For rightsholders
You seek sponsorship
Events, sport, arts, culture, causes, venues, festivals, leagues, councils, universities. If your job involves getting a sponsor to say yes — and then to say yes again — this is your version of the site.
Sound familiar?
The four problems rightsholders bring me
Different symptoms, usually the same root cause: an offer built around what you have, instead of what a sponsor can do with it.
“Our proposals keep getting knocked back.”
Because they’re inventory lists. A sponsor doesn’t buy signage, they buy a way to connect with people who already care about something. Fix the offer and the sales problem shrinks.
Offer development resources“Our portfolio is bottom-heavy.”
A long tail of small sponsors, each costing as much to service as the big ones. You need a portfolio structure and pricing that reflects value, not tradition.
Rework it in a strategy session“Our sponsors phone it in.”
They don’t leverage, they don’t measure, then they blame you when nothing happens. The fix is to teach them — which also happens to make you look like the most valuable partner they have.
The leverage workshop“We know we’re worth more than this.”
You probably are. Most rightsholders undersell because they’ve never inventoried what they actually control, and price against last year instead of against value.
Free inventory templateFree first
Start with the free stuff
Genuinely. If reading three things fixes it, that’s a better outcome for both of us than an invoice.
Top Ten Tips for Sponsorship Seekers
The short, sharp starting point. Free PDF.
Read moreGeneric Inventory template
Work out what you really have to sell. Free Word doc.
Read moreProposal basics in 15 minutes
The blockbuster video tutorial.
Read moreBest of: offers, sales, renewals
Three curated reading paths, in order.
Read moreWhen you want help
And when reading isn’t enough
Work out what you actually have
A strategy session over a day or two: portfolio structure, offers, pricing, hit list, negotiation planning. Whiteboards full of answers, and a team that helped build them.
Or do the full strategy properly
Strategic consulting when you need a formal framework, the buy-in of a board, and a document to be held to.
Build the skills so it keeps working
In-house training that goes well beyond your sponsorship team — because sponsorship needs broad buy-in and everyone thinks it’s someone else’s job.
Turn your sponsors into better sponsors
The Advanced Leverage & Measurement Workshop: invite every sponsor, they bring their teams, and they leave with a draft leverage plan. Renewals get much easier.
If you’re a funder, not a seeker
Group training for the events, venues, and organisations you fund — so they get better at this and lean on you less.
This served to build capacity within my newly formed team, reinforce the vision and commercial direction we were taking, assist in reinvigorating our proposal writing and creating leveraging ideas. Thank you for your sage wisdom and expertise.
She ran workshops for our sponsors to maximise the value they received from their association with the Games. These were extremely well received by our corporate partners and also led to some extraordinary commercial outcomes for our sponsors.
Adelaide Festival worked with Kim to review and refresh our approach to sponsorship. We particularly enjoyed Kim’s enthusiasm, sense of humour, and practical advice, alongside her extensive expertise.
Tell me about your property
What you’ve got, who you’ve approached, and where it keeps stalling. I’ll tell you whether it’s an offer problem, a pricing problem, or a sales problem — and what to do about it.