Attracting and retaining sponsors by delivering mutual value

Sponsorship for Membership Associations

Effective sponsorship is all about creating relationships that deliver mutual value.  You receive sponsorship income (and sometimes much more than just money) that is used to deliver value for your members – and in return, you offer your sponsors something that has commercial value to them.   Sponsorship is a business investment not corporate philanthropy. Creating successful sponsorship programs requires an investment in effort and resources – and commitment at every level of your association.

Understanding what you have to offer and who might find that attractive lies at the heart of a successful sponsorship program. Understanding how to put it all together (and keep it running smoothly) can be overwhelming for many membership associations – and particularly smaller associations who do not have access to in-house sponsorship or business development expertise.

This is where we can help.

Our Approach to Association Sponsorship

At FineHaus, we offer several ways to help our clients attract and retain sponsors for their association. We can help you develop a sponsorship strategy and packages for your association or for a specific program or event.  Or we can take a very hands-on approach, working as part of your team as your contract, part-time Sponsorship or Business Development Manager, with responsibility for sponsorship at your association.

1. Sponsorship Program Development

Step 1:  Sponsorship Audit – Understand the market & identify opportunities

Before we develop a sponsorship strategy, we conduct a sponsorship audit to understand your members, your association, your industry and the overall market.

• We develop a thorough understanding of your membership (who they are, what they are responsible for, their engagement with your association and  their attractiveness to sponsors).
• We review your membership offering and identify potential sponsorship assets.
• We conduct research into your industry to gain insight into the key issues, what is happening in your industry, the value chain and where you fit within this, in order to uncover opportunities.
• We meet with existing sponsors to discuss their needs and challenges and what they value about your association.

Step 2. Develop sponsorship strategy 

We then work collaboratively with you to develop a comprehensive sponsorship strategy. This includes:

• Recommendations to enhance existing or create new programs and offerings in order to attract sponsors
• Establishing a potential sponsorship target list
• Developing sponsorship packages and pricing
• Detailed implementation project plan, which details what activities need to be undertaken, when and by whom.

Step 3: Implementation 

Where required, we can then help you implement the plan.  This might include creating the partnership prospectus or proposal, creating partnership campaigns, building a partner database, running a partner event,  coaching your board or leadership team throught the sales process and monitoring your progress to ensure it is all on track and to maintain momentum.

2. Sponsorship Management

For our virtual association management clients, we offer an end to end sponsorship management service, where we manage everything related to sponsorship at their association (including the selling), working in close collaboration with the board. We can also look after all aspects of sponsorship for events that we manage.

Talk to us

If this sounds like the kind of practical, results-oriented sponsorship advice and support your association needs, then let’s talk.

Nicki Hauser leads the sponsorship projects at FineHaus.  Nicki has extensive experience in the space, having spent six years successfully managing marketing and sponsorship for the Australasian Legal Practice Management Association.  Over this time, she achieved some impressive results that we’d love to share with you.

Our proven approach to sponsorship, based on the principle of mutual value, is the reason why our clients choose us for this essential work.

And we’d love to help you.