I realize I'm biased when I say this, but my husband is pretty amazing. Take for instance the work he does as Asst. Vice President for Community Relations at Premier Members Credit Union, here in Colorado, where he oversees the credit union's many sponsorship arrangements with local non-profits as well as programs in sustainability, corporate and social responsibility, and more. But I'm not posting here to brag about him (though I'm happy to do that). Today I want to look at a specific program that he's created that is truly innovative, and should serve as a model for arts organizations looking to expand programming and garner more corporate sponsorship. It's also a model for businesses looking to make a more significant impact with their community giving. (This story was recently featured in BizWest, Colorado's main business publication. Click this link to read!)
Corporate sponsorship tends to work in one of the following ways: it underwrites a performance ("Tonight's performance is presented by..."), it buys naming writes to a facility/space ("The Pepsi Center for the Performing Arts"), or it is the naming sponsor for an event -- usually a fundraiser ("We're so grateful for the sponsors of tonight's gala, including our Presenting Sponsors..."). There are variations on this theme, of course -- for instance, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival has these neat folding chairs for their outdoor theatre (which are surprisingly comfortable for what they are), emblazoned with the name and logo of the sponsor who purchased them. (And the plastic cups used to serve beer at the concession stand is branded with the company underwriting said beer.) Regardless of the particulars, if you've ever been to a sporting event, a pop show, a fine arts performance, or a non-profit fundraiser, you've seen countless examples of this sort of thing.
For the company, all of these uses are simply a marketing expense. They provide a financial gift to the entity in question in return for the privilege (sometimes exclusive, sometimes not) of displaying their name & logo. The size of the gift and degree of exclusivity depends mostly on the number of people the company calculates will encounter their brand as a result: a one-time sponsorship of the Symphony Gala (approximate audience size: 800) won't capture nearly as much money as the naming rights to a pro football stadium (approximate audience size: 55,000 in-person every time there's a game, plus every time it's mentioned in the media, plus every person who passes the stadium on the freeway and sees the giant neon sign, and on and on).
For the organization (and let's assume we're talking about non-profits now and not football stadiums), they get financial support. And that's not nothing -- none of those glitzy fundraising galas we love to throw every year would make a penny without underwriting by sponsors (and even then many only break even...but that's a post for another time). So the company gets some visibility in their market and the organization gets some dough. Sounds like a good arrangement, doesn't it?
Except it's not really. Consider this: when you're flipping through the program book at the symphony/opera/ballet/theatre what do you see? A bunch of ads and a listing (in tiny print) of all the sponsors and donors in descending order of dollars given. (This can be fun reading, but mostly in the gossipy sense: Wow! The Whooziefats gave $25K to the ballet...I had no idea they had that kind of coin!) If it's one of those galas or another sort of event you'll see a poster by the sign-in table and/or a slide projected over the stage with a collection of all the sponsors' logos -- a phenomenon my husband calls, "logo soup". And let's be honest: Can you remember any of the companies listed the last time you saw a logo soup poster, slide, or page in a program book? Of course not, because none of those things makes a meaningful connection with you. Half the time you don't even know what the business is ("Silver Level Sponsor: Hambleschmidt and Roux, LLC"). If anybody from the company in question is there, it's a point of pride; for the non-profit, it's another precious check to cash. But despite the company chalking it up to "marketing," it has little or no marketing benefit.
My favorite (current) example of this is Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh. When it was time to renew their contract, Heinz (of ketchup fame, founded in Pittsburgh and a point of great civic pride) didn't offer enough money to satisfy those running the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were outbid by a company nobody had heard of, Acrisure. (In fact, nobody even knew how to pronounce it.) So now it's Acrisure Field instead of Heinz Field. Turns out Acrisure is a "financial and technology insurance company" based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They shelled out $150 million for 10 years' worth of naming rights. That's one helluva marketing spend, especially when you consider this: who of the thousands of Steelers fans who attend home games or tune in on TV is in the market for a financial and technology insurance company? Who of those people even know or care what Acrisure does? All the average fan knows is that the Steelers now have the worst-and most-hated stadium name in the NFL.
