Fundraising Workshops for Sponsorship and Philanthropy
Fundraising workshops, in a way, are just part of the day-to-day job for someone in the money raising business. Fundraisers are ongoing presenters and teachers. We are always training board members, volunteers and our non-fundraising co-workers. We also present the organizations we represent to prospects, supporters, community organizations and more. At the Pitcher Group, we have taken this presenting background a step further with our workshops and training sessions. Over the years, we have covered every aspect of sponsorship and philanthropic fundraising. We can help you raise more money for your cause in as little as an hour.
Upcoming Fundraising Workshops
WEBINAR — Intro to Moves Management: Move Prospects from Leads to Contributors
ARTS REACH WEBINARS
Toronto — July 20, 2017 / 11:00am
In the fundraising world, planning and tracking your solicitation process is called Moves Management, and referred to as Sales Pipeline Management in the commercial sector. This workshop will show you how to take control of your solicitation efforts, and raise more money. Companies have very specific and differing reasons for adding strategic philanthropy and sponsorship to their corporate social responsibility and marketing mixes.
In this workshop, you will learn and practice a thorough process to identify and track the stages of a sales cycle as well as the steps to take at each stage. The goal: by the end of the hour, you will have a solid plan for a number of your hottest prospects, and a winning framework for your entire solicitation process.
Moves Management Deep Dive
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
Toronto — October 24, 2017
In the fundraising world, planning and tracking your solicitation process is called Moves Management, and referred to as Sales Pipeline Management in the commercial sector. The Moves Management Deep Dive, building significantly on the Pitcher Group’s Introduction to Moves Management, will show you how to take control of your solicitation efforts, and raise more money. This interactive full-day session will provide you with a thorough, but lively analysis on how to identify and track the stages of a sales cycle as well as the steps to take at each stage. The goal: by the end of the day, you will have a solid plan for each of your top prospects, and a winning framework for your entire solicitation process.
What Sponsors Really Want: And How to Provide It
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
Toronto — October 26, 2017
Companies have very specific reasons for adding sponsorship to their marketing mix. All businesses have challenges unique to their industry, their target market or their specific company that they seek to address by partnering with organizations such as yours. If you do not know these unique needs or how to identify them – or worse, you only offer prospective sponsors standard packages – your sponsorship program is performing significantly below its full potential. Knowing a company’s challenges is only part of the answer. You also have to know how to actually create new sponsorship opportunities during the solicitation process that meet those needs. Focussing only on the standard kinds of projects that need funding and offering recognition is not nearly enough to be a competitive organization in today’s sponsorship marketplace.
With the Pitcher Group’s ‘What Sponsors Really Want’, you will learn to value quality instead of quantity. A bigger sign does not equate to bigger dollars. What does raise more is a carefully crafted benefit that responds perfectly to a sponsor’s needs. Often, these benefits are right under your nose, but can be easily overlooked if you don’t have the necessary skills to enter the sponsor’s mind.
Past Workshops
2X Sponsorship: Raising Your Sights to Raise More Money
CANADIAN ARTS MARKETING, DEVELOPMENT & TICKETING CONFERENCE
Toronto — June 12 – 13, 2017
Imagine if you could double your sponsorship dollars — that’s 2X Sponsorship. The session will get you started on this highly achievable goal — raising your sights and giving you specific, success-oriented tools. First, we’ll cover how to build sponsorship properties (opportunities) that provide dramatically more value to partners. Then, we’ll review how to start developing sponsorship benefits that get both your sponsors and creative team excited. Lastly, we’ll go through how to craft a solicitation plan that more consistently and successfully moves prospects from first contact to cheque writing. To support each of these three strategies, you will receive three cutting-edge tools — a Properties Matrix, a Benefits Ledger and a Moves Calendar. Finally, you’ll go home with a specific to-do list so you can hit the ground running when you’re back on the job. So, don’t miss this opportunity to give your programs and facilities more of the funds they truly deserve.
