Sponsors and partners to national teams

Do you have in your national teams , sponsor or partnerships that gives you money or pay to you like the flights or is just your federations that do all that job ?

All our money comes from our own pockets. Federation doesn't pay a thing. We have tried to get some sponsorship but nothng ever comes of it.

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Just in case you weren't sure, it's official -- CMAS sucks.
Oh yeah, and now they're broke.

has no extra money, and we barely make organizational expenses each year; we are a small memberships based organization - dues are $15 US/year. I would dearly love to support the teams, but I pay my own way (anywhere and everywhere) too. Only benefit we can give some, those who own homes for instance, is the ability to deduct their expenses from their income tax as charitable donation, but those such as Duck, who live in apartments, do not benfit. why ? just take my word for it unless you want lesson in us tax stuff!

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Carol Rose

We do get some sponsorship from different organizations.
Ok, quit some are related to players (like family or so) but others have absolutely nothing to do with underwaterhockey.
Some advice that I can give you, is by looking for companies that can give you something they don't have to pay money for. Airline companies or car rental companies.
From other companies you can, for example get something you can later on raffle or sell.

The most important thing is to present them a good sponsorship deal where you explain your objectives and, most importantly, their benefit. Uwh has a huge media potential if you play it right, and they can communicate it to their customers. It shows their company is very innovative and special.
As our sport is considered to be a weird, intense sport, it reflects this upon their company image.

Of course, also the care afterwards is important. Give you sponsors a full report on what happened. Give them one of the T-shirts you had made that includes their logo and give them a picture of the team.
Don't forget them at Christmas. Even sending a card will already make them happy.

Further to Fred's response...

Ask yourself ?
• How could a sponsor or a number of sponsors enhance the event or team?
• What can contra sponsors offer?

Define opportunities
• Branding - clothing, printed materials, banners etc
• Staff involvement
• Is there an opportunity for sponsors to promote services or products?
• What media coverage is planned?
• Exposure to large audiences

Identify potential sponsors
• Don’t waste time with the random shotgun approach
• Try to target by association - ie - by colours - or by product

Research potential sponsors
• Company philosophy
• Do they have a sponsorship budget?
• When do they set budgets?
• What have they sponsored in the past?
• Corporate goals
• Latest media coverage
• Trends in their industry
• Who are their customers?
• What is their advertising strategy?
• Who makes the decisions?

UWH Federations need to be able to give possible sponsors a profile of your organisation and membership. Companies like to target various sectors so knowing the number of members and their demographics is important.
Companies sponsoring your team or teams seek
• Performance (they want to be associated with winners)
• Recognition\acknowledgement (know who they are and what they do so that you can acknowledge them if asked or when the opportunity arises)
• Not to be embarrassed (nothing turns a sponsor off more than negative publicity or talk about a team or player they have associated themselves with)
• Tax break
• Enhance their image or public awareness
• Gain publicity through increased media exposure
• Improved customer relationships
• Be seen as a good corporate citizen
• Economic development for the region
• Increased sales
• Increased employee morale

Keeping your sponsor
• Develop the on-going relationship
• Never under-deliver on your contract
• Ensure you evaluate and quantify all the benefits received including all copies of print media, TV clips or radio adverts
• Say Thank You!
Keeping sponsors is as important as finding new ones.
You are more likely to get funding and / or sponsorship if you have a successful club, association or federation administratively as well as being results driven.
You will need:
• A short, medium, long term strategic plan
• A Mission
• A Vision
• Achievable goals
• Good day to day management of your club, association or federation
Hope this helps.
In New Zealand’s case we are trying to be as professional in our approach as possible but this has to happen in all sectors. Underwater Hockey Federations have to have plans and administrators have to be organised.
With our representative team’s costs, our biggest issue as its costs NZ players NZD $2600 to fly to London or South Africa or $2000 to America. We have not found a sponsor to solve this but we have become better organised and we are planning well in advance. We have organised a raffle and when all the tickets are sold then the players will earn $500 towards their trip.
Try to be successful and find a solution to issues. Generally the momentum from the successful area does rub off into other areas. Start small and build to something great.

In my observation UWH Federations plan to fail as they fail to plan sufficiently.

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Tristan Reynard
Schools/Chair
Underwater Hockey NZ
www.underwaterhockey.org.nz

TKR has a good list.
(its a good list)


Sponsers do not find you by stepping to a company or institution and hold your hand for what money.
The bests you can firstly establish a good sponserplan with objectives, visions etc.
Where you reflect/think in advance what you want to have.

When you have such book/plan you can give it to possible sponsers.
And it works. My club works already some years by such plan.(in Dutch)
And i think that TKR also has such a sponserplan. (in Englisch?)

An other possitive point is that when your club has a plan in book form is when the person that does hold/make the contacts with sponsers stops everybody can take it over. And can easy work it out by that Sponserplan.

Important note.
*Keep the plan up to date.*
Like a vision can chanche in time. etc.

