Help Line: 01737 276000

• Skip menu
• Accessibility
• Contact us
• Site map
• Site A-Z
• Site help

Fundraising information

How to attract sponsorship

• News centre
• Ways to pay
• Get help & advice
• Helpshop Online

You are here: Home > Community and Living > Fundraising information > How to attract sponsorship > Approaching companies

Key Factors in approaching companies

This page contains information about the key factors to consider when approaching companies for funding.

Research

Research is very important, not just into companies, but also into personal contacts. When planning an appeal, an important first step is to find which of the people associated with your charity have influence or know people who have. If you can find a link between one of your supporters and a particular company use it.

• One of your trustees/ members may be on the board of directors or have contacts there – it will prove useful for them to write or sign the appeal letter.
• One of your volunteers or supporters may be an employee of the company.
• Your clients/ users (or their parents) may work for the company

Alternatively, you might be able to tie your appeal in to a known personal interest of a director.

Getting in touch

Generally an appeal through a personal contact will work the best. But if you haven’t got a contact and can see no way of developing one, then you will have to come up with another link.

As a first step you might contact the company to find out the following

• Who is responsible for dealing with charitable appeals
• Their name and job title
• What information they can send regarding their company
• Any procedure or timetable for submitting applications
• Whether they might be interested in coming to see your organisation at work

Visits are useful when discussing bigger donations with larger companies, but are difficult to arrange for anything small.

Almost certainly your appeal will be in the form of a letter. Make this as personal as you can. Circular letters tend to end up in the bin. Make the letter short and to the point.

Be specific in your approach

Rather than sending out a circular mailing to 100 or 1,000 companies, you will be more successful if you select a few companies you believe will be particularly interested in your project, and target your application to them and their policy. (Many companies will not consider circular appeals as a point of policy).

Find a good reason why you believe the company should support you and include this prominently in your letter. You may be able to relate what you are doing as a charity to companies that have some relevance to your work; for example, a children’s charity can appeal to companies making children’s products; a housing charity to construction companies, building societies etc. Any relationship, however, tenuous, creates a point of contact on which you can build a good case for obtaining the company’s support. If there is no relationship, should you be approaching the company at all?

There may be occasions where a charity will not want to accept money from a company in a related industry. A health education charity may not want to accept money from a tobacco company or a brewery or from the confectionery industry.  Similarly an environmental group may not wish to accept a donation from a nuclear power company. Such charities may feel that they would be seen to be compromised if they did so. Similarly, a local charity might not want money from a company who has made people in the area redundant. Each charity has to judge where it draws the line.

Be clear about why you want the money

You must be clear about the objectives of the work you are raising money for, particularly its time-scale and how it relates to your overall programme of work. Try to think in project terms rather than seeking money to cover basic administration costs. This can be difficult, because most people spend most of their money on administration in one form or another, so you need to conjure up projects out of your current activities to present to potential donors. You can build a percentage of administration costs into the costs of a project. If you relate what you are doing to a specific time-scale, this again makes what you are applying for appear more of a project than a contribution on your year-on-year core costs.

Be persistent

Do not underestimate the persistence factor. If you do not receive a donation in the first year, do not assume that the company will never support you. Go back a second and even a third time.

If you are going back, mention the fact that you have applied to the company previously, perhaps saying that you are now presenting something different which may be (you hope) of more interest.

If the company gives you reasons for refusing support, use these to help you put in more appropriate applications in the future. If the response is that the company does not give to your particular type of activity, then you know that it is absolutely no use your going back. If the company said its funds were fully committed, you can try to find out when would be a better time to apply (although this might only have been a convenient excuse because the company did not want to give to you).

Note the response to your appeal and use any information you can glean to improve your chances the next time. People respect persistence, so it really is important to go back again and again.