships with your sponsors. And then the the last one, the sixth one is the impact that corporate sponsorships can have on your nonprofits work services, programs, offerings, etc. So, thinking about all those things, what I want you to do in the chat is I I like to be a little bit interactive here. here. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, where one is like the lowest and 10 is the highest, how happy are you with your corporate sponsorship strategy. Numbers are flying through. Awesome. Awesome. I'm glad everybody found. So, we've got some ones, twos, a zero. Terry, I imagine zero is probably maybe you don't have one. By the end of today's session, you are going to have one or at least 3/4 of the way. We're going to get through the workshop, through the workbook. We might not be able to finish it in the time that we have, but hopefully uh it'll set you on a really, really strong path. Maria's got a six. Okay, feeling good, but no, there's some room for improvement there. Lots of ones, twos. Alli's got a seven. Awesome. A minus one from Laura. Okay. Don't have one. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's what I'm hearing a lot from a lot of our clients and prospects that we meet with and have conversations with. And that's one of the reasons that I'm here is to help you all out in a giant group setting here instead of one-on-one, right? We can hit more people up and uh give you the insight and information that you need in this session here. So, awesome, awesome, awesome. So, something else I want you to think about is where do you want your corporate fundraising to be? For anybody that doesn't have one, you probably just want it to be. For those that do have one or you've been thinking about like, you know, a year from now, 3 years, 5 years from now, how much of your revenue operating budget would you like to have coming in from corporate sponsorships? So, that's something to kind of think about. And then, how would you also like corporate sponsors to help drive your mission forward? When we think about sponsorships and businesses, corporations and involvement, a lot of times we think about money, but there's more to it than just money, right? It could be time, it could be effort, it could be marketing, it could be shared experiences. There's there's a whole bunch of stuff, and we're going to definitely get into that today. And, you know, we've got some stuff today. Obviously, there's going to be the workshop. That's kind of the main thing that we're here for. But, I do have an offer in here as well for a free website audit. That's going to save you $500. That's what we typically uh just under 500 is what we charge for that. I have an ebook that I'll get to all of you that want it. It's three simple words to increase your donations by 20%. Super easy to implement in your organization. And recently I actually wrote a book uh it's 101 ready to copy and paste prompts for nonprofits and associations. So we'll talk about that later on. Okay. So now my formal introduction. Hi, I'm David Pacer. I'm the CEO and founder of WOW Digital. I'm also a business coach and mentor. I work with organizations to help them grow and scale and streamline processes, that kind of stuff. I've got over 30 years of web experience. I've got uh over 26 years in nonprofits and associations in that sector. I've been interviewed in over 30 podcasts. I've been cited in a PhD dissertation. I taught design and programming at two colleges uh in Ontario. I was the lead developer in the dotcom boom in 99. I worked there for 2 months. We went from 0 to million dollars and went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Uh so lots and lots of experience. Wow digital which is my agency. We just passed May was our 10th anniversary. We've done over 320 projects with organizations like yours, small and large. And in uh 2021, I also started a podcast. Maybe some of you have heard of it. Hopefully, ideally, all of you have heard of it, but nonprofit digital success podcast. Check it out. It's on I think there's like 12 different podcast platforms. It's also on our website, so you just go to wowdigital.com. But really, why am I here? I'm here because I have a big hairy audacious goal which is to work with 5,000 organizations to improve the lives of 100 million people through the use of technology and digital solutions. If any of you take one thing that I've talked about today and go and either talk to somebody about it, implement something, even if you don't hire us, like we would love to work with all of you, but even if you you're helping me get closer to my goals. So, thank you all for taking time from your calendar, from your schedule, from the craziness of your to-do and task list to be here and join today. These are just some of the organizations we've worked with over the past couple of years. All right. So, by the end of the day today, I want you to ask yourself a question. Are you ready to make a change and have a clear path to corporate partnerships? That's really the thing. We can sit we can plan. We can have conversations. is you can I I don't know if this would resonate with any of you sitting in a boardroom talking with people in your team or volunteers or consultants that have come in maybe on Zoom and you have conversations but you never actually take that step forward right you need to actually commit to take some kind of action and hopefully by going through the workbook today you're going to feel empowered to take that action. So to attract corporate sponsors, nonprofits need to shift their thinking and start approaching potential sponsors with a business mindset. Okay. So I one of the things I typically say is you need to run your nonprofit, your organization like a business. And we need to be thinking about it in that kind of way because really you need money coming in so that you can pay for your team, your staff, your rent, your services, your materials, whatever it is that your organization does. It does take some kind of money at some point and you need money coming in for that. So what does this actually mean? It means identifying what value you can offer to potential sponsors and understanding what they're looking for in a partnership. And to do this, you need to conduct some research on potential sponsors. Identify how your organization can help them meet their business goals. Right? Nonprofits should also be clear on the benefits that their organization can offer. Whether it's brand exposure, access to a specific target audience, or the ability to connect with socially conscious consumers. All right. Uh one example is World Wildlife Fan uh I can't speak fund. World Wildlife Fund. They're known globally for their efforts to protect endangered species, promote sustainable living, etc., etc. They forge alliances with Coca-Cola, Tiffany, and Google. But these aren't just about getting donations. They ensure their corporate partners also get some kind of value, offering them key insights and resources. But why does this matter? Because framing their partnerships as mutually beneficial business relationships rather than just charitable donations, they've managed to secure longlasting ties with major corporations. They've raised $55 million in just one year from these partnerships and they've achieved notable conservation outcomes like 1.5 million km involving 15 million people in conversation efforts etc. So from this example, it's clear when nonprofits approach partnerships with a business mindset that they can unlock powerful