How to get sponsored

[Tripper]

How do people get sponsored? How can a person raise money for a particualar cause such as cancer. Has anyone had any experience with this?

[Alexlebrit]

It depends what type of sponsorship you're looking for, you've mentioned two types here.

1. Charitable fundraising
2. Sponsorship to cover the cost of your trip

Ok, starting with:

Charitable fundraising: depending on where you live, you could go to a site like Justgiving.com and pick a charity already on it which is close to your heart, and then fill out the forms and voila, you have an online fund-raising page. Then contact the charity itself, even if they're on justgiving, it's good to make contact, if they're not it's essential, charities have their good name to protect, and while a wodge of cash is nice, they like to give the right image too. They might also have people who know about fundraising and might be able to give/loan you some materials (leaflets, balloons, collecting tins, t-shirts etc) to help.
Then you'll just need to tell as many people as possible about this, start with your local media (newspaper, radio, tv and work up, also try any specialist magazines). Tell your mates, get them to tell their mates, add the site as an annoying signature on all your e-mails, join Facebook and invite people in, all that type of thing, none of it's hard and it doesn't need a lot of work.

Trip Sponsorship: this is going to be harder, much harder. What you basically have to think is not that you're seeking sponsorship, but that you're selling advertising. That's the payback for any sponsoring company. So you have to view yourself in the light of other advertising media, and make sure you give them very good value for money. In simple terms that means getting as much media exposure as possible, and looking as professional as you can. Things you might consider:

• Start a website: it can be a prebuilt blog site if you like, the blogs here on HU or on Wordpress, Blogger etc. Ours is with Blogger. I skinned it myself, but I have no knowledge of HTML at all, everytime I wanted to do something I typed it in Google and found the answer.
• Buy a domain name: and make sure you get e-mail with it. (even if you use a free blog with Blogger for instance you can still get it to say mytrip.com for about $10 a year).
• Get e-mail forwarding: and set up a few mail accounts, start with myname@mytrip.com for everyone on the trip, but then get media@mytrip.com, info@mytrip.com, sponsors@mytrip.com and so on. You're going to receive all the mail from these accounts, but it makes you look bigger, better organised and more professional, and it's amazing how it gently fools people. I organised a Mini Cooper rally and it was only on the rally itself that any of the 50-odd participants realised it was one bloke with a PC and an in and out tray and not an office full of people.
• Become a media whore: contact the media, get exposure. The more people see you the more people see your sponsors, and the more traffic you get to your site, where they again see your sponsors. Remember you're selling advertising.
• Prepare press releases: Keep them to one page of A4 formatted as a pdf file (you can find free pdf creators with Google). Take photos and if e-mailing send at low-resolution, but with the offer of very high resolution if required (magazines need high res). You might find a local paper will even help out with these if you ask them nicely.
• Build relationships with the media: make phone calls, have meetings. If they've spoken to you, or even better met you, they'll hopefully help you out more. Start local and build to national if you can. Use snail mail it's harder to ignore than an e-mail.
• Keep all your press cuttings: show these to your potential sponsors so they see you're getting coverage.
• Get seen: sticker up your bike/car/lid/jacket early and park up in obvious places, hell, sticker up all your cars and bikes and your friends' too. Wear your T-shirt with pride. Park outside your local TV studio. Print leaflets and cards if you want.
• Prepare a sponsors' pack: with examples of past expeditions, media cuttings, examples of where their logos will go, tailor it to your potential sponsor by finding out everything you can about them, if their small send it to the MD or CEO; if they're big send it to marketing or advertising. Find out people's names, follow up with phone calls, send it snail mail (it's so rare to get snail mail now, it's harder to ignore), offer to visit, build relationships.
• Prepare a pricing scheme: so they know what they'll get for their cash, and how much cash they need to get what, offer a range of packages so that even the little guys can afford it. After all one $10,000 sponsor is just the same as 100 $100 sponsors.
• Oh and most important of all, if you really want to do this, start early, start very, very early, START VERY, VERY, VERY EARLY. However long it takes you to prepare this expedition, treble it.
• And have fun.

Phew that was a bit long wasn't it? I can't even say I'm speaking here from huge experience either, I've organised a couple of charity rallies as I said and we did well with BMW, but that's it. Most if this is just stuff I did because, well, it seemed logical, at least to me. I look forward to seeing what everyone else says.

PS, if you can get a Z-list celebrity, former Big Brother winner to come with you it CAN sometimes help.

