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Sponsors Change Personnel, Can You Roll With The Punches?

By Brett Ridge | June 9, 2011

Has this happened to you? A new CEO takes over as the leader of one of your most valued, high-dollar corporate supporters and he/she has another organization stuck firmly in their heart as their number one charitable priority.  Or perhaps its a new Marketing Staff Leader who wants to make a splash for themselves by changing horses in midstream with their corporate dollars.

They’ll tell you its fair. You’ve been benefiting from the company for many years now. All they want to do is spread their wealth out to other areas of the community. Their employees have many priorities and its time to let someone else have a turn.

Or, they’ll go the other direction and tell you that they’ve been fragmented in their philanthropic approach and now they want to focus in on some simple corporate priorities.

Any way you slice it, a huge chunk of your budget is suddenly at stake;  many times as much money as what you would earn from a small event. Suddenly, corporate relationships that have been built through years of cultivation are no longer valid and you are going to be scrambling to find a way to replace that funding if you don’t act quickly.

What do you do? If you cry, “foul” you risk alienating the new person in a dozen different ways and never getting any money from them ever again. But if you do nothing,  you risk all that you have worked for with that same company.

While there are no easy answers that are guaranteed to work 100% of the time, I do have one solid suggestion that is pretty straight-forward, but no easy trick.  Simply put; lay the groundwork necessary to make sure that it never happens in the first place. In other words, before it ever gets to this situation, do your best to arm your organization against this type of loss by building your relationship with the company beyond any contracts and handshakes. Just as deep roots are the armor that helps a tree stand through a storm, deep roots can be the armor it against a sponsorship hijacking that could kill your organization.

First, involve as many executives in the business relationship as possible. Don’t leave yourself on an island when you need to have a difficult conversation down the road. Of course this is easier said than done. But inviting key executives to your events as your guest is often one way to at least spend some time with them as well as educate them about your mission and just why what you do is so critical.

Second, and perhaps even more importantly, find a meaningful way to involve employees of the company in event and/or mission related activities as often as possible. The more of the rank and file that you can get on board, the more the new person will have to be sensitive to your needs. Make sure that they build a team for your pledge events (Walks, Bikerides, etc…) as well as help with planning, registration,  and check-out. Try to get several of them to actually work with your constituents in delivering services so that someone in the company has actual stories to tell of how leaving you would be detrimental to someone in need.

Finally, if you know that they have a structure within the company for these decisions, you may even be able to encourage them to formally align their corporate charitable priorities with the mission you deliver so that it is on the books when the new person steps in.

In any case, make sure that you truly have a relationship with the whole company. Cultivate that and eliminate the one-man decision making process.

I like to tell the story of our MS Walk Title Sponsor back in 2002 when I was working for the National MS Society. This well-known women’s clothing retailer had been the Title Sponsor for several years but had suddenly decided that they were going to “spread the wealth around” and give their money elsewhere. After enlisting many of their local employees in a campaign to change the mind of the new CEO, I took a sort of passive aggressive attack and simply asked if their employees could still put together a team to participate in the Walk.

Over the years, they had become the largest team of walkers for the event and I knew that many of them were committed to the cause. I explained to the new CEO that if he wanted to spend his resources elsewhere, I understood, but that I felt if we explained to his employees that they could replace the $25,000 he was moving by raising it themselves, they would get the job done. I then told him I would even offer to continue calling them a sponsor due to our longstanding relationship and my confidence in his employees. I said I would continue to market them as an integral part of the event because I knew his employees had taken ownership of it. He called back two days later and said they were giving us the money and that they would be staying with us for the foreseeable future.

Simply enough, we had grown some deep roots within the company and this guy finally saw that his decision would truly be just that………his decision and not that of the company.

Arm yourself today. Run those roots deep. Prepare to roll with the punches and keep your sponsors on board for good.

*****Thanks to Jason Dick who blogs at “A Small Change.” He is hosting this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival for About.com. He is taking submissions on the subject of handling objections and inspired the idea for this blog. Check out all of the other good ideas….  A Small Change.

 

 

Topics: Fundraising, Governance, Leadership | View Comments

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