Applying for Sponsorship

How to Apply

• 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

How to Achieve Success

• 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!