opportunities. So the one thing I probably should have started off with, the examples that I have are large, well-known organizations, and you're probably thinking to yourself, okay, they have big budgets, massive budgets, they are well-known, people are familiar with them. And yes, that definitely ties into part of it, but these are just examples to help you start get the wheels turning in. Okay, here's how they're doing it. We're a lot smaller than them. You know, our operating budget is, you know, $50,000 or a million dollar a year, somewhere in between. How can we do this? The idea is to spark thought and ideas to get the ball rolling with it. Uh so another example is CCS, the Canadian Cancer Society. They stand out as a nonprofit that thinks like a business and it paid off in their corporate sponsorships. They launched unique events. So, they have something called Relay for Life, which invites businesses not just not just to donate, but actively participate in this 24-hour fundraising relay that they do. They're not offering a one-sizefits-all sponsorship. They create custom partnerships that sync with a company's brand and values. Right? So major partners, they've got Shoppers Drug Mart, CIBC, RBC. I I noticed when we asked where you're from a lot, we're in the US. CIBC in Canada, we have uh 678 major banks. CIBC and RBC are two of the largest ones uh that we have. In 2019, granted that was like 7 years ago, they raised over $22 million through these corporate ties that they have. And they're making real change. Over the last 5 years, they've channeled more than 129 million to cancer research. So, they're making huge seismic shifts. And really, how how does their websites play into all of that? In our digital world, a compelling online presence is really vital. Both WWF and uh CCS mastered this by leveraging their website with a business mindset. So their site spells out clear partnership benefits, brand boost, engaging employees, a green footprint. They amplify their reach with targeted digital campaigns on social, email, etc. With CCS, their site has a rich partnership section, not just listing benefits, but also showcasing real success stories. They're both one thing to note is both of these organizations are, yes, they're big, but they're not passive, right? They're using their digital pa platforms proactively to reach, inform, and collaborate with corporate partners. Okay, so creating engaging content is really a critical shift for nonprofits looking to attract corporate sponsors. It's essential to have a strong online presence that's attractive and engaging to potential sponsors. Those two are need to work handinand for sure. So nonprofits need to focus on creating highquality, relevant and inspiring content that will actually capture attention of potential sponsors. So creative uh creative and compelling storytelling that showcases your impact of your organization, eye-catching visuals, making it clear how potential sponsors actually do help. At the end of the day, you could also consider targeted content that speaks to specific needs and interests of potential sponsors. So, one example is Charity Water. At their core, they provide clean, safe drinking water to developing nations. That's really what they're at. When you visit their site, you're not bombarded with facts. You're taken on a journey through it. Powerful stories, compelling images. They don't just inform, but they also resonate. They create an emotional connection. And that's what we want to do. We want to create this this emotional um connection with people that makes them want to read more, get involved, help, support, click on that call to action link to to participate, right? And that's what we want them to do. Their strategy attracted organizations like Google, Lyft, Nike. They raised $14 million through corporate partnerships. And so that's really some some uh very impactful movement that they've had. They showcase the potency of engaging content, right? They don't just share a mission, but they make you really feel like a part of it. And another great example is David Suzuki Foundation. So they're Canadian nonprofit. Um if you're not in Canada, you've probably heard of David Suzuki. He's been an environmentalist scientist for I don't know probably 40 or 50 years. They created their blue dot campaign which uses digital experiences to educate and engage supporters about the importance of protecting Canada's air, water, soil. And this helped form partnerships with organizations like Mech, Patagonia, and Van City. They raised I believe it was about $2.5 million through their corporate partnerships. Okay, so their websites, right? Charity water site has dedicated corporate partnership section includes information about benefits of partnering with them and a list of current partners. Send an ebook donation problem. Yes, I'm just I'm sorry. I'm just taking a look at what's happening in the chat here. Okay. Uh so all those all those details about the uh the book, the prompts, the website, that's all going to be later on uh after the workshop part. So hang in with us and I've got all the details as part of the slide deck. Yeah. So, Charity Water, uh, they use their digital marketing to promote their corporate partnerships and, uh, social media campaigns, email newsletters, digital ads, all that type of stuff. David Suzuki Foundation again also has a dedicated corporate partnership section. They talk about the benefits of partnering with them, uh, such as brand exposure and environmental impact. So, organizations that are really interested in preserving the environment, renewable, etc., etc., they're all really reaching out to them because that's part of the foundation's core values and mission. One thing um that I do want to mention before we continue is about the website audit. So, if you do want to take some kind of action right now, uh if you're feeling that your efforts aren't working for you, for the organization, you can just head over to wowdigital.com/ audit to receive um sorry, to reserve your uh your free website audit and I'll drop a link right here in the chat for all of you. All right. Uh I'm going to keep going through. If you open that up, go for it. It's a really quick thing. You just pick a date. we need a little bit of information uh so we could actually run the audit for you. And uh the third shift, this is the one that nonprofits need to make strong relationships with potential sponsors. To do this, you need to take the time to understand the needs and interests of the sponsors, the businesses, organizations you're trying to reach out to, and tailor your approach accordingly. You need to build relationships, which means focusing on the long-term benefits of a partnership rather than a one-time financial contribution. So, this is investing time and effort into understanding the goals. Super easy to do now with AI. If you wanted to leverage AI to find corporate partnerships and and to go out there and do some uh initial research and development for you, you can definitely use that to uh to build that up. But you need to engage in open and honest communication. and you need to provide regular updates on your impact of their support, right? If you're going to ask for $10,000 from a local business, 5,000, 200,000, they're going to want to know the impact that's happening because they can go to their shareholders, to their annual reports, to their management, and say, "Hey, look at this great impact we're having." And maybe they want to promote it that