[mattcbf600]

Originally Posted by Alexlebrit

It depends what type of sponsorship you're looking for, you've mentioned two types here.

1. Charitable fundraising
2. Sponsorship to cover the cost of your trip

Ok, startin.........

celebrity, former Big Brother winner to come with you it CAN sometimes help.

Fantastic post Alex - spot on :-)

[Alexlebrit]

From you Matt, I take that as a compliment, you old tart. Like I said though, none of it is any more than my opinion and limited experience.

I can't believe though that me and the OP are the only two contemplating this.

[Matt Cartney]

A very simple way to raise money for 'charidee' is to get a 'Justgiving' page at justgiving.com

I raised over a grand for Save The Children, essentially by saying "I'm going on holiday, it's going to be a big holiday and quite hard work sometimes, why not give some money to charity because of my descision to go on a big holiday," and loads of people gave lots of money! People are surprisingly generous sometimes.

All you do is register on the site, pick a charity and write a little blurb. Then email the link to everyone you know.

I strongly recommend you do this as lots of sick/starving/poor/etc people could benefit from five minutes of your effort. I'm often surprised more people don't do their big trips 'for charity' as it were.

Matt

You can see my effort by clicking on my link below and following the 'Save The Children' link on the right of the screen.

[indu]

Many larger companies have their own internal communications departement. They are always looking for ways to enhance the internal spirit and pride of their employees, so they tend to sponsor all kinds of crazy stunts that might suit their case. Myself, I found this multinational paper producing company with mills all over the world, except Africa. I proposed a Grand Tour and dubbed it "The Paper Trail". I prepared a great presentation, and as I used to be a journalist I proposed to write stories ("Tales from The Paper Trail") to their internal e-zine en route - all kinds of stories that might be relevant to them. Also I'd participate in any event at any mill and even give presentations to anyone who'd care to listen. For one year I'd travel and visit their paper mills and make some PR for them along the way. And this for the small sum of 60 000 euros. I almost made it. The Director of internal communications, the HR Director and so forth thought it to be a great idea, and cheap too. A couple of weeks later their shares started to drop, and soon all costs were cut to the bone. Including any euros put aside for my trip. My wife was happy, I was not. This was some years ago, and I never got aloft with "The Paper Trail" tour. But I have new ideas! It might work for you too.

[elgeorgiou]

[quote=Alexlebrit;176471]It depends what type of sponsorship you're looking for, you've mentioned two types here.

1. Charitable fundraising
2. Sponsorship to cover the cost of your trip

Ok, starting with:

Charitable fundraising: depending on where you live, you could go to a site like Justgiving.com and pick a charity already on it which is close to your heart, and then fill out the forms and voila, you have an online fund-raising page. Then contact the charity itself, even if they're on justgiving, it's good to make contact, if they're not it's essential, charities have their good name to protect, and while a wodge of cash is nice, they like to give the right image too. They might also have people who know about fundraising and might be able to give/loan you some materials (leaflets, balloons, collecting tins, t-shirts etc) to help.
Then you'll just need to tell as many people as possible about this, start with your local media (newspaper, radio, tv and work up, also try any specialist magazines). Tell your mates, get them to tell their mates, add the site as an annoying signature on all your e-mails, join Facebook and invite people in, all that type of thing, none of it's hard and it doesn't need a lot of work.

.[/quote


Hallo everyone, i am new here.
I dont understund how the fundraising for a charity works.

You build the page to raise money for the charity, or for yourself in the name of the charity?

:confused1:

[Desert Ways]

You have your own page on justgiving (other fundraising websites are available ) but the donations go to whatever charity you are raising money for, provided they are registered with that particular website.

For example our trip later this year Home (blatant plug) has it's own justgiving page here, where the money raised will go to the charity we are backing. They will also sort out "gift aid" etc. and it makes the whole thing easy.

[Lisa Thomas]

here is a link to a great article written by Scott Brady. The Truth About Expedition Sponsorship:

called the 'Truth About Expedition Sponsorship'.
its excellent and well worth the read.

[MotoEdde]

Originally Posted by Tripper

How do people get sponsored? How can a person raise money for a particualar cause such as cancer. Has anyone had any experience with this?

Why do you want to get sponsored?

[Lars]

Try to avoid marketing disasters.

LEO D-E Ergebnisse für "Tripper"

SCNR

Lars

[craig76]

Originally Posted by Lars

Try to avoid marketing disasters.

LEO D-E Ergebnisse für "Tripper"

SCNR

Lars

That's good advice, lol