Finding a sponsor for your sports club: packages, what you give back and the first letter
The budget does not add up, someone says more should be done about sponsorship, and a letter goes round saying the club could really use your support. That has produced the same harvest for years: two lots of small change from people who are members anyway. Not because there is no money in the area, but because nothing is being offered.
A sponsor buys something, he does not give anything away
Almost every sponsorship letter from a club starts with the club: how many teams there are, that hall hire is going up and that every contribution is welcome. It is all true, and it is exactly why the letter ends up at the bottom of the pile. On the other side sits somebody who has to justify an expense — to a partner, to an accountant or to himself — and who has one question: what do I get for it?
Ask for support and you get a donation. Offer something and you get a meeting. And you have more to offer than you think, because a business in your area usually needs one of three things: staff, local visibility, or a story for its own customers. A plumbing firm that has been looking for engineers for two years gets little out of an advert in a national magazine and a lot out of weekly visibility among four hundred adults who live within ten kilometres.
The fourth motive is often the real one, and you are allowed to say it out loud: the owner has a daughter in your under-15s. That is not a weak reason — it is the strongest there is.
Work out first what you have to offer
Before you call a single business: put your offer into numbers. Not because it impresses, but because otherwise you do not know yourself what you are selling. Take a club of fourteen teams and 180 members. Around every youth member stand on average two adults who are in the hall at least once a month. You quickly arrive at three to four hundred adults who almost all live within ten kilometres — a more precise audience than most local advertising reaches.
Add the occasions to that: fifteen home playing days a season, four to six matches a day, twelve to thirty people per match. Plus the practice evenings — five evenings of hall use a week are hundreds of visits a month past the same wall. Count them in your own calendar: those numbers differ enormously per club, and an invented figure always comes back to bite you.
Note your digital reach as well: how many followers the club page has and how many posts you put out per season. A club that shares three results every Monday ends up at thirty to forty posts. That is a concrete offer; "we will put you on Facebook too" is not.
Three packages, not twelve
The biggest time-eater in sponsorship is bespoke deals. Every sponsor with his own amount, his own arrangement and his own end date: after three years nobody knows who pays what and for what. So build three tiers and stick to them. What clubs charge differs enormously by country and by town, so ask around locally rather than copying a figure — but keep the ratio between the tiers at roughly 1 : 2 : 4, so that every step up is a visible one.
- Board sponsor — the entry package, three years. A board along the court or on the wall, the name on the website and one post per season. Set the entry amount at whatever a modest local advert is worth in your area. Three years is not a trick: the board costs money once to make and hang, and with a one-year deal you spend the same hours twice. Have the sponsor supply the board or invoice the production separately.
- Team sponsor — the shirts, three seasons. The name on one team's kit, plus everything from the tier below. Roughly double the entry tier. Tie this to the lifespan of the shirts: kit lasts three to four seasons, and a sponsor who stops after one year leaves you with twelve shirts you can no longer use. Name which team it is straight away.
- Main sponsor — one per club, three to five years. The name alongside the club name or on the shirts of every team, a place on every publication and a moment of its own at the club tournament. Roughly four times the entry tier, or more. You do not sell this tier with a letter but in a conversation.
What you do not do: add a fourth tier because somebody asks whether it could be for half. A lower amount is fine as long as what you give back moves with it — the lowest tier without the social media post, for instance — but the package itself stays as it is.
Only promise things that cannot go missing with a volunteer
This is where it goes wrong at most clubs. The letter says four posts a year and a mention in the tournament programme. In March it turns out one post went up, because the person who kept the club page going has left to study. The sponsor notices, says nothing about it, and does not renew.
So go down your list with one question: does this hang on a person or on a thing? A board on the wall hangs on a thing and is fine for three years. A monthly post hangs on a person and is fine for six months. Only promise the second if it is settled who does it — and put that job into the same division as the rest of the club work, as in dividing up the jobs in a club. Hours that are written down nowhere do not exist.
What does hold up in practice: the board, the name on the kit, the name on the website, a banner at the club tournament and a spot on the canteen wall. What rarely holds up: newsletter columns, a sponsor page kept up to date, and discount schemes for which members have to remember a code.
Practical tip: take one photo of everything you give back — the board with a full hall behind it, the team in the shirts, the banner at the tournament. Those three photos are your entire renewal conversation later on, and together they cost ten minutes.
The first list is in your own membership
Cold-calling unknown businesses returns almost nothing for a sports club. The yield sits in four groups that already have a line to the club, in this order.
- Members and parents with a business of their own. The landscaper whose son plays in the under-17s, the dentist who plays recreationally himself. They do not say yes because the board pays for itself, but because they are there anyway.
- Former members. Somebody who stopped fifteen years ago and now has a business often still feels connected. This group is almost never asked.
- Businesses the club is a customer of. The printer, the sports shop, the canteen supplier, the insurer. You already have a relationship there and an invoice; the question is obvious and is rarely put.
- Businesses within five minutes' drive of the hall. Visibility among the audience of your hall is only worth something if their customers live there. A business from the next town gets nothing out of your wall.
Watch how you come by that list: your membership administration exists for the membership and not as an address file for a commercial campaign — see which member data you keep. The safe route is also the most effective one: let somebody who knows the people name a handful, and approach those personally. That works for the same reason as with recruiting coaches — a question to everybody is a question to nobody.
