A well-promoted event doesn’t just attract attendees—it also keeps sponsors coming back. But how you engage your sponsors before the fundraising event can make or break their willingness to support your nonprofit again in the future. By integrating sponsors into your event’s promotional efforts during the planning process, you help them stand out, feel valued, and connect more meaningfully with your audience. In a competitive landscape where businesses are approached by many causes, extra creative touches can be the difference that sets your nonprofit apart.
So, how do you keep sponsors engaged and excited before your fundraising event? This guide will explore four creative, adaptable strategies that can be adapted for a variety of nonprofit events—from charity golf tournaments to galas to walkathons. Whether you’re new to securing corporate sponsorships or looking to fine-tune your approach, these ideas can help elevate your sponsor relationships.
1. Co-Brand Marketing Materials
Co-branding is a classic but often underused tactic. In co-branded marketing, sponsors’ names or logos are prominently and visually engagingly added to your event materials. This might include your event website, digital ads, email campaigns, social media graphics, printed signage, or even folded into the physical elements used during the event itself.
For example, let’s say your charity golf tournament sold a pin flag sponsorship. Not only would that sponsor’s logo be added to the event website and promotional materials, but the pin flags would be co-branded with the sponsor’s logo and the benefiting charity’s logo. Co-branding a dynamic and unique medium like a pin flag makes that sponsor’s support even more visible.
It’s a good idea to run any co-branded materials, especially something like a pin flag, past the sponsor before the items are produced to ensure they’re happy with how their branding appears.
2. Give Sponsors Access to Exclusive Events & Opportunities
One way your nonprofit can strengthen relationships with sponsors is to give them access to the same high-value audience your event is trying to reach. Hosting an exclusive event prior to the main fundraiser is a great way to accomplish this. These smaller gatherings can be designed to align with the sponsor’s specific goals for supporting your event.
Continuing with the golf fundraiser example, you might host a cocktail reception the evening before the tournament for top-tier sponsors to connect with the high-capacity donors, board members, and business leaders that are typically represented in the golfer demographic. This offers a more intimate setting where sponsors can engage with these folks on a one-on-one basis. GolfStatus also suggests offering sponsors that donate a product or service to be part of a raffle package the opportunity to set up a tent or booth on a tee box to directly engage with golfers or make brief remarks at the tournament’s kickoff.
3. Publish Educational Content from Sponsors
Educational content that’s engaging, helpful, and informative gives sponsors the chance to showcase their expertise while promoting the fundraising event and providing value for the reader. It’s important to ensure the content is genuine and doesn’t feel intrusive or read like an ad. Instead of pushing an overt pitch for the sponsor’s business, invite them to contribute knowledge-based content like:
- Guest-authored blogs
- Live webinars
- Panel discussions
- Social media video content
For instance, let’s say your nonprofit is focused on youth sports, and a local sports apparel company signs on as the title sponsor for your golf fundraiser. You might offer the company a guest blog about the value of youth sports for underprivileged youth, weaving in messaging about how their in-kind athletic gear donations are helping these youth athletes succeed and promoting the upcoming golf event. The post would link back to the golf tournament’s website, where golfers and sponsors can sign up to participate.
4. Organize a Sponsor-Led Donation-Matching Drive
Donation matching is an incredibly effective fundraising tactic and a powerful way for a sponsor to get more people interested in donating and excited about participating in the event with relatively little effort. In fact, Double the Donation reports that 84% of donors indicated that they’d be more interested in donating if they had a match option.
Here’s how it works: Ask a sponsor to match donations or provide a donation for every registration (up to a certain dollar amount) in the weeks leading up to the fundraiser. This approach helps build early momentum and encourages your audience to give or register early, knowing their contribution will be multiplied. It also boosts the sponsor’s visibility, especially if you present it as a specific pre-event matching gift challenge.
Returning to the golf tournament example, you might announce on social media and in promotional emails that a sponsor will match all donations up to $10,000 in the two weeks before the event. You add a donation tracker to the tournament website and recognize the sponsor as the Matching Gift Sponsor. This recognizes the business’s generosity and community focus while giving your tournament a fundraising boost.
Wrapping Up
Strong sponsor relationships are built on value and visibility. By thinking outside the box, you can involve sponsors in your event promotion in ways that elevate both their brand, their ROI, and your fundraising outcomes. As you plan your next fundraising event, keep sponsors in mind and what kind of content or exposure would benefit their business and resonate with your audience.
When you effectively involve sponsors in your fundraiser’s promotion, everybody wins—your event, your supporters, and the sponsors who make it possible.
About the Author
Logan Foote, Sales and Education Manager at GolfStatus
Logan Foote has been around the game of golf nearly his entire life. He first picked up a club at the age of four, and despite thousands of attempts, he’s never had a hole-in-one. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and pursued a career in sales.
Logan came to GolfStatus in 2017, where he channels his passion for golf to help nonprofits raise money through the game. As Sales and Education Manager, Logan oversees a team that works with thousands of nonprofit clients to maximize their golf fundraisers with the GolfStatus platform, and shares his golf fundraising expertise through GolfStatus’s free educational webinars. He lives and golfs in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and three sons.