Corporate sponsorship drops the aura of doing good and gets down to an exchange of benefits between the corporation and a charity—cash (or goods) for positive PR and some marketing opportunities. There’s big money in sponsorship: the IEG (International Events Group) tracks billions in sponsorships worldwide.

In the past, the marketing opportunities nonprofits offered usually consisted of various forms of acknowledgment of the corporation’s support: its logo on brochures, in ads, and on its website. These days, corporations crave “brand experiences” that allow consumers to see and touch their product in some way. Can you let your constituents sample the sponsor’s products? Does your nonprofit use the sponsor’s product or services? If so, how can you let your constituents take part in that experience?

A corporate sponsorship proposal bears little resemblance to a grant proposal. The sponsorship proposal’s focus will be on the demographics of your constituents (age, income, occupation, home location, and buying habits, if you know them) rather than on the details of your programs. Rather than smoothly flowing prose, the sponsorship proposal uses bullet points to highlight the PR and marketing opportunities you offer.

If you cannot describe the people your organization serves in demographic terms, you probably will be unsuccessful seeking sponsorships. You can survey your constituents to gather this information, or you can get general information on your local population from the U.S. Bureau of the Census (census.gov). Its website can give you a lot of what you’ll need based on city, county, or even city block, and the information is free.

To give you a more concrete idea of what a sponsorship proposal looks like, here’s a list of its parts:

Do not include books, an annual report, or videotapes. The idea is to sell the corporation on your charity with the fewest possible words and pictures.

If you approach a major corporation for sponsorship, it’s quite likely you’ll be directed to its online application. These forms can be very specific about some things, while asking nothing about what’s really special about your sponsorship opportunity. For examples, go to sponsorport.com/customers/index.aspx, where you’ll find information for a wide variety of companies. Many times, you’ll make your first approach by e-mail. Keep it very short and to the point. Try not to make it longer than one screen, and make the subject line focus on what the company has to gain, not what your organization needs. (You can include background information as an attachment when inquiring by e-mail.)

Pay very close attention to the company’s guidelines and interests when completing one of these online forms. The first review may well be by a computer, which has been programmed to search for certain key words before passing it on to a human for further review. So if the corporation supports programs serving “at-risk youth,” be sure to use that exact phrase several times in your project description. (This is an exception to the use of jargon discussed in Chapter 14.)

You’ll find a template for a complete corporate sponsorship proposal in Appendix F, but here’s an example of a fact sheet that lists the benefits to the corporate sponsor and the demographics of the charity’s audience.

You’d think that sponsorships would not be tax-deductible, but that’s not the case. As a grant writer who will be crafting sponsorship proposals, you need to understand what benefits are and aren’t tax-deductible. Even though the corporation’s decision to sponsor you will be based on market factors, being able to remind them that all or part will be tax-deductible sweetens the deal.

Tax-deductibility of contributions is a complex subject. The examples given here are not meant to be applicable to any other situations. Always check with your accountant or lawyer to help you determine whether gifts are tax-deductible or not.

Because neither you (probably) nor I (certainly) are tax experts, we can breathe a sigh of relief that in the end, it’s up to the corporation to defend whether a sponsorship fee is tax-deductible. Your responsibility is to clearly state in any contract, agreement, or proposal exactly what benefits the corporation will receive. Benefits that might affect tax-deductibility include …

Tax-deductibility aside, as the grant writer, you need to determine which office at the corporation will be most interested in your proposal. To do this, contact the sponsorship or marketing office if you can offer significant public relations opportunities to the corporation in exchange for the money. Regardless of how much ends up being tax-deductible, this will be considered a sponsorship. Or contact the foundation or contributions office if you can offer nothing more than a polite acknowledgment of the money.