Most nonprofit executive directors spend a great deal of time either worrying about funding, or working to get more funding. It’s a constant concern in the nonprofit world, especially for animal shelters where you have living creatures housed under your roof. Therefore, it makes sense to consider all the possible fundraising tools that are available to your organization, such as sponsors. Of course, not every type of fundraising methods is right for every organization, but here are some of the benefits of getting sponsors for an animal shelter.
Annual Income
There are all types of sponsorships with various benefits, but generally sponsorships renew on an annual basis. If you keep your sponsors happy, they will probably remain with you year after year. Not only will this give you an annual income stream, it can be depended on and included in budget forecasting.
Free Services
When a business has cash flow problems, they may want to donate goods or services instead. That’s perfectly fine. Remember, for every dime you save in vendor fees, the animals benefit. Just make sure that all these goods and services are things that you actually need, or that it’s one of your regular vendors. Some examples of goods or services that you might exchange for a sponsorship:
• Cleaning supplies
• Janitorial services
• Pest control
• Plumbing
• Roofers and building contractors (if needed)
• Paper and printing services
• Marketing
• Graphic design
• I.T. services
• Trash service
• Water
• Power/electric
• Telephone or cell phones
• Internet
Relationships/Networking
Not to be over looked is the network you will build once you start accepting sponsorships. Certainly these companies participate for business reasons, but they also believe in your mission and genuinely want to help. Some examples of how this type of relationship can be beneficial to your animal shelter:
• Connections to important people in city and county government.
• Offers to assist the animal shelter in even more ways, such as donations of old (but very useable) office furniture and shelving.
• Free advice from these knowledgeable professionals regarding other services you should consider or more ways your organization can save money.
• Extremely prompt service when you have an emergency (plumbing or pest control, for example) – you have a relationship now; your logo is on their trucks after all!