they're doing this in the community, right? So building strong relationships your nonprofit can increase the likelihood of securing long-term support from corporate sponsors. And a really great example of this is Habitat for Humanity Canada. So they are a nonprofit that has successfully built strong relationships with corporate sponsors. They developed long-term partnerships with businesses like Lowe's, Home Depot, Seco, Habitat for Humanity. They build homes. They need supplies. They need lumber, they need siding, they need bricks, they need electrical wire, they need all kinds of stuff. So, it's logical that they would go and try to connect with these companies that sell or manufacture these type of products, right? So, they went out found somebody that or found a few or businesses that are in the niche in their sector, right? and they tied what they do to specific businesses to get them to participate in sponsorship. They raised over $11 million through corporate partnerships which helped them build over 700 homes. Talk about impact 700 homes. That's about 1,400 families that they've been able to help. Uh they use digital marketing to promote uh their corporate partnerships including targeted social media campaigns and email newsletters. Where we at here? Okay, with all of that, I hope that there was a bit of inspiring thoughts there for you and, you know, getting the the brain muscle starting to kind of work and the the cog starting to turn a little bit here. I just wanted to check in and see how you're feeling about what I've been talking about so far today. if you want to mention anything in the chat, happy to uh to answer maybe quick little Q&A, maybe like two minutes, and then we can um get into the uh the workshop part here. >> Yeah, I got some questions here in the Q&A if you want to take a stab at those. Uh Michael said, uh would love to know any suggestions for organizations that are not direct service delivery. Many of these case studies and examples have been for orgs that support people, animals, and me directly. So, don't have a clear cut as call to action. So, they have an even harder sell to get corporate uh sponsorships. Are any suggestions there? >> If you want to drop in the chat like what does your organization do because it's it's it's a little bit vague. Every nonprofit charity has NGO, right? You have a mission, right? What does the mission say? So, it might it might not be directly serviceoriented, but there's a goal in mind there, right? So, if if I had a a little bit of a clue what what you work on, I could probably come up with maybe one or two quick ideas for you. >> Sweet. Let us know in the chat here, Michael, if some more details here. Um, let's see. We'll move on to one more question in the meantime. Learn, sorry if I mispronounced that, said, "My nonprofit is a small parent run volunteer booster club to support a high school band program. What do you marching band uniforms and it's a need that recurs every 10 years or so? What strategy would you utilize to finding corporate sponsors in a small town where all the other sport booster clubs are also vying for donors?" Hey. So, uh, you mentioned music, right? >> Uh, yes. For a high school band program. >> Okay. So, there's got to be organizations out there, businesses that have instruments. You don't need to necessarily think about just your immediate local as well, right? So, there are companies that manufacture instruments, whether they're drums, flutes, saxophones, all that kind of stuff. it might be worth reaching out to them. Uh maybe there's an opportunity that they donate some money, you put some of their logos on some of the musical instruments, uh get them a little bit more visibility. I think there's definitely opportunity to work with clothing manufacturers. Usually with bands, there's some kind of uh wardrobe that they need for for whatever whenever there's some kind of performance that they're doing. So, I think there's definitely an opportunity there for that. And it could even just be uh you know reaching out to uh to local council as well. Um a lot of people think that that corporate sponsorships are just businesses but it it is also the city the towns that you can approach with that as well. >> Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Um and then I believe uh you're asking like for some examples for the um previous question. And I see we have a few folks chimed in here. I don't see Michael's response unfortunately, but um you know folks are looking for an example. It might be a nonprofit that funds research on rare diseases or public libraries. Again, this is for organ just for organizations that are not direct delivery or service delivery. >> Yeah. So when you're when I think of public libraries, right, I imagine I'm I'm pushing 50. Okay. I'm 48. So I'm going back like 30 years when I 25 years ago when I was in school and I'd go to the libraries to do some research this that whatever stats of books all of that. There were a couple computers with like giant monitors and stuff. It might be worth reaching out to to tech companies, IT companies. Uh get some upgraded hardware. Uh reach out to telecom for internet providing uh or internet connectivity. it might be worth reaching out to businesses like um like Amazon to get some e-readers that people might be able to check out. I I think there's a lot in the tech space, but then you also think about sustainability, right? So, you can reach out to some construction companies to help uh implement some kind of better heating or cooling, maybe solar, things like that to help offset the ongoing costs that library infrastructure actually has. So, I think there's definitely opportunity there. >> Awesome. Awesome. Have a few more questions here. Um, up to you. I don't know if you want to take another one or >> take one more and then uh and then we'll get going. Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, you have Megan's here. Do you have any suggestions for very rural small nonprofits with limited local corporations that may that may even have enough funds to create a partnership? or is it worth even looking outside quote unquote local geography? >> I have two thoughts on this. Um I think you should definitely reach out locally and um there's a lot of push to support local, right? So if you're in a small community, it would make sense to reach out to folks in that community, but if there are a lot of like small businesses, they they might not have budget. they might not have the the profit margins to to provide any kind of monetary donation, right? The other thing we need to think about is do you need time from people? Do you need people's expertise? Do you need them to maybe come and sit on a board, volunteer? Uh if if you were an organization that was putting together back to school packages for um for children from lowincome families, right? Can they come and like help deliver things, right? It's not just about the money. It's about their service, their time, their expertise. If they're running a successful business, can they come in and help you with your bookkeeping even? Right? Like what what is it that you need help with outside of just money? So that that's kind of the first thought. The second I can't speak today. Oh my goodness. The second thought that I have is you definitely should be going outside of the area. There's a lot of big companies in your state. There's a lot that are across the country as well as international. Getting uh an organization that's in Australia