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Follow the yellow brick road and you are coming somewhere.

Amongst all the points well raised by Tristan I would like to point out the cruciality of the "Tax break" element.

Find precises informations about Tax Law in Portugal before launching your "sponsor haunting campaign" and underline this aspect when you communicate with your potential sponsors. From our experience, it is decisive.

Few tips:

- Don't communicate by emails which are too easy to repply with a standard refusal answer. Get direct contact by phone or better in person;

- Have a support, something to give to your potential sponsor, presenting: the game, its spread worlwide, its developpement and grown possibilities in Portugal, and it is very important an additionnal clear list mentionning the different economical level of contribution that you expect from them as it will serve has a reference for further negociations. (You may find for example our support document in french and dutch prepared for Bari here : http://www.buwh.be/images/doc/dossie..._2007_bari.pdf and the one for Sheffield there http://www.buwh.be/Document/WC_2006_...compressed.pdf );

- spread the haunt (by motivating your players to contribute actively to it) but centralise the communication;

- Insist on the institutional aspect (IOC, CMAS organisation, etc...) even if it is only a label, sponsors are always extremely attentive to this recognition, it comforts them providing them the sentiment that they are not giving their to money to a baunch of amateurs ;

- Be creative, reactive and imaginative in order to find how your collaboration with a sponsor could be optimised into a partnership;

- And the most important : Be really PROACTIVE,POSITIVE and as PROFESSIONAL as possible. Even if it seems difficult to understand believe strongly that what you offer has a real VALUE (even a begining team like Portugal). Try to push every door.

It is not because some old player tells you that something is not possible that it is not.
It just proves that he has simply never seriously tried.

Yours,

Romain

I can talk about my experience: It's really hard, and there are a lot of things that you must have, and take a lot of time/work. And a suggestion , having a good proffesional really makes a difference.

I had prepared several docs, for different opportunities. In the beggining, I thought tried to put a lot of info about the sports, clubs, tournaments, organizations, etc. My first docs used to have more than 40 pages, including a lot of newspaper articles, official letters, etc. Usually, people that didn't know the sport found it interesting, but boring.

For Durban, one of the players that is publicist did the work. He focus on doing things simple, just enough info about the sports/organizations, players, roadmap, one or two newspaper articles, one or two letters, and that's all. All together, in a very fashion and modern template. Every single guy that saw it is amazed about the doc, and it's about 15 pages long. A complentary DVD with games and also TV notes, completes the set.

So, my advice: try to keep things SIMPLE. Don't flood your presentation with sport specific info, that will be amazing for all sport related people, but boring to a stranger that must decide if he/she will give you some of his/her money in the next 5 minutes.

By the way, I guess this is probably the most important gap. I guess a place for sharing this kind of docs, antecedents, facts, pics, videos, etc is really needed. Not just funny stuff, good stuff that address some standard quality.

I really hate to re-invent the wheel every time I need to prepare a "please give me something" doc.

I can mail you the doc if you want, it's in spanish, but you may use it as an example.

Regards,
Sebastián

My Labor Union sponsor me,but I am out the game for a year ,due to my eardrum rapture...
I could get easyly $10 000-$15 000 to play UWH for USA,in my estymate-you know Union Construction Industry is pretty big in NYC/USA

1) individual support: how do individual players get support? As one of my players just pointed out, he went to his union successfully. Others have found their employers have matching grant system - you put in XX $ and they match. This is usually limited to tax exempt organization which is a USA entity wherein donations are tax deductible (ie Boy Scouts, Red Cross, etc come to mind as well as USOA). Also player can go to their families and friends - for my birthday, Christmas, ext present, could you????? and this is also tax deductible in US but money has to be given to USOA who then returns it to the player. Even small donations, ie $25, add up. Some persons can get time off with pay to attend a WC which is indirect support. Or what we call 'in kind' support - get local dive store to donate your fins or other equipment.

2) Federation support dollars - in US this is very difficult. Big manufacturers are mostly already tied into Olympic support. And remember, big companies set their budgets the year before, so bids/requests should be submitted by mid year the year before. Often big companies have official form and bid outline to use and don't consider any other applications.

3) Support for an event: in 1998 we found some limited support for food and drink for opening ceremonies. Bottled water company gave us 50% off; food companies (bread and cheese) gave substantial discounts. Guys hit local wineries week before, and we able to get bottle or two from about 10 wineries which was enough.

In US, as we (USAO) have tax exempt status, donations are deductible to company (ie bottled water company, baker, cheese factory, etc) at the retail sale level. I sent 'tax receipts' out to each donor allowing them to fill in value, and we listed each of them for a year in our newsletter as 'official donors.'

When approaching companies, all of Tris' ideas are good. I always emphasize how long federation has been in existence, that we are tax exempt, status of our teams (medals in past), cost of each player to attend the event in question and that they are self supporting. I think each country has to fit their specific situation and legal ramifications.

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Carol Rose