Sponsorship Is Not about You or Me - It Is about the Sponsor

Recently I have been fascinated by the idea of creating corporate sponsorships for some of my books and projects. This will help me achieve my retirement plan a lot quicker.

That is why I attended Brendon Burchard's 3-day Sponsorship/Partnership seminar in San Francisco.

I just received this e-mail from a friend after discussing the idea of Corporate Sponsorships with her.

There is a guy in Alberta who has brain cancer and has to raise $9100 each month for a drug that is not yet available to Albertans because of some red tape. I've suggested to the person running a campaign to raise funds (in a very tedious, slow way) that she go directly to the drug company and ask for a sponsorship for her cause. I've just sent her the links to his videos. Hopefully she will use the idea!

This was my response:

Thaneah:

Quickly, about sponsorships, particularly going direct to the drug company.

This is not a good idea.

Sponsorships are about Partnerships, which means both parties have to win.

The problem with most people is when they think of sponsorships, they think of Me, Me, Me!

See my blog post SPONSORSHIP IS ALL ABOUT PROFITS - THAT IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE! on my Redroom blog at:

Plain and simple, Sponsorships / Partnerships are about how you can create something for the Sponsor so the Sponsor wins big time and you win big time at the same time.

What you have to do is create a campaign that brings COOLNESS, AWARENESS, and GOODNESS to the Sponsor and the Sponsor gives you what you would like in return.

With this in mind, the drug company is not the place to go for sponsorship. It would not benefit from any awareness that it is giving away the drug to someone. There would be thousands of other people asking for the drug for free. This would be detrimental to the drug company. The drug company is not in the business of giving away the drug for free and this is the way it should be. I don't hear of any school teachers or nurses or auto workers willing to work for free of at a loss.

Having said this, sponsorship is definietly possible for this case.

It's a matter of being creative and putting in the work.

What is required is creating a campaign for a large company (bank, telephone company, human resources company, etc ) that would create COOLNESS, AWARENESS, and GOODNESS for the company by buying the drug for someone who needs it.

I suggest that if you don't have a LinkedIn account, that you sign up for one.

Then join the two sponsorship groups that I have joined.

Then ask other people for opinions on how to create (notice I said create and not "get") a Sponsorship/Partnership for this case.

Particularly ask Kim Skildum-Reid from Australia, who has been doing sponsorship for about twenty-four or so years.

Also review all her posts on LinkedIn because there is a lot of valuable information there.

She has written a book about it called Sponsorship Seeker's Toolkit Third Edition which I am ordering.

Note that I am buying this book even though I spent over $2,000 to attend Brendon's Sponsorship/ Partnership Seminar and already have an incredible amount of resources to work with.

Check out Kim Skildum-Reid's website called Power Sponsorship and note that she is doing two different workshops on Sponsorships in Los Angeles in May.

Also check out Kim's blog posts such as this one called How Do I Get Sponsorships for My Event.

In short, sponsorship is not about you or me - it is about the Sponsor! That is the way it should be because the sponsor is the one spending the money.

So long for now,

Ernie J. Zelinski
The Creativity Guy
Best-Selling Author, Innovator, and Unconventional Career Expert
Author of the Bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
(Over 110,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
and the International Bestseller The Joy of Not Working
(Over 225,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)