to come and financially support you in some way. I think it's really hard to do that. But getting one that's maybe a threehour drive away, that's I think definitely more achievable. >> Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for that. A few more questions here, but we can save them till the end and those with your hands up um during the Q&A, we can also kind of allow you to unmute and ask your questions live as well. >> Awesome. All right. So, get back to the uh workshop. Yeah, I do I do have some time allocated for some more Q&A uh in here kind of like right near the end. So, if you do have any questions, throw them in the chat. We'll take note of them uh and we'll come back to those later on. At the same time though, at the end, I'll give you all my contact information, too. So, if you do want to connect with me oneonone, you can book a consult and we can chat. Absolutely. All right. So, just to give you a little bit uh of a refresh here. Uh speaking of consult, right? So, Wow Digital, we do web design, digital marketing. We help nonprofits get found and deal through the parts that they struggle with the most. And we want to help you jumpstart your digital strategy. And we have something called our mission accelerator program. and that's going to help you and allow you to get started, implement a website, digital marketing and strategy that will get you to where you want to be. So, this is for any nonprofit or charity. Uh, if you want, just head over to wow digital/cconult. I'll drop that link here in the uh chat as well. So, feel free to uh to book a call and we can get things going. So, all right, uh let's get to work. I am going to drop a link here. I have a fillable PDF file uh which is like super awesome because you can just save it. If you want to print it off, absolutely feel free to print it. Grab a pen, pencil, and write on it. Myself, I've got an iPad, so like I would load it on there with my Apple Pencil and whatever. All right, so here's the link. And uh it is using our kind of older branded style, so just kind of ignore that. the content is still awesome inside of it. So, the workbook is designed to guide you through the process of securing corporate partnerships and sponsorships. And with the help of the workbook, you're going to be able to understand the benefits of corporate sponsorships, identify potential sponsors, develop a strategy, create compelling sponsorship proposal, maybe a recognition program, leverage uh digital marketing and storytelling techniques, and ultimately build strong relationships with them. So, by the end of us going through this workbook, we're going to go through one by one. I'm going to talk through different parts. So, I'm going to pause and give you opportunity to fill it in, but when we get to the end of the workbook, you're going to have a clear understanding of how to secure corporate sponsorships that will align with with your organization's values and mission. And this is really going to be like the start of a toolkit for you to build those relationships. All right, so I know we've got uh until we've got another 50 minutes. Uh I do want to leave some time for some Q&A at the end. So I am going to on my phone here I'm going to set a let's say 45minut timer. We might be able to get through all of it. We might not. Um so uh if we do awesome and if we don't that's okay because you have this document. You can use it and you can you can fill it out. The link is to a Dropbox link and so download it. Uh, if it does, I think it'll automatically download. If it doesn't, just click the download link, save it locally. I am going to switch my screen sharing over to the workbook. Excellent. Excellent. So, I've got it open up here on my screen and let's uh for anybody that might need it again, there it is. Hopefully, now I'm actually sending the message to everyone. So, ens uh hopefully you can see that link that I just uh pasted in there. Okay. So, we are going to start going through the document here. Perfect, Tony. Awesome. All right. So, this welcome message here. This is what everything I just said on the before we before I shared this. Uh, so we're just going to kind of skip this. So, this is the first page of uh of the PDF. Um, it's a 12-page document. And feel free if you want to, like I mentioned, if you want to print it off and work through it that way, that works. If you want to use Acrobat Reader, uh you should be able to uh to fill this in. Um I don't think you need Pro for this. So the whole document is set up exactly the same as this. So questions to consider, possible action steps, and then any kind of notes that you want to make. All right. So we're going to pause in between each one. If you want to kind of work ahead, if you've got, you know, the first one and you want to go to the second question in here, feel free. Uh work at your own pace. But I am going to go through all the questions or as many as we can uh in the time that we've got here. So >> those questions, sorry I thought I talked about the chat questions. I'll I'll let you go. Sorry. >> I It's all good. So uh some questions to consider. The first one here, what are the goals and values of your organization? What is your mission and purpose? And it's very possible most organizations have a page on their website called mission, vision, values, something kind of like that or it might be a message on your about page. But I would encourage you to try to distill that down to maybe 5 to 10 words, right? A a lot of time there's a lot of corporate jargon that's thrown into that and it's like over years and years and years depending on how long your organization's been around. Uh so for example um thinking about your goals and your values, what is a possible action step that you can take? Right? So a possible action step could be uh research potential corporate sponsors and see what their values and goals are. Do they align? Right? Like Habitat for Humanity, right? They want to help people build homes. Home Depot and Lowe's, they sell home building supplies, right? Cool. That sounds like a good alignment. I'm going to pause maybe for like 30 seconds or so in between each one here. That way it gives you some time to think a little bit. Okay, so the next one here is what unique offerings does your nonprofit have? Right. What I would recommend is to define the benefits that you can offer to potential corporate sponsors. Something else that you could do is maybe develop a pitch for the sponsors, a slide deck, an email template that you send. And the third one on here on this page is what are some potential challenges to securing sponsors? Right? How can what what's the action step that you can take around that? Right? off the top of my head, create a plan for addressing common challenges that you might have. Like where do we even find them? What's the benefit of them partnering with us or sponsoring us? So really coming out of that, how can you can you develop a strategy for building relationships with sponsors? If you're thinking of going and getting corporate sponsors, you should have a strategy for it, right? We're going to go over to the uh the next page here. So, when we're thinking about our potential sponsors values, their mission, what they want to achieve, how do yours align with theirs, right? Have they ever worked or sponsored another organization? One of the things to do would be to check out their social media. A lot of organizations when they volunteer, they go to a food bank, the homeless shelter, whatever, they'll