4 Tips for Securing Last-Minute Nonprofit Event Sponsorships

Your nonprofit’s fundraising event is rapidly approaching. Invitations have been sent, registrations are coming in, and details are being finalized. The only thing missing is a full slate of sponsors. And as you know, securing corporate sponsorships for nonprofit events is crucial for a lucrative event—boosting revenue, covering hard costs, providing in-kind donations, and opening doors to future support for your cause. 

But not to worry! There are plenty of ways to secure sponsorships at the eleventh hour. So whether your event is entirely in person, virtual, or a mix of both, these tips can help you appeal to businesses and secure their support just in time for your fundraising event.

1. Leverage Your Networks & Community Ties

Using your networks is a good practice anytime you’re looking for sponsorship opportunities, but calling upon those relationships becomes crucial when you’re down to the wire for an upcoming event. As any nonprofit fundraising event consultant will tell you, your supporter network is a valuable resource for finding event sponsors, particularly at the last minute. 

Think beyond your planning team, board, and volunteer networks, and look at your nonprofit’s connections throughout your community. Let’s say your nonprofit is hosting a charity golf tournament to raise money for a new initiative. The tournament is only a week away, and you need $2,000 in sponsorship revenue to hit your goal. 

To find last-minute sponsors, reorganize your sponsorship packages to appeal to a broader range of businesses. Double the Donation recommends offering tiered sponsorship levels. The lowest level is the cheapest but offers the fewest benefits, the next level offers more and is more expensive, and so on. 

When reorganizing your sponsorship tiers to attract last-minute partners, consider creating mini-packages that offer few benefits for businesses but are substantially cheaper than your lower tier. For example, if your lowest sponsorship tier is $2,000, you might split it into five $400 chunks, making it more viable for businesses with smaller budgets. 

Next, appeal to your donors, board members, volunteers, and other community connections to sell the newly packaged sponsorships. When you leverage these ties, you also leverage social proof, which is the idea that people are influenced to support causes when someone they know already did.

In other words, when meeting with sponsors, emphasize other sponsors that have already signed up to support your event, the number of expected attendees, and your relationship with whoever facilitated your meeting with the business. 

2. Create Personalized Pitches for Each Prospect

When approaching prospective sponsors, have a unique value proposition ready for why your fundraising event will help them reach potential clients and customers. A value proposition is essentially a statement of what a prospective buyer, or in this case a sponsor, has to gain and why your organization can uniquely provide that benefit. 

For instance, most nonprofits might lean into the fact that businesses want to be seen taking philanthropic actions in their communities and emphasize the improved reputation and promotion to the nonprofit’s supporters. To explain why a business should support that nonprofit specifically, an organization might point to the fact that its support base aligns with the business’s target audience or that its past sponsors have seen a boost in sales.

Since you’re coming down to the wire for the event, you might also throw in additional sponsor perks to sweeten the deal. Consider offering:

• Extra social media shoutouts
• The chance to mingle with event attendees 
• A brief speaking opportunity at the event

Let’s continue with the golf tournament example. According to GolfStatus, golfers’ higher-than-average net worth and annual income make your tournament especially appealing to sponsors looking to get in front of a higher-end audience. In this instance, you would leverage this value proposition to target businesses that cater to a wealthier clientele.

3. Create & Stress Urgency

As a nonprofit leader, you know that your ability to accomplish your mission and do your important work can suffer if you don’t hit your fundraising goals. You likely feel the urgency to bring on additional sponsors to improve event outcomes, so communicate this to potential sponsors to compel them to want to get involved.

There are a number of ways to create and stress urgency when appealing to businesses, including:

• Offering exclusive “limited time” benefits. Continuing with the golf tournament example, you might offer a premium spot on the practice green or in the clubhouse to allow the sponsor to mingle with attendees or double the social media mentions to sponsors who come on board the week of the tournament.
• Sharing the impact the sponsor will be making with their support. This could be as simple as sharing a video with sponsorship prospects that tells a beneficiary’s story. Not only does this tug at their heartstrings, but demonstrates the impact the sponsor will help create and drive them to give.”
• Highlighting the limited number of sponsorships remaining. Nothing compels action faster than someone thinking they’re missing out on an opportunity. If suitable, mention “only four sponsorships remain” in your custom pitches to businesses to further create urgency.

4. Streamline the Onboarding Process

Pitching to sponsors can already be a long process, so make the onboarding process short. You can make becoming a sponsor for your nonprofit as simple and streamlined as possible with the right tools.

Intuitive nonprofit event management software solutions will have native sponsorship onboarding and management capabilities. This way, sponsors can commit as soon as they hear about your event and submit logos and links through your sponsorship portal without a time-consuming back and forth with your team.

Wrapping Up

While giving yourself a long runway to solicit fundraising event sponsorships is ideal—and should be part of your event planning—these strategies will get you off and running if you’re in a time crunch. That being said, your team might consider building last-minute sponsorship appeals into the overall planning processes, outlining these and other strategies you’ll take if your event date is nearing and you still need to shore up sponsorships. Whether you’re hosting a silent auction or sports tournament, building out these tactics in advance during the event planning stage can alleviate some stress, keeping you organized to create the most effective appeals possible to meet your event’s fundraising goals.

About the Author: Jen Wemhoff, Communications Manager at GolfStatus

Jen Wemhoff accidentally discovered her passion for nonprofits in college. An internship while earning a degree in Communications from Doane University led to a 20-year career in the nonprofit sector, where she found a strong desire to be part of something bigger than herself. Her vast nonprofit experience includes roles in marketing, fundraising, and direct programming. When Jen came to GolfStatus as Communications Manager in 2020, she was struck by the power of the sport to raise money to power nonprofit missions. She tells GolfStatus’s story across platforms and channels and develops educational tools and resources to help nonprofits tap into golf’s giving power. Jen, her husband, and two daughters call Lincoln, Nebraska home.