Welcome to the Sponsors Section!
Sponsorship team is working mainly with sponsors to get the most out money and swag.
Overview
Venue for adequate size.
Get that money from sponsors
API Sponsors & API Prizes
Goal
Bring as much revenue as possible and get as many sponsors as possible.
Fiscal Sponsors
The absolute, most important thing of organizing a hackathon is making sure you have some kind of funding. Additionally, having a fiscal sponsor is crucial to the success of a hackathon. A fiscal sponsor, in this case ==> Hack+, is usually a non-profit organization that will help you with the legal aspect of hackathons. Especially with high school students, there is a extremely large concern with overnight activities. In terms of funding, companies are weary to give out large sums of money to students; this is where a fiscal sponsor comes in. Hack+ will provide companies with invoices, bank accounts for organizers to use, and contracts for finalized sponsors (depending on what plan you choose to have).
Sponsorship Prospectus
For regular sponsors, it is crucial to build a sponsorship prospectus. This packet includes basic details regarding your hackathon and the importance of sponsors supporting it. More importantly, it provides "tiers" of specific benefits to sponsors depending on the amount of payment they give. Some sponsors might provide "in-kind" donations which means anything but money including swag, API credits, or prizes. For examples of sponsorship prospectus, check out hackathon pages like TinoHacks or just reach out to me for some! Additionally, remember that: financial support > swag (prizes, tours, shirts, stickers, mentors, judges, etc.) > literally anything > said no > no response. No matter what, always remember to follow up and get anything that you can because you want any support that you can get, especially if you are a high school event!
Reaching Out to Sponsors
Make a list of all of the nearby companies around you. There are a lot of companies that haven't even sponsored a hackathon before and don't know what a hackathon is. For these potential sponsors, you can use the "it's the first hackathon in this city" to help persuade them to support your event. Additionally, hackathons are a great way for them to gauge their audience on a more personal level. Finding companies to sponsor is kind of like finding a venue. Make sure to include a monetary option to the venue emails. Once you have those connections, it'll be a lot easier to reach out to and ask. Create an organized spreadsheet with columns labelled "Company, Contact Name, Contact Email, Contact Position, Member of Team In Charge, Situation, # of Follow-ups, Sent Out Mentor Form?".
Email Process Requirements:
Whenever your team members sends out a response, make sure to track your emails in the spreadsheet. If you get no response within three days, FOLLOW UP. Make sure to constantly check your emails.
Who should I email?
Developers, developer/community evangelists, recruiters, HR, outreach directors, sales are all fair game. Even better would be someone high up (think VPs, directors, CEOs, CTOs, etc)
Helpful links to use:
Clearbit Connect- download (it’s a chrome extension) and make sure that you’re sending it to real people since this database is old by checking them on LinkedIn
https://app.voilanorbert.com/#!/prospecting/manual- to get more emails
Streak CRM- make it so that you send your emails from monday-thursday in the mornings (like 8am)
Also, just try going on other hackathon pages and look for the companies that usually sponsor and just email them.
The Focus
We want to focus on getting responses rather than focusing on the amount of emails sent out. For your team members, don't measure the amount of success they have by the amount of emails. Also, make sure to have certain deadlines so that you're team members don't slack off.
Maintaining a Good Relationship
Sponsors enjoy getting updates and seeing how their support has improved our event so make sure to send a final report including stats like how many people came, gender ratio, and projects submitted. Also, it's smart to ask for mentors to build a stronger relationship with the sponsor and involve them more.
Real-life Example
Sponsors want to see that your event is worth to support so they want to see other "high-level" sponsors on your page. For Superposition, our focus was for women in tech so we reached out to Girls Who Code and women in tech organization and got some help from them. Also, we looked for sponsors that were especially open about supporting women since we had aligned goals. Also, we accepted in-kind donations and mentor sponsorship (like Google) because we were able to put their logo on our page and gather more attention to our event.