take some pictures, they'll talk about it, that kind of thing, right? If they've already worked with an organization, that tends to be an easier ask to have them also work with you because they've got some experience and exposure to it. You're looking at a little bit of a larger organization, so probably maybe 100 employees or more. They probably have a corporate social responsibility document policy, something like that. You might be able to find it on their website. I just want to get I guess a little bit of a I'm curious like am I going through these too quick? Do you want me to give you a bit more time in between? I want to make sure I'm at a good pace. Okay, awesome. This is also going to be recorded so there'll be a replay if you need to come back and um and rewatch any part of it. That'll be available as well. Okay. And so the the second part of this one is what are some different sponsorship packages that you can offer? What are the benefits? Right? How is each level going to be structured? What would the cost be of each one? I'm not asking you to plan that all out right now. That's going to take some some more thinking through it for sure. Emma, no problem. No problem. Sit and enjoy. Listen to my lovely soothing voice. Right. you know what promotional opportunities would be there, right? So, coming out of this, you know, a good action step would be something like developing a tiered sponsorship proposal, right? So, uh when we talk about tiers, there's something Oh, I forget what it's called. Oh my gosh. If you put packages together, you want to have an uneven number of them. So, usually I would I would recommend that you have three tiers. uh like a low, mid, high, it's called price anchoring is what it is on the sales side of stuff. The the middle tier is kind of the thing that most people would kind of gravitate towards. For anybody that, oh, you know, they don't have a lot of money or they don't have as much, you've got a lower tier or somebody that wants more involvement, they would go up to the higher tier. Um, so think of this as kind of like a matrix. So if you had, okay, here's all the different ways that we could promote the sponsorship, what they get for it, etc., etc., uh you can figure out if you want to do tiers where and what is included in which tier. So obviously the bigger the tier the more value it would have in there more benefits more exposure that type of thing. Robin a prospectus I think I guess a prospectus maybe um but I think prospectuses are more for getting like investments or getting a loan. I'm thinking of this more like a slide deck type of thing or a brochure, something that uh you can call up uh a local business or, you know, state or federal national organization and say, "Hey, we're doing this thing. We're looking for sponsorships. I can send something over to you. We're doing a a two kilometer run, five mile run, whatever it is. We'd love, you know, like your logo on everybody's t-shirts, right? Here's what you get for kind of And then it would be uh a document that you can send over to them and just kind of like a a one or two pager type document. A prospectus I think is usually more like here's all your financial data for the last like 5 10 15 years. Uh here's how many people are involved in the organization. And it might be okay to include a little bit of that detail in the slide deck. Like we're an organization of 15 employees. We have 100 volunteers. we help this many people in our community with this thing that they're struggling with. We would love for you to participate in helping XY Z and reshaping this or that that type of thing. Yes, this is going to be recorded. Um, and there will be a replay available. It'll it might take a day or two uh or three for for that to get up, but yeah, there will be a replay that will be sent down. I'm going to say shortly afterwards, but it might be a few days. Right. So, we're going to jump to the next page here. So, like I was talking about earlier in the presentation, it's not just all about money, right? It could be in kind donations that you would need, right? So, if you're putting together food hampers, right? Maybe you need baskets or bags or wrap or twist ties or delivery cars to go or trucks or whatever to drive around and drop stuff off, right? So, what types of inkind donations could you use? If you think about Oh, there's a little typo in here. What types of products or services? There should be a space there. You know, like what what types of things do you use? Maybe it's toilet paper in the bathrooms. I don't know. Like what does your organization use? There's always stuff that you need. You know, maybe it can be incline instead of just money, right? So, an action step from that might be to look at all the invoices that you've had for the last two months or three months or a year, right? see where you're spending the most money and go, "Oh, what are we spending this money on? Okay, we need some maybe we can go and get support for this or for that or to to get these things donated to us." If you're buying a lot of stuff from a vendor, like let's say you were a daycare, right? Not some some of them are are nonprofit, most of them aren't. But let's say you're a daycare and you feed you provide meals to the kids, making sure they're like nutree and allergy free and blah blah blah, all that stuff. Maybe the supplier can donate something and you promote them in your email or on your website or on social media, right? I would say an an action step would be to consider offering in kind sponsorships, but identifying what those pieces are would be the action step. Something else that might be helpful is a lot of organizations do they have like an annual gala or an online auction or an in-person auction, maybe getting some prizes for that. There's lots of sports teams across the country. Maybe there's a somebody with with, you know, seasons tickets to something and they'd be willing to donate a pair of tickets. And then kind of hand in hand, and I've I've kind of talked about this a little bit through the presentation today, is what types of recognition can you offer sponsors, right? So, can you feature them on your website, thanking them at events, putting them their logo in your annual report, uh, in your marketing materials, right? So, I think if you were to create maybe a sponsor recognition program uh that would publicly acknowledge them, that could be super helpful as well. Aside from the as we're going to continue obviously going through this, but I'm just curious, aside from the action steps that I'm mentioning, are things coming to mind about, oh yeah, we could we could do this or we can do that or we should think about this. Anything else kind of like sparking some ideas for you? You don't have to tell me what they are. You can just say like yes or no in the chat. That's okay. Okay. Awesome. Amazing. Yeah, Emmy. Uh sorry, Emma. That is that's one of the reasons there are graphic designers out there, right? Uh so it could be infographic, it could be slide deck, it could be photos, it could be a video that talks about all of that and and how to make it visually pleasing. The one thing that I would advise against, Chat GBT is really awesome at making graphics. Canva is as well. What we're seeing though is that a lot of the graphics they produce, you can really easily tell that they're created with AI. So, it might be really good for creating like an initial concept, but if you have some budget, I would recommend uh getting a graphic designer to take that and turn it into into something that doesn't look like it was generated by AI for your organization. Maybe that's something you might be you might have a volunteer or maybe there's a design agency. If you have a web company that's already helping support you, they probably have some designers that you might be able to ask them, hey, you know, we have this social media graphic. This is our idea, our concept. Can they make something that's on brand for you? So, that that might be a way to get some help there as well. Okay. All right. So, we're going to go to the next page here. All right. So, what are some key messages, right? And we want to create a content strategy. Uh, so a lot of people think about like a marketing strategy or a business strategy. A lot of people aren't really thinking about having a content strategy, right? So create a content strategy that aligns with your messaging, right? Some of that might be storytelling. Like you always want to talk about somebody who's been affected or had their life improved or received X, Y, and Zed from your organization. Uh there's a really great book. It's uh it's very inexpensive. It's by Ian Harris. It's called Hooked on You. I think it was $9 shipped to me. It's very it's a very quick read. It's like 90 something pages, maybe 85 pages, something like that. It's about using storytelling to create impact and get people to read what it is that uh that you want them to be involved in. So, I'm going to hooked on you and Harris. Great little book. And then we need to understand who is our target audience. Who is it that we're going to do outreach with? What do they care about? Where do they spend their time? How can we connect with them? Right? So great that you have this key messaging, but can you develop that content so that it speaks to the interests of your potential corporate sponsors? Maybe there's something you can do with digital experiences. So maybe you help families in third world countries. So you can maybe get some video about a day in the life following a person or a family or a farmer or a business or somebody that's weaving some kind of fabric to sell to make money to support their village or family or themselves. If you can create something really engaging that really connects with somebody. If a photo, this is the thing I always talk about. If a photo is worth a thousand words, video is worth like a million words, right? Even if it's 8 to 10 seconds, because you've got the motion of what's happening, you've got some audio, maybe there's some music, you can set the tone, all that type of thing, it really does create a better experience. So, nobody is really nobody anymore. I guess the over the last five years, six years, the rise of Tik Tok, UCG, like user created content, UGC, sorry, user generated content, nobody's really expecting Hollywood production work, certainly not from nonprofits, right? Uh so even if it's, you know, a cell phone that is 15 years old, like third, fourth generation iPhone or something like that, if you can capture some kind of video, it's still worth having. And then how can you distribute this information, right? What are the ways and and creating a strategy around the content distribution is important, right? But before you do that or part of the research of creating your strategy is you need to understand is my audience are my corporate sponsors are they hanging out on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., etc. Where's the right place to try to connect with them, right? To bring them into your world. Possible action step I would say would be to use social media, potentially some other digital channels. Something else to think about is maybe leveraging existing relationships so that you can amplify your message. If you get one corporate sponsor, maybe they have family or friends, right? Or business associates you can reach out to. who maybe there's some like local business groups, BIA chapters, things like that. David, the author is Ian Harris. The book is called Hooked on You. It's uh three or four messages up. I I dropped that in the chat. Yeah. So, the channels, Roy, this would be like where can you distribute your message, right? TV, radio, newspaper, social media, your website, email marketing, skywriting, like the killer pigeon. Uh, all right. That that's a little bit ridiculous, but yeah. Where how can you reach your potential corporate sponsors? Where are they spending their time? What would they pay attention to? Yeah, exactly. Media or I guess maybe medium might be better, but that's idea there. Okay, we're going to go over to the next page here. So, key messages and themes that align with your mission and your values and what you actually do, right? you can probably come up with one of the things I like to do when I'm reaching out to potential prospects is ask them like in three or four words can you describe what you do right so based on those three or four words maybe they're like individual words right like maybe it's children food hunger um school right so based on those you can develop social media content calendar right so there there theme days and weeks and months through the year. Can you tie yourself your organization to any of those? Right? Uh can you link to any of those? Can you find anything that your corporate sponsors might be or potential corporate sponsors might be involved in during those periods? We want to be smart about the time that we're spending and where we're spending the time, right? So, by that I mean if you're going to put, let's say, 3 hours a week or 3 hours a month or however much time into trying to do some outreach to corporate sponsors, you want to be smart about where you're doing that. And if they are not on Instagram, if they're not doing stuff there, it's not worth going out on Instagram, right? So, a little bit of research, figuring out where they are. uh if you go on their websites, they might have links to their social media channel channels that they're on. And so you can maybe build out a spreadsheet. Oh, they're like these organiz these businesses are all on YouTube. These ones are on this channel, this channel, this channel. They have an email newsletter. Okay, cool. We should subscribe to it and we should see what they're talking about. So I think there's definitely lots of ways to do a bit of research and find out and you can definitely even leverage AI to help you with some of the initial research there. Having said that, I need to like blanket statement. Whatever AI produces, you need to take that with a grain of salt. They're not the beall and endall, right? Like anybody could create a website and say whatever they want. Just because you read it doesn't mean that's true. You still need to do your own research through that. So, but you can have it generate a list. You can have it give you a bunch of URLs to go and check out and then stories, right? So, what are some of those what's the impact that your organization has had? And you can probably get this really easily through your annual report. Uh if you have any blogs or news releases or anything like that, you probably skim through that and get some of those clear ideas. There's probably some that come to mind right now like what is a really compelling story that happened over the last 12 months, 14 months, 18 months, right? There's probably a few that pop up in mind. Put those down in your notes so that you've got, oh yeah, there was this thing with this person. What was their name? I don't remember, but it was uh in May. Make a note like look at blah blah blah back in in May 2026 or something like that, right? Top of mind. Make a note. Okay, we're going to go to the uh next page here. Oops, didn't go. There we go. I am page with this. Hold on a sec here. Dual content. Yeah. So, you know, like what are Did I skip a page here? No, I think this is where we are now, right? Okay. All right. Cool. Thank you, Emma. So, what are the shared values and goals? Right. So, when you take a look at I'm on page nine right now. Is this the wrong page? Do I need to go back a page? Wrong page. Go back. Okay, cool. Yeah, I didn't really talk about stats. So, all right, cool. Thank you. All right, so thinking about the stories impact, and you might have this already at hand, like I mentioned a moment ago in your annual report. What's the data that can actually back up these stories? What's the the data that can back up the critical importance that your organization has, right? Or your nonprofit started because somebody had a problem and they wanted to solve it. It might not have been their problem. It might have been a problem in the community or globally somewhere, right? But there was a problem. They went, "We need to fix this and I'm going to start an organization that's going to focus on that." How has that changed? How has that shifted? If you have donations that have been coming in, awesome. Where did that money go? How did it help? What was the impact? Can there be a multiplier on that? If you enact this now, like we've got Giving Tuesday coming up really, really quick, right? I know it's in November. It's only beginning of September, but you need to be planning for that. And if you can get maybe there's somebody that can do a matching campaign for you. So, maybe there's an a business out there that will sponsor you to match uh dollar fordoll up to $1,000 or $50,000 for every donation that comes in, they'll they'll match it or they'll double it or whatever. There's all kinds of promotion and things that you can definitely create around that. But if they can understand the impact that's happening, the statistics, the number of people helped, etc., etc., animals saved, what, whatever it happens to be, that would help. So the data and statistics will help illustrate the importance and impact of your organization but also help with the storytelling and the importance of why you need to why you need their help. And then handinhand with that is are there any visuals? Do you have photos, videos, infographics? Uh if you don't have, can you make them? Can you get them created? Right? Anything that you can do to help tell the story and sell the emotion is what's going to help get you them. Hey, we're doing really well. We're doing really well. We're about 2/ird of the way through. It does take a little bit to get into like the state of flow and start, oh yeah, this happened and we've got this and we've got this archive of photos and they're over here and we have a video. We hired this videographer to put this thing, right? to get into that state of flow, it takes uh for me anyways, usually somewhere around like 10, 12, 14 minutes to start getting the juices flowing and getting the mind thinking there. But we're getting there. So, you should hopefully be feeling like, oh yeah, we have this thing, right? Okay. All right. We're going to go on to the next page here. So, page nine. Now, we're getting this right here. So, shared values, right? Um what are they? What are the goals? Identify them, right? You want to focus on building relationships with these potential sponsors based on your shared values and goals. So, show up at events that they're putting on. Find out, oh, they're they're sponsoring this golf tournament. Can you participate? Can you be there? Can you rub elbows? Can you have conversations? Right. Maybe Yeah. And then once they're in your kind of maybe not inner circle, but in your orbit, right? provide regular updates to them on the impact of sponsor support. So maybe they're not a sponsor right now, but you can talk about maybe a competitor of theirs or somebody else that they might be connected with or affiliated with or know about that is a sponsor so that it builds up some trust. Oh, this other person is sponsoring them. Yeah, you know what? I should help out also. That's kind of the the idea there is we want to make them understand that you are legitimate. You're not just a lost cause and you do need their support because you want to do more and you want to help more. Emma, that is amazing. So, um, Emma just posted a a quick little story in the chat here. They posted a message for a birthday for their uh executive director and how they wanted people to donate to the emergency fund instead of presents or cards and they raised $5,000. That's amazing. Uh I did something kind of similar actually last year for my birthday where every like or comment on my post I I donated to buy a tree for through like one of the tree planting uh organizations. And I don't remember how many we got. I think it was like 400 something trees and that was like across all of our social channels. So there's things that you can definitely do. AI is awesome for brainstorming this kind of stuff. So uh definitely consider using that to help you out if you're if you're feeling like a little bit stuck. And then what value can you provide beyond financial support, right? So it might be employee engagement opportunities. It might be volunteer opportunities. A lot of organizations and businesses, they'll go, you know what, one day a quarter or a half a day a quarter, we are going to go as a team to this local charity, soup kitchen, homeless shelter, hospital, whatever it happens to be, and we are going to volunteer our time for that half a day, whole day, week, whatever it happens to be. There's lots of businesses that do that. So, are there volunteer opportunities? Okay, I'm going to jump to the next page here. In terms of long-term partnerships with sponsors, the number one thing that we see is that organizations that aren't communicating, they're not talking, they're not meeting, they're not going, they're not providing information, they lose their supporters, right? So, you want to make sure that there's regular communication. It doesn't have to be daily, obviously, once a month, once a quarter, whatever the right cadence is for your organization. And you can even ask them, how often do you want us to let you know what's going on? How can you maintain that? Could be collaborations, maybe there's ongoing projects or some initiatives, maybe there's committees or board positions. Then in terms of some unique and engaging networking events or webinar topics, can you put on an event that they would want to participate in? Right? Maybe you don't have a venue to host your big fundraiser. Maybe you can use their space for it. All right, so that would be a great inkind donation support that you can get from my business. We've got 3 minutes on my timer, but uh I think what I'm going to do is just call it here because we've got about 8 minutes left. So um I do want to hit up uh I've got a couple more slides in my deck. Uh, and then there's the um the other offers and I want to have some time for Q&A as well. So, I'm going to flip out from here and I'm going to uh go back over to the uh the slide deck. Where is it? There it is. Boom. So, that was awesome. Great work, everybody. And uh I hope you you got some really good value out of sitting here and and going through the workbook. Absolutely. Continue