Growing 1 million businesses through sponsorship

Reset and Recovery Guide for Organizations, Service Clubs and Entrepreneurs: How to Bounce Forward After Tough Times

The current times we are living in with social distancing, mandated isolation and a global pandemic along with natural (and man-made) disasters are creating significant challenges for nonprofit organizations, entrepreneurs, and purpose-driven professionals.

In many cases, a situation like a health pandemic or a disaster can result in an entrepreneur or organization struggling financially, losing good staff, reducing or cutting operations, and even failing. These types of crises can definitely and deeply impact an organization’s morale and sense of connectedness.

Collaboration and preparedness are key in bouncing forward and safeguarding your ability to do what you love, serve your clients, and stay connected.

After working with several communities, organizations, and businesses who have experienced natural disasters, below are a few learnings to share to ensure that your passion remains intact and to help you get through the challenges that occur after a disaster.

What Sponsorship Systems Do I Need?

If you follow the Raise a Dream 7-Step Sponsorship Success model (available in the ebook on our homepage here), you’ll see that collecting and following up on information play large roles in the success of building relationships with potential partners and sponsors...

...and then keeping those relationships long-term!

There are a number of ways to process the information you need in order to stand out to sponsors and grow your business.

Let’s talk about a few.

I Feel Like I Need to Build A Team But Have No Budget

Let’s face it... raising dreams and building a business can be tough and isolating, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Raising big dreams like the ones you have takes a team. But who says you need a huge budget to build a team?

5 Collaborative Ways to Build Teams Without a Budget

Below are a few ways that we have built teams to raise dreams without a budget (or while the funds are being generated to pay a team).

The 5 Questions to Answer to Make Your Speaking (or Book) Tour Profitable

So many people plan a speaking or book tour (or large event) without enough time to properly plan, secure partnerships/sponsorship and collaboration partners, or to maximize time and minimize workload.

Believe us, we’ve made those mistakes too… BIG DREAMS need a team and the time to raise them for success.

This blog provides you with a few critical questions to make your next speaking tour, book launch, or large event profitable, less stressful, and more fun!

Sponsorship: The Myths, Must Knows, and Methods

In this article, we’ll explore myths, must knows, and methods related to sponsorship to help you gain clarity and take action in relation to the project you’re working on or dream you are raising.

Sponsorship Myths:

At Raise a Dream, we dispel the myth that sponsorship is a handout or philanthropy. It is not grant funding or a donation.

Sponsorship is a marketing relationship.

Companies and brands are using their marketing dollars to invest in sponsorship marketing. So just like a company measures the return on investment (ROI) with their different marketing activities (e.g. direct mail, media, digital advertising, print, etc.), they measure how well sponsoring your project met their marketing objectives.

Sponsorship for Speakers Made Easy!

For speakers, keynoters, and seminar leaders who are serious about growing their speaking business through collaboration, sponsorship funds, and influence, one the first few things you must have clarity around is the value that you bring to the sponsor (and their audience).

Clarifying the Speaker/Sponsor Relationship:

When corporate sponsors invest time, in-kind contributions, and sponsorship funding or dollars into your big dreams and projects, they are looking to get return on investment.

You see, sponsorship is a marketing relationship where the sponsor is helping you (e.g. contributing cash and other resources or products to your projects), but you are also helping them.

7 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Sponsors Receive More Value and Get Your Big Dream More Attention

One of the reasons a sponsor may say yes to providing in-kind or cash sponsorship (or combination of these) to your project, event, or big dream is that they see the value you are able to bring to their brand through your social media connections.

In other words, sponsors see the potential to have ROI – return on investment – from their sponsorship and relationship with you. (Remember, it is important not to assume what sponsors want and need. Instead, ask them!)

Sponsors may have a goal of being seen in front of a particular audience and social platforms can create the targeted platform and buzz they desire. When done effectively, sponsorship social media strategies draw positive and desirable attention to both your sponsor (and your dream project).

Don’t Let Decision Fatigue Impact Your Sponsorship Opportunities and Business Results

Now, more than ever, our brains need a break.

Just like overdoing it on your exercise routine (when your body is stiff or achy), our brains can be overworked and become vulnerable to decision fatigue. Our minds need both time to be unplugged from technology and freedom from making decisions.

Think about the number of decisions that you make throughout your work day. When there are too many decisions or too much to do, you may find yourself later fixing issues that resulted from a reactive or poorly thought out decision. Such mistakes cost us time, add to frustration, and may impact relationships you are trying to build with sponsors.

Reports indicate that we make about 36,000 decisions each day. WOW! It’s astounding isn’t it?

The Power of an Hour in Raising Your Dream

One of our Big Dream Primer program students posed a great question in our Insiders' Facebook Group. The question was concerning an issue that is very real for many people with a big dream.

“How do you balance having a full-time job/career with having a big dream to raise without going down rabbit holes?” What a great question! It addresses a challenge that many of us face.

There are only 1,440 minutes available to us in a 24-hour period. This is 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour period. Now given that some of that you are sleeping for 8 hours and then potentially working at a job for another 8 hours, the issue of how to allocate the resource of your time becomes very important. How do we make the best use of the precious time that is available?

Hire an Event Planner: The Key to Sanity, Savings, and Success!

Event planners. They are the treasured keepers of sanity, savings, and success and the reasons to partner with or hire an event planner for your next event are profuse.

Of course, savvy speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs will try to minimize event costs, perhaps believing that one such saving is to NOT hire an event planning professional. We get it. We’ve been there.

But… the reality of not having a volunteer team, event planning expert, and event support is that everything falls into your lap.

As an event host or speaker, it's not just that you likely will not have the time (or skill set) to manage all these details... it shouldn't be you doing these tasks. If you’re the frazzled one moving furniture, dealing with heating/cooling issues, and handling questions about where the bathrooms are from the attendees, you’re probably not painting the image you wish for yourself as an expert or speaker.