The letter fits on one page, the meeting takes twenty minutes
The letter sells nothing. It gets somebody to say yes to twenty minutes over coffee. That saves you half the text. Five blocks, and there is no need for a sixth:
- The first sentence is about them. "You have been looking for engineers for a while" or "You are opening on the high street in March". Not: "Our club was founded in 1974".
- Three numbers. Number of members, number of adults around them, number of home evenings a season. More numbers does not make it more convincing, only longer.
- The three packages, with the amount alongside. Leaving the amounts out to save space costs you the meeting: nobody rings up to ask what something costs.
- One sentence about who you are. Name, role in the club, and why you are the one calling.
- The ending is an appointment, not a hope. "I will call you on Tuesday around half past ten to hear whether it is interesting enough for a coffee." And then do call on Tuesday.
Send it in spring, not in September. Many businesses fix their budget in the autumn, and in September you are in your own busiest weeks. April to June is the quietest window, and you then still have time to get a board made.
Sit down with three questions and nothing else: where are you looking for customers or staff, do you already know the club, and what would you want to get out of it yourself? Talk about the club as little as possible. Anyone who spends twenty minutes talking about his club does not hear what the other person needs and then sells the wrong package.
What you put on paper at the end fits on half a page: the amount and the period, what the club delivers exactly, who gets the invoice and when, and the notice period. Put one name on it from each side. That last part is the most important, because sponsorship arrangements almost always founder on a change of committee and not on money. Keep them in the same place as the rest of what the club has written down — the club handbook is the logical place for that.
Sponsors stop because they never hear anything
Ask a departed sponsor why he did not renew and the answer is rarely "too expensive". It is: I have heard nothing for eighteen months. That is the cheapest mistake a club can put right.
One short letter a year is enough, and it is about him and not about the club: here hangs your board, this is how often your name appeared, this team played in your shirts. Add the photos you took during the season. Invite him properly once as well — the club tournament is the best moment for that, because the hall is full. And phone about the renewal instead of emailing: an email asking whether it can run for another year is the easiest email in the world not to answer.
What a sponsor does not buy
Two lines you are better off drawing in advance than afterwards. The first: a sponsor buys visibility, not influence. Someone who helps pay for the first team's shirts does not decide who plays in them and does not decide who coaches. That seems obvious until the sponsor is the father of a player who is on the bench. Say it lightly but clearly when you sign, and let the committee have that conversation, not the coach of that team.
The second: sponsorship money does not replace subscriptions. At most clubs sponsorship covers only a small slice of the budget — often somewhere between five and fifteen per cent; the rest comes from the members. A club that keeps its subscription low on the promise of sponsorship income is left out in the cold after one cancellation. How you bring in that basic part is in collecting subscriptions at a club.
One variant is worth considering, because it costs little and is visible: let a sponsor pay not for the budget but for one concrete item. The balls for the youth teams, the tournament, the referee course. Someone could equally take on the club subscription to an app like Koach that way — the club then sees in the profile who is providing it, as described in managing your volleyball club. Small amount, clear return, and it does not fall over because a volunteer is unavailable for a while.
Frequently asked questions
What do you charge for an advertising board in the sports hall?
That differs a great deal by country and by town, so first find out what a club near you charges. As a guide, an entry tier at the level of a modest local advert works for a club of a few hundred members, with a three-year term and the production of the board invoiced separately or paid by the sponsor. More important than the amount is that you use one rate: as soon as you have negotiated per sponsor, everyone hears about it within a season and the lowest price becomes the price.
May I ask parents of players whether their business wants to sponsor?
Asking is fine, but do it separately from the team and never through the coach. A parent who says no to his child's coach inevitably thinks about that child's playing time — and that is exactly the confusion you do not want. Let someone from the committee or the sponsorship group ask, away from the hall, and make clear in one sentence that a no has no consequences whatsoever. Do not use a membership list as an address file while doing it: approach people personally, not in a mailing list.
How long should a sponsorship agreement run?
Tie the term to the thing you deliver. A board costs money once to make and hang, so three years; shirts last three to four seasons, so at least three years and preferably as long as the kit does. Shorter agreements cost you the same recruiting work every year, and with shirts you are left holding kit you can no longer use. Do agree a notice period of a few months before the end, so you know in time whether you have to find someone new.
A sponsor wants a say in selection or in who coaches. What do you do?
You refuse, and it is easier if you said so in advance. Put one sentence in the agreement stating that sponsorship is about visibility and not about sporting policy, and let the committee be the point of contact — not the coach of the team in question. If it happens anyway, have the conversation away from the hall and with the chair present. Losing a sponsor is annoying; losing a coach because the committee did not stand behind him costs you more.
Is a sponsorship contribution the same as a donation?
No, and that difference is often decisive for the business. With sponsorship there is something in return — a board, a name on a shirt — and that makes it an ordinary business expense with an invoice attached. A donation is one-off and without anything in return. The tax rules differ by country, so state in your proposal what you deliver and let the sponsor check it with his own accountant; never promise a tax advantage yourself.
Our club has no sponsorship committee. Can one person do this?
Yes, provided you start small. One person who approaches ten businesses a season and offers three packages gets further than a committee that first writes a plan. Reckon on about two hours per business approached, including the letter, the phone call and the meeting. What you settle straight away is the follow-up: write down who calls about the renewal in a year's time, because that is the moment a one-person effort grinds to a halt.
