Finance and Funding

• What do you want from your sponsorship deal? Sponsorship doesn't always have to be monetary, for example a food company may be able to provide refreshments for an event or an industry expert may be able to deliver skills workshops for your members.
• What can you offer you sponsor in return? Remember sponsorship is two-way relationship so you need to think about what you are going to offer your sponsor. Examples of this are displaying the sponsor's company logo on your group's banners, hoodies or social media pages. Alternatively, you may be able to promote their services via your society newsletter- make to never share your members' personal details with the sponsor (e.g. names, email address', phone numbers) and that any communication with your members is only via your own channels.
• Who is the right person to contact? Do your research! Don't just contact company employees on LinkedIn. Use the generic enquiry email address or phone number on the company's website and ask who the best person to talk to would be.
• Tailor your application to each company! Don't just copy and paste the exact same application, research each company and their strategy.
• Be honest about any other sponsorship deals your group currently has or have had in the past
• Include an overview of your group and make it personalised! This can include photographs from any successful events you've held, your society's social media engagement stats and member demographics.
• Follow up after a couple of weeks, if the answer is no, ask for some feedback on move onto another application

• Contract: Make sure you have a contract with your sponsor, detailing what you both agree to. Use the template below. Make sure to send you contract to [email protected] before signing for a member of the Activities team to check over. Once your contract has been checked over by the Activities team it will need to be signed by both a member of the committee and the sponsor. Make sure to keep a copy of your signed contract and send one to [email protected] also.
• Invoice: Once your contract is signed and sent to the Activities Team, you'll need to fill in the invoice request form below. Send the filled in invoice request form with the signed contract to [email protected].
• Maintain the relationship: It is mportant that you do your best to maintain your agreement with a sponsor. The more proactive you are in working with your sponsor, the more likely they are to sponsor your activity group in the future. Honouring your commitment is vital to maintaining a lasting, positive relationship between your group and sponsor. Also, breaking a legal agreement with a company could potentially have serious consequences. As well as honouring your contract with your sponsor, here some additional things you could do to help maintain the relationship with a sponsor:

  Send a thank you letter when the contract is signed, or when money or services are receive, send them pictures of events, ahare examples of their money, logos or donations in action and put together a report, including pictures and examples of how money was used, with a short description of why their sponsorship was so important to your group

We find that having your own custom email address can make your society appear more professional to potential sponsors, so we've put together a short guide to getting your own domain:

1. Purchase a Domain Name:

There are many domain name registrars to choose from, but the most popular ones are, Namecheap, Hover and iwantmyname. An example of what your custom email will look like: [email protected]. You can choose other top-level domains such as .org, .net etc. Domains can cost as little as £5 per year.

2. Choose an Email Hosting Provider:

The next step is choosing your Email Hosting Provider. This is the service that will host your domain and there are many to choose from such as Google, Office 365 Business Essentials, Zoho Mail, FastMail, ProtonMail, Pobox and Rackspace Email. When selecting an email hosting service, consider the best email management solutions, storage capacity, technical support and, of course, an affordable price. The process of creating a custom email address is more or less the same for all providers and you can find a step-to-step guide on how to do so with a few providers here.

You are now set up with your own custom email address!