Kind of OT...sponsoring a school team

[papajgirl]

I haven’t heard back from my boss, even though he is VERY excited at the prospect of sponsoring a girl’s basketball team for my daughter and her school mates, so I thought I’d run this by you as I wait for his reply.

The league fee is $350 and meets what he would like “exposure-wise” in the way of games…there will be at least 10 to 15 spread out over the months with players from all over our service area.

The uniforms cost $379.00 with shipping for 10 girls, so that leaves the grand total of $729.00.

I have never asked for a sponsorship before until I did, and I realize that some of this is completely up to the budget of each individual owner.

So, I guess what I’m asking is that if you were hit up with a sponsorship of a school basketball team to help the kids and your business…is $729.00 for a few months of games worth it for the exposure and community involvement image you’d want to convey to your customers?

See, this store has new owners and the previous owners were awful. Even though it’s been a long while since the old owners had the store, sometimes our store still bears the bruises of that old image, even though we are doing VERY well now.

I just don’t know if what I asked was too much and this would scare him away from it. I went the cheapest route on uniforms I could find for a quote, as he didn’t want “tee shirts with numbers”…he wanted it to look like it wasn’t “cheap” but the cheapest we could find that looked good.

What do you all think?

 

[famouspizza]

seems expensive to me…we sponsor a team in EVERY league in our local park & rec dept and it runs from 100-200 per team.

 

[pizzapirate]

Seems out of line in relation to other advertising costs. Team stuff is really more appealing to places with a lot of dine in seating – not a take-out/delivery concept. Unless there is some angle where he could generate some additional sales, I would think it doesn’t make sense. If your $800 investment was good then so would every other team – but obviously that is not the case.

On the other hand, if there are going to be team get-togethers, parties, ceremonies, etc., work it out so that he gets the business. Or, he fronts part of the money and delivers the balance in pizza. You’ve lowered his cost and you still get the same “value”. Win Win.

 

[Registered_Guest]

papajgirl:

So, I guess what I’m asking is that if you were hit up with a sponsorship of a school basketball team to help the kids and your business…

Help my business? Give me the pitch, tell me the numbers, exactly how will this help my business?

IMO, your boss has to consider this a donation, period. To think that he will be getting anything in return is just wishful thinking. I’m not saying he shouldn’t do it, but do it only to be helpful and supportive of the team - not because it makes any numerical business sense.

 

[scootersgym]

How about having the girls run a fund raiser selling pizzas to help out! I have sponsored a lot of teams throughout the years and what I do is offer them a way to earn their sponsorship by selling pizzas.The more they sell the more money they receive for their cause ( up to a certain amount). By doing it this way I can give a organization the opportunity to have me sponsor them if they really want to and if they don’t want to run a fund raiser then I tell them that we can not help them at this time. This works out really good- they get their uniforms/entry fee and equipment and in return I get tons of publicity and advertising. We make sure that each pizza they sell has our menu on the box. If you want I can send you some info.

 

[Kris]

We probably get 10 calls a week along with 10 letters a week of people wanting donations. We try to give them prizes and etc. Some days I just want to say to them man…do you know you are the 10th person calling asking for something this week?

I get very aggrevated when someone comes in like it is no big deal to fork over 500 bucks to sponser their childs activities. Where do they think the money comes from? Am I weighing cheese and toppings to drop 500 bucks for someone to play ball? Do they think money is over flowing in my pockets and I just don’t know what to do with it?

I think it is very inappropriate for you to ask your boss to sponser your childs team. If he says yes then next time it is even easier for you to ask. And what about the cook or driver who has a child…why your kid and not theirs.

Now if someone came to me…employee or not and said can we do a fundraiser night to raise money. I would say absolutely. If someone said hey can I put candy on the front counter for my kids team, I would say absolutely. If they said hey can we sell gift certificates for 12 bucks you keep six and we keep six I would say absolutely. If they said hey can our team door hang for you and you donate a nickle for each one…I would say absolutely.

I hope you don’t think I am being hard on you …from this post and the other but you are fixed in YOUR world not the world of you boss. He has other issues besides yours. You are HIS problem solver not the other way around.

Kris

 

[NicksPizza]

I agree with the viewpoints so far. I would have to consider this a donation with limited marketing value . . and my store cannot handle that sort of scratch.

I spend less than $729 mailing my 4000 postcards, and I get direct immediate reults of 4000+ people seeing my piece and possibly ordering. If that sponsorship included signage at local school and at the events where they play, then I could see more marketing value. My experience here is that schools are loath to allow private enterprise to display marketing materials on school grounds or anywhere school related. It may come across differently in that you are talking about a “sponsorship”.

In my world, it would seem a golden opportunity to generate a networking and marketing partnership with another business or two. If I could find two other business owning partners to go in with me in sponsoring the team, we could all find ways to spin it into marketing opportunities for us and each other. As a straight marketing expense, the $700+ is too steep . . . as an additional opportunity to hook up with a hotel and salon (or the like), it makes a little broader sense and application to my business and marketing plans.

 

[Rockstar_pizza]

I have to agree with the other posts, I get SO MANY requests and everyone wants cash…at some point you have to put a ROI. We have a small advantage over you pjgirl as we have dine in and all the teams we sponser come here for after game dinner, so we do have a large number.
BUT I did have someone playing in a basketball league ask for me to buy there uniforms and they will put my logo on there sleeve. 375.00 I thought WOW really how many will see this, then I found out that its in the inner city about 30 miles away. I think the ROI would be zero. One thing you have to understand is there are SOOOOO MANY people with noble cost it is just so hard to help all of them

 

[papajgirl]

Okay, excellent advice.

And NO, I don’t feel anyone is being hard on me, so Kris, not to worry.

I have offered to pay 1/2 of the uniform costs, I just didn’t mention it in the original post because I wanted to see what you all would think of the “whole” price as if I was just someone who came off the streets to ask.

I think it’s a little steep, too. But that is the cheapest I can get uniforms, so that’s why I’ve offered to front 1/2 of it.

His corporation did sponsor a baseball team in another town one of his other stores services. He WANTS the girls to play.

As for the other employees right now…remember, most everyone is young…so those that have kids do not have school age kids…so no issue there either.

Right now, it’s all about creating a positive community image to help restore the faith in PJ that was lost under the old owners…so that’s why he wants to do this.

The teams will be comprised of members from all over our service area, and playing in the town that this PJ is actually in.

He feels it will be a great thing, and as long as he’s fine with it, we are grateful for the opportunity, too.

Keep the ideas coming, I’m all for it!

 

[15thStreetPizzaandPu]

two things here…

1)scooters I think we would all like to hear about how you get them to sell pizzas for you and how it all works and how it benefits them

2)this came from another post but…if they want money do a sponsorship night where the come in buy pizza/food and you donate a percentage of the proceeds to the team. that way you get revenue out of it and they still get a donation from you

 

[Piper]

15thStreetPizzaandPub:

two things here…

1)scooters I think we would all like to hear about how you get them to sell pizzas for you and how it all works and how it benefits them

2)this came from another post but…if they want money do a sponsorship night where the come in buy pizza/food and you donate a percentage of the proceeds to the team. that way you get revenue out of it and they still get a donation from you

We do both of these as fundraisers, and they are our only fundraiser opportunities we offer. We do lots of in-kