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| Re: Paying a percentage for finding marketing donors
Posted by Tony Poderis   on 10/5/2009, 8:10 am, in reply to "Paying a percentage for finding marketing donors"
VIP Poster | Message modified by user Tony Poderis 10/5/2009, 8:37 am
Greetings: As I always endeavor to offer as much advice as anyone would need---often more than is wanted---I hasten to reply because I see the potential for real and serious problems with your proposed arrangement---until I (we) understand fully the role of the “middle man” under discussion.
By “event,” I expect you are talking about a high-visibility program which attracts the attention, and perhaps patronage as well, of a very large audience. It is axiomatic that the greater the visibility you can promise, and be able to deliver for image-related financial support, the greater the likelihood of a positive and substantial response to the proposal. However, if your event is but local in its scope, you cannot expect support from national corporations, other than those having operations in the area you serve. How far afield, literally, you go, must be always ready with the answer to any potential sponsor’s question, “What’s in it for us?”
By the very nature of your organization’s major community entertainment/outreach event, with its potentially widespread promotion and publicity programs, your organization could very well be in a far more favorable position than most non-profit organizations to be able to obtain sponsorship funds from corporations for what, first and foremost, could be a good business deal for the corporation.
A potential sponsor can initially see its support to be more of a business quid pro quo arrangement than solely philanthropic, thus your organization can set out to “sell” its sponsorship. And your organization can do that with a sponsorship “broker.” While such services would more likely be provided by an advertising or Public Relations firm, a marketing and PR professional could as well be engaged to broker such arrangements with their clients. It must be clearly understood that in this instance your non-profit organization is not engaging a paid solicitor to secure philanthropic funds in the main. Your organization, with its special event perhaps being able to provide the sponsor with unusually high visibility, prime entertaining opportunities, etc., may be able to provide a good deal of true “market value” to the sponsorship.
Not necessarily in this order, but here are my additional comments:
(1) The marketing professional (middle man) and your organization should understand the difference between marketing and soliciting a charitable contribution, no matter if the latter is connected as a sponsorship. Marketing, in a non-profit setting, is more geared to the offering of a non-profit’s programs and services to its users. Most sponsorships by corporations, no matter the scope of visibility and other benefits they receive upfront are, in the end, seen as well as being philanthropic in nature. All but the most inexperienced sponsors know they are making a donation to some degree. Don’t work so hard to convince sponsors of the value they will receive that they cease to see their sponsorship as a philanthropic endeavor. Avoid the “Boy, have we got a deal for you,” approach. Even when it is a good deal, as seen by the marketing officials of a corporation, they always make tracks to dip into the charitable budgets of their corporate contributions’ colleagues for a good portion of the money coming from a corporation.
(2) Ask your proposed middle man for the names of those corporate marketing officials and the corporations where he already has those relationships. Get written testimonials and referrals before you take another step. If you cannot obtain that information, proceed with extreme caution.
(3) What is the percentage he expects? What about other expenses, such as travel, etc.? Would any potential sponsor accept a portion of they money they give to go into someone’s pocket in that way if support proves to be more of a giving of charitable funds?
(4) Is he going to be a broker in the true sense, taking some reasonable steps toward a quid pro quo PR and advertising deal, or is he simply going to be paid on a contingent-pay basis as nothing more than a hired solicitor? Big, and very critical, difference.
(5) If this individual told you of the slim time window regarding available funding from corporations for this fiscal year, and that you must act now, I would be wary. Making a statement such as that is, to my way of thinking, could be a hurry to get hired.
Corporations have had next year’s budgets developed for many months, even years, and what money they may have yet in their budgets for advertising projects or philanthropic endeavors yet this year, is not the issue. It will take some time to make decisions, and if a relationship with your organization is indeed desired by any potential sponsor, the funding will be allocated one way or the other---paid this year in full, part, or deferred until next year.
With our major orchestra, often attracting funding from corporations located out of our service area because of our concert tours, on three occasions we partnered with highly regarded PR/Advertising/Communications firms which brokered sponsorships with their clients having business interests in our concert presenting cities. With considerable advertising and entertainment activities on the part of the sponsors, and which were paid by them, we had more of a business partnership at first which warranted the middle man agencies’ brokering on our behalf. But when the checks came in---and there were always two checks; one paid for business-related tickets, advertising and receptions. But the other check was always the biggest, as a charitable contribution. Remember this, because as a non-profit organization, you have a better chance to obtain more money overall for the attachment by the sponsor to a good and worthy community cause.
From my experience, I have learned that all but the most inexperienced sponsors know they are making a donation to some degree. I was careful to avoid working so hard to convince sponsors of the value they will receive that they ceased to see their sponsorship as a philanthropic endeavor.
if you have a true broker working for you, stretched as far as you can with the example I gave you as it relates to your event going well beyond the usual as what non-profits can present, then you may have something. If, on the other hand, you hire a paid solicitor of mainly charitable funds, then in my opinion, you will be making a big mistake.
--- Asking For The Money Is The Job Of The Leadership And Friends Of A Non-Profit Organization: Never Hire Someone To Do What Is Their Responsibility
http://www.raise-funds.com/c98forum.html
Let us know how you are doing.
Tony Poderis
http://www.raise-funds.com
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