to go through it. meet with your team. If you have a team, if you want to meet with me to talk about anything, absolutely feel free. Here's really kind of the truth. You don't need to be a million-doll organization to make a million-doll impact. You just need to make the right decisions that are going to help your organization get to the next level. And and really, like I said at the beginning, you need to take that first step, right? You need to start working on that. And coming here today, working through the workbook, that is definitely that first step. All right. So, the freebies website audit. I mentioned this earlier. Uh, we've got the URL here. Wow digital on it. I will drop this in the chat now that I'm actually messaging to everybody instead of just the hosts and the panelists. Got that. There's the book that I wrote. Literally, I wrote the book on AI. Uh, it's a practical guide on how nonprofits can put AI to work. There's no hype. There's no jargon. This book is, I think, 103 pages. There's 101 prompts in here that you can just copy and paste into AI. It's normally $37, but I've got a coupon code tech for you to use today, and that will take the cost down to $11 for you. So, feel free to grab that. It's 70% off for you. And then also I've got our ebook which is uh called three simple words to increase your donations by 20%. I just need to make sure I've got your email address. I don't know if you have um the ability in your chat to message just hosts and panelists. If you do feel free drop your email in there. If not you can just email me directly. wowdigital.com. just write ebook in the subject line. So, you can email me. Uh I see some messages coming in with uh with chats, which is awesome. So, no worries. I will definitely make sure that we get that over to you. And then, yeah, some we've got a few minutes here for some additional Q&A. >> We we have quite a few questions. Um I don't think we're going to be able to get through them all in the five minutes, but we'll do our best. to those um that aren't answered. Um we'll pass those over to David and he will do his best to get all of them answered. Um so let me open this up right here. So a few questions just starting from the top here. Um seems that many corporate grants require the nonprofits to have a bigger budget than they have. We've only surpassed 50,000 annual revenue. Filed our first public 990. The question is, one, how do we get past the bottleneck of not being eligible to apply because of funds or lack thereof? And two, when you say sponsorships, are you referring to anything other than grants? Both really great questions. So, the first one is try to befriend people that are higher up in the company that you're trying to get these grants from. the I think what they're doing is they're trying to weed out people that are just in startup mode where they they're only at like $500 or $1,000. They haven't really set their foot in the um in the nonprofit space and they're just starting out. They want people who are I think very serious about the organization. So, I would maybe do some LinkedIn. So, you can go to that business, see the employees that are there, you can look at their job titles. Uh you might be able to find somebody even on their website under their like leadership or board of directors or uh in their annual some some businesses publish their annual reports uh if they're publicly traded. Uh you might find some contact info and a a lot of people nowadays are scared of picking up the phone and making a phone call. I would pick up the phone and make a phone call and talk to actually talk to somebody. um not just send an email, not just send, you know, like a DM on LinkedIn or something like that, but actually, you know, like grab your phone and and have a conversation with somebody. It might just be there as a gate to prevent people or it might be a legitimate thing, but maybe they have some other ways that they can contribute like I was talking about. Maybe they can provide space or volunteers or leadership or thought to help you out. Um and then you know in terms of getting past the bottleneck. So we talked about the bottleneck and then sponsorships other than grants. Yeah. So it could be uh donations in kind. It could be experiences. So like Ronald McDonald House, they provide support for families that uh that need it who have to travel for children to get like life-saving surgeries and stuff like that. So they partner with businesses, they they buy well, I guess it's raw McDonald's, right? So they get their own donations, but I imag I I really do expect that they work with local organizations as well to get support. So I think there's definitely opportunities to think more than just money, which is part of what the workbook is supposed to help you do as well. I hope that helps. >> Oh, just answer some folks in the chat. Uh we'll be emailing the recording of this with any or all of the resources as well. Um including the transcript, Aaron. Um so you'll have that as well. Um looks like we have time for one more question here. So this one is to do with sponsorships is should your sponsorship tiers mostly be tied to promotion or should you include values as well or as well uh such as you support XYZ with this amount and ABC with that amount. >> I think it's both. I think you really need to think of it as as a 360 total holistic approach to it. If I was going to come and sponsor your nonprofit and give you $1,000, $50, $50,000, whatever it is, I want to know what it is that the impact that you're going to have. At the same time, aside from a tax receipt, right? Like, what else am I getting for my business? Am I getting advertising? Am I allowed to mention on our social like, hey, we're a socially conscious business. we're supporting this organization and helping this this this whatever. What is it that they're actually getting from you and what is it that you are getting from them? Because it is it is mutually beneficial. Awesome. Awesome. That uh is taking us to the hour here. So yeah, once again, we'll uh send David all your questions and do our best to get them all answered following the session. So stay tuned for that and also in the follow-up email. I want to take a moment to thank you David for being here and uh sharing your expertise with us. Uh before we wrap up, is there any uh last notes here you would like to uh leave us with? >> I want to thank everybody. Great work today. Thank you for coming. I know you've all got really busy, hectic schedules, but this is really going to help set you on the right path to growth and to getting you the support that you need. So, keep the momentum going. Finish filling out the PDF, going through that. Also, remember like WOW Digital, we're here to support you. Uh we're in your corner, you know, head over to our website, wowdigital.com. We have our blog, we have our podcast, we've got all kinds of resources on there. Uh and next week, actually, uh I'm running a webinar as well if you want to register for it. Uh it's for associations and member-based organizations on growth and and member retention. Fantastic. Awesome. Um we'll be sure to get all the emails for the uh ebook as well. And um I did just drop a link to a very short survey. If you could take a moment to share your thoughts on today's session made it extremely valuable to us. So thank you very much. Um and with that we will wrap for the day. Hope everyone has a good rest of their week and uh we'll see you next time. Take care. Thanks much everybody.