What Sponsors Really Want: And How to Provide It
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
Companies have very specific reasons for adding sponsorship to their marketing mix. All businesses have challenges unique to their industry, their target market or their specific company that they seek to address by partnering with organizations such as yours. If you do not know these unique needs or how to identify them – or worse, you only offer prospective sponsors standard packages – your sponsorship program is performing significantly below its full potential. Knowing a company’s challenges is only part of the answer. You also have to know how to actually create new sponsorship opportunities during the solicitation process that meet those needs. Focussing only on the standard kinds of projects that need funding and offering recognition is not nearly enough to be a competitive organization in today’s sponsorship marketplace.
With the Pitcher Group’s ‘What Sponsors Really Want’, you will learn to value quality instead of quantity. A bigger sign does not equate to bigger dollars. What does raise more is a carefully crafted benefit that responds perfectly to a sponsor’s needs. Often, these benefits are right under your nose, but can be easily overlooked if you don’t have the necessary skills to enter the sponsor’s mind.
Introduction to Moves Management
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
In the fundraising world, planning and tracking your solicitation process is called Moves Management, and referred to as Sales Pipeline Management in the commercial sector. The Introduction to Moves Management will show you how to take control of your solicitation efforts, and raise more money. This interactive introduction will provide you with a fast-paced overview on how to identify and track the stages of a sales cycle as well as the steps to take at each stage. The goal: by the end of the hour, you will have a solid plan for a number of your hottest prospects, and a winning framework for your entire solicitation process. See the detailed fundraising workshop description for Introduction to Moves Management to learn more.
Fundraising and the Board
LONDON AND REGION FUNDRAISING PROFESSIONALS CONFERENCE
Your Board of Directors can quickly derail your fundraising efforts if you are working at cross-purposes with them. However, you do not need their active participation to be successful. With the Pitcher Group’s Fundraising and the Board session, you will learn when to work with your board, when to (politely) ignore it and when to rebuild it. We will discuss winning strategies for each approach such as how to narrow the scope of their task, how to collaborate versus report and how to focus on your star directors. The goal is for you to have a team that raises more money with less effort on your part.
Sponsorship Gut Check: Are You Ready for Sponsorship Fundraising
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
Developing a high-performing sponsorship culture in your organization can be challenging. This is especially true given that both the corporate and charitable sectors are all over the map regarding what they consider sponsorship to be. You can have a successful program you call sponsorship even if you stick to charitable fundraising strategy. However, if you are not taking advantage of advanced sponsorship tactics, you are almost certainly leaving significant money on the table.
Even if you understand what fundraising should be, it doesn’t mean the staff, volunteers and other stakeholders of your organization ‘get it’. If your colleagues resist good sponsorship principles, your corporate partnership opportunities will also underperform. The Sponsorship Gut Check will lay the foundation for you to be a sponsorship high achiever with strategies to get you ready and your organization onboard. The Gut Check can be designed as a one-half or full-day fundraising workshop. See the detailed fundraising workshop description for the Sponsorship Gut Check to learn more.
Crazy Ideas About Charitable Fundraising: Inspired by Sponsorship
PURE PHILANTHROPY CONFERENCE BY FRANK CERISANO MANAGEMENT INC.
Sponsorship fundraising and philanthropic fundraising have some subtle and not-so-subtle differences with some surprising implications. If your background is in charitable fundraising, you can learn some important, and often, counter-intuitive lessons from the world of sponsorship — lessons like ‘It’s easier to raise money when you don’t need it.’ or “Recognition is over-rated.” This fun, often-irreverent workshop will provide memorable advice to help you up your fundraising game. The session can be scheduled for one to two hours.