My point isn't to rant about Acrisure blowing $150 million on a pointless initiative (well, maybe it is a little: think of the good they could do with that money if it were directed more strategically??). Rather, it's just a particularly large-scale example of the company who gives $5,000 to the Symphony Gala thinking that the folks attending are going to spot their logo within the soup and then change who they do business with as a result.
Surely there's a better way to do this for all concerned.
Enter my husband Jeffrey and his wonderfully inventive and creative mind. (Yes, he's a Jeffrey; you can call us The Jeffs.) Prior to his arrival, his company did what everybody else did: lend their name in support of events and programs in their community that reflected values the company wanted to highlight. And again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But Jeffrey started to wonder if there was a better way to go about it. For starters, how might the credit union get more bang for its buck, whether that be in terms of new accounts or brand loyalty or a higher level of visibility than that gained by the logo soup approach? And how might the benefit for the receiving organization be boosted, whether that be in terms of new customers or new programming that otherwise wouldn't happen?
The classic film series featured in the article linked above is but one example of how these questions can be answered. The film series is every month, and the credit union is the sole sponsor: every month a sold-out theatre not only sees the Premier Members logo, they see a representative from the company introducing that evening's selection; the credit union has a face: the logo has been brought to life. And the Dairy Arts Center -- the city of Boulder's community arts venue -- gets more than a check: it gets support for a film series that they weren't offering previously, one that has proven to be immensely popular and that brings people into their space and in contact with the galleries and countless other events going on there. And since the check covers the licensing rights for the films, all revenue from tickets and concessions goes to the Dairy, so there's a multiplier effect that brings more to the Dairy than they would have received had the credit union just made a donation. Money, impact, engagement are all leveraged for greater impact on all sides. Everybody wins.
Another example is how the company is present at various community events like the annual Pride Festival. Lots of companies come to Pride these days; some of them are LGBTQ owned, but most of them are just hoping to snag some new customers. Moreover, banks are a staple at these sorts of events -- you can bet the credit union won't be the only financial institution there. So how do you make your presence more meaningful? How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors? For starters, you work with the company's LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (which Jeffrey founded, btw) to design the display, come up with fun and creative ways to interact with passersby, and then staff the event -- but you don't do any selling of your product. Then, rather than invest thousands of dollars in branded swag (pens, mugs, t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, rubber stress balls, you name it you've probably seen it), you purchase gift cards to local businesses (in the case of Pride, LGBTQ-owned businesses) and have a series of drawings to give those cards to attendees who sign up for your mailing list. This provides a unique and memorable experience for attendees that super-charges your visibility while also supporting the businesses in your market (many of whom become customers, if they weren't already). And now you also have new contacts -- warm contacts, mind you -- who you can follow up with later and hopefully further engage.
This approach is especially important if the event in question is to celebrate a marginalized community, whether that be Pride or Juneteenth or any other similar event. Because members of those communities have a finely-honed sense of when they're being exploited or tokenized. Don't show up at the Pride fest angling for my business if you're not doing anything to support my people! On the flip side, show up with authenticity and focus on a meaningful connection and you'll get our attention! (By the way, last year's Pride events garnered more new accounts for the credit union than any other events they put on all year. This is not a coincidence.)
All this might sound obvious on the face of it, and yet it's actually radically different from the established approach taken by pretty much everyone on both sides of the equation: sponsoring organizations pay for logo soup or set up their booth at an event to push their product, passing up a golden opportunity to differentiate themselves and create lasting visibility; and receiving organizations, who are just glad for the dollars, shortchange their mission and impact due to the temporary high they get simply by receiving a donation they desperately need. It's missed opportunities all around.
So, I guess I did end up bragging on my husband in this post. But mainly this is another example of how those of us in the non-profit sector generally -- and the arts sector specifically -- need to be much more creative in how we view the connection between funding and mission. We approach our donors (corporate and otherwise) with our hands extended asking, like Oliver Twist, "Please, sir, can I have some more?" Imagine the possibilities we could unlock if we instead asked, "How might we partner together so that you make meaningful connections with your market and we produce more meaningful programming for our community?" Rather than a scarcity mentality, we've opened up a mentality of abundance, growth, and creativity.
Or, said another way: Why have plain old soup when you can have a Michelin-star meal?
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