© Mark W. Pettigrew
I'm currently looking at an ad for the SISU Children's Fund (a Bellingham nonprofit charity) on page 46 of the July 2011 issue of Entertainment News Northwest, a magazine published and distributed in Bellingham. A good 85% to 90% of the ad seems to consist of a list of businesses who supported the group's recent fundraising event, according to the ad copy. The list includes a bank, a tire store, a restaurant, a fine art studio, a golf club, and much more.
While donations from individual donors are obviously important components in fundraising efforts for most charities and nonprofit groups, such donations aren't always enough to enable such nonprofit groups to even survive, much less meet all of their fundraising goals. That's why corporate sponsorships are so important.
One benefit to such sponsors, of course, is that there may be tax deductions associated with such sponsorships (provided that the organization has 501(c)3 status, or that it is operating under the umbrella of another related organization which does).
Another benefit may be that the companies which help to sponsor such charities can enhance the perceptions of people in the community, in terms of seeing those businesses as important members of that community, regardless of how large that community might be. When people perceive that particular businesses or business people have helped to sponsor worthy charities and organizations, they tend to think more favorably of those companies, whenever they are seeking to purchase products and/or services.
A third benefit, especially in this age of the Internet, may be that the organizations which benefit from such corporate sponsorships may return the favor by linking from their web sites to the web sites for those businesses. There can be real tangible benefits connected with such links, since web traffic can make the difference between a web site which achieves what is intended and a web site which does not do so. Not every business uses e-commerce in order to do business directly, but for those which do, that's an especially powerful incentive for sponsoring worthy causes and organizations.
Sponsorship can come in many forms. On the most basic level, sponsors can offer written endorsements and/or testimonies (as well as audio or video versions of those endorsements and testimonies), which can be indirectly valuable in terms of persuading people that the nonprofit groups or charities are worthy of their support. That really isn't much to ask. It costs little or nothing to take a few minutes to write such materials, and only a little bit more time to create audio and/or video versions of the same.
At the next level, the sponsors can offer practical help and material contributions, which may come in the form of volunteer work or financial contributions or links from their own companies' web sites to the web sites for the organizations which they wish to sponsor. In the case of the organizations listed in the SISU Children's Fund ad, it appears that their help came more in the form of enabling that charity to hold (and possibly publicize) its fundraising event. My guess, however, would be that each individual business had its own unique contributions to make, depending on the needs of the SISU Children's Fund, and on the abilities and resources of the individual sponsors.
If you own or work for a business which is interested in the possibility of deriving the benefits of sponsoring the Artistic Rescue Project, please take the time to read the materials which I have posted on this web site so far (and which I intend to continue to post in the future), to see if this might be the type of project you'd like to sponsor. If you think that it might be, I would be delighted to visit with you here in the Bellingham and Whatcom County place of business (or any other accessible location of your choice, provided that I can afford the travel expenses) in order to answer any questions you might have about the project (provided that I have the answers to those questions). If you decide to do whatever you can do in order to help make this project a success, I promise to do everything which is feasible and reasonable to publicize your generous support of this project.
Inasmuch as this project exists in large part for the purpose of raising money for major nonprofit charities and relief organizations such as Convoy of Hope, World Vision and others, it logically follows that the success of the Artistic Rescue Project will benefit those organizations as well. Therefore, I would hope that such organizations would help with whatever resources they have available to them to make the Artistic Rescue Project a success. I realize that large organizations of that nature are generally far more successful than I currently am, and some might even argue that my own little project is such "small potatoes" that helping it would be a waste of their time and resources. But I pray that they will see the potential benefits of sponsoring the Artistic Rescue Project so that they might receive reciprocal benefits later on down the road.
Thank you for your time.
I can be contacted via e-mail and/or phone, via the contact information which I've added to the sidebar for this blog.