Sparking a Sponsorship Culture Revolution
SPONSORSHIP WEEK BY THE SPONSORSHIP REPORT
Fundraising staff cannot obtain ambitious financial targets on their own. They need the support of their organization (both management and senior volunteers) behind them. They to develop a sponsorship culture in their organization. Sponsorship culture is the group belief that marketing partnerships are vital to your organization and group action to foster those partnerships. The workshop will discuss five challenges of developing a sponsorship culture such as believing sponsorship is too costly or believing you are too busy. The session will then cover seven strategies for sparking a culture revolution like making sponsorship pay its own way and returning value to stakeholders. Designed as an introductory version of the Sponsorship Gut Check, this workshop is appropriate as a one- or two-hour session.
Other Sessions
After the Deal
Raising money is hard, but in some ways, your work is just beginning when you receive a sponsorship or donation. There’s an old fundraising adage that your best prospects are your current contributors, but that is only true if you foster relationships with them. Our After the Deal workshop can focus on sponsorship or charitable fundraising or both. It shows you all the science and arts of good stewardship. You will learn about gift agreements and sponsorship contracts. We will cover donor recognition and sponsorship benefits. You will learn how to exceed expectations and develop a reputation as a great organization to support. Sessions can be one to four hours depending on your needs.
Fundraising for Non-Profit Executives and Volunteers
CEOs (or Executive Directors), VPs Finance, Board Members and Volunteers can all benefit from better understanding how sponsorship and major gift fundraising works. This fundraising for non-fundraisers workshop is designed to help you, the development professional. We teach your colleagues about the expectations of sponsors and donors. We cover the resources needed for fundraising success. We show them on how to work with you as a team to grow your fundraising results. We even discuss how to best evaluate your performance so that you are probably rewarded and supported. This training can be structured for sessions lasting from one hour to a full day.
Leveraging the Internet for Fundraising
Today, there is much more to online fundraising than just having a donate button and form on your website. User-generated fundraising pages, call-to-action conversion strategies, landing pages, search optimization, project-based reporting have created exponential growth rates in online fundraising. This workshop will show you how to implement cutting-edge online fundraising strategies for your organization, and raise more money. The program can be structured for one to four hour sessions.
Write a Major Proposal in a Day
We have all attended a great workshop, been motivated to put our new knowledge to work, only to get caught back in the grind at work or stuck not knowing where to start. With the Pitcher Group’s Proposal in a Day workshop, we help you craft the first draft of an actual fundraising proposal you can present to a real prospect. We cover everything from fundraising strategies, to writing techniques to design considerations. This session is designed to be conducted over an entire day, but can be adapted to a half-day format.
Pricing Your Properties
Many organizations raising money do not know how to price their charitable and sponsorship opportunities. There is a way to do this without counting each eyeball for your programs by looking at ten different value factors. For those needing more documented pricing, a formal valuation process can be followed. This session covers both approaches. Session options are available anywhere from one hour to a full day.
Grow Your Numbers with Data: Fundraising Research, Data and Evaluation
Your best prospects come from people your organizations already knows. However, every fundraising professional reaches a point where they need to identify and connect with new prospects. This workshop will show you how to identify individuals, community organizations and companies with a potential interest in your projects. Session options are available from two to four hours.
Leveraging: How to Make Your Opportunities More Valuable Before Your Begin Pitching
Leveraging is about strategies that put your organization and your projects in front of more people whether face-to-face or via marketing efforts. A common way of doing this is to recruit a media partner such as a newspaper. However, too many organizations do not know how to properly leverage a media partner. Furthermore, there are innovative strategies such as attending popular festivals that organizations never consider at all. This workshop shows you how to identify five types of leveraging opportunities, and to maximize your fundraising potential with each. The session can run from one hour to a full day.
Guerilla and Digital Marketing to Sponsorship Success
Many organizations have limited marketing resources for providing exposure opportunities to sponsors. Fortunately, new digital marketing strategies make creating exciting promotional initiatives easier than ever. Meanwhile, innovative grassroots marketing can dramatically increase the appeal of partnering with you. This workshop shows you how to create money boosting promotions for you sponsorships with limited funds and time. Even those from large organization can benefit as we discuss ideas you can implement on your own without being beholden to your in-house marketing department to make things happen.