Starting and continuing the conversation with a business is by far the hardest part of the process. Follow these steps on how to reach out and set up a meeting:

  1. The first step is setting up a meeting with the appropriate person. The appropriate person may be a manager, owner, or someone designated for community interaction. You can usually find them using their website or just calling in and asking for a name. Reach out by visiting in person, or if unavailable then over the phone. Setting the meeting up to be in-person is ideal and will likely yield the best results.
  2. When meeting with the individual, make sure you come prepared. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how it will help, and be sure to know information about your program and the cause in general. It is a good idea to bring a letter (potentially with the school letterhead), that explains your program and the cause so the business can look at it after the meeting.
    1. Here's an example letter used by DublinThon. Note: This letter is older and uses For The Kids and FTK, both of which are not allowed anymore: Branding Restrictions
  3. Make sure to thank the business for their time (regardless of the outcome) and make sure contact information is exchanged after the meeting.
  4. After the meeting, you will likely be given a time frame in which you will hear back from them. Make sure to thank them for their time and send a follow up email afterwards with information. If the time frame has passed and you still haven’t heard back, send a short email checking in.

    1. Here is an example check-in email:

    2. Hello NAME,

      This is NAME from PROGRAM NAME, I hope you are doing well. I wanted to check-in about our previous meeting about [summarize the request]. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Looking forward to hearing from you. Have a great day!

      Thank you, NAME

Bonus: Sponsorship Levels

A cool way to give a structured format of sponsorship to businesses you work with is setting up levels of sponsorship. Provided pre-designated levels makes it easy for businesses to decide what works best for them using the simple approach. The hardest part is deciding what levels to use. We recommend looking at what sponsorships have been given in the past and looking at that data holistically. Your YPC or members of BuckeyeThon's Development team can help you finalize your structure. Here's an example of what you could use:

These levels can be used with monetary and in-kind donations. For in-kind donations, you can do it based off value, so if Pizza Hut donates 20 Large Pizzas that are usually $10 each that makes a $200 value and they could be Bronze level sponsors. You can also limit the number of sponsors for some of the higher levels, making it more selective and encouraging companies to donate sooner.