Starting a Business Program- PART 2
previous post: Starting a Business Program- PART 1 | next post: Making “The Ask”
Read PART 1 about working with employee groups and setting up a gift acceptance policy.
When starting your program you can look to develop in a few different ways (cont’d):
Have businesses sponsor event or programs. Look at your organization and figure out what is that you have that you can “sell” to a local business. They want to lend their name to your organization it makes them look good and adds credibility to your organization. What annual events or campaigns do you have that you could ask businesses to sponsor? I’ll talk more about setting levels at a later time. Is there a place on your organization’s website that you could post a message that says, “this page (or website) is sponsored by” and post a business logo? This can be done for an e-newsletter, a monthly publication you send out, a brochure you create, etc. It is important that you are specific about what the business is getting so they know what exactly they are sponsoring and for how long. And don’t sell yourself short. One of the biggest problems non-profits have is that they will offer too much for too little.
General contributions and grants. Lots of businesses have money that they want to give to local and national community projects. My best advice here is that you just need to ask for it. A mid to large size organization might get some random gifts from local businesses but if you are a small non-profit they probably don’t know about you (same thing if you’re a mid-size non-profit). Put together a plan for how you will approach past business givers, and a plan for how you will look to involve new ones.
I could probably talk in a great deal of more depth about business and will continue to at a later time. Do you have any specific stories or questions related to business giving?
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 27th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I think that one of the things that many non profits fail to
realize is that businesses are just that: businesses. They
have an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders
(public or private), and everything that they do, and
everything you request, needs to be viewed in that light.
In other words, when approaching a business you need to be
asking yourself “what in it for them?”.
What does that mean in terms of approaching businesses?
In my opinion it means a couple of things.
It means that unlike an individual’s donation, a donation
from a business needs to be regarded as a transaction; they
give something that’s of value to you, they get something
that’s of value to their business.
That in turn means that requesting anything from a business
is as much about what you or your organization have to offer
*the business* as much as it is about how deserving you are
of their support.
I know that strikes some as crass and commercial and
inappropriate for a non-profit with (presumably) a higher
calling. But in my opinion it’s a practical reality. And it
doesn’t have to be crass at all.
In fact, we see it all the time in event sponsorships. In
exchange for a sponsorship donation of some amount, the
business receives public recognition of varying degrees. I
know, I’m not supposed to call it advertising, but that’s
pretty much what it is.
So, aside from the obvious sponsorship opportunities such as
that what does *your* organization have to offer the
business community?
Ideas:
- Advertising & Public Relations. As with Jason’s “page
sponsored by” example, there are many simple opportunities
that, when used carefully, can be very effective without
being overt or “plastered all over”. This is perhaps both
the most common, AND most overlooked in terms of both the
many opportunities that exist, as well as how easy it is
to present to even the smallest business. Consider how
your business can “ride your coattails” in any public
communication.
- Employee good will (being “seen as caring about X”). This
is actually one reason that many large companies
participate, because their employees expect them to. That
means supporting the company with materials, collateral
and perhaps even access or personnel to help carry that
message to their people.
- Volunteer leadership opportunities that give employees
leadership experience that they can bring back to the
business setting.
- probably much more than I can’t think of right now.
I also want to challenge everyone to get creative with the
existing opportunities that they have. I’ll use an example,
not from the non-profit space, but the tech space…
There’s a large tech conference I attend from time to time.
Around 200 geeks, and it’s standard practice for everyone to
attend and have their laptops on and running during the
entire conference. In other words much longer than laptop
battery life.
Now the conference has many general sponsors (not unlike a
non-profit event, now that I think of it, banners and all).
But one sponsor *specifically* sponsored … power and
extension cords. And got an ovation for it. THAT sponsor got
exceptional value out of his donation, and the conference
attendees benefited as well. (And you can bet he was back
next year.)
What opportunities do you have to tweak what you’re already
doing, perhaps just a little, to make those sponsors really
feel like their getting their money’s worth - in *their*
business sense, beyond whatever mission in your organization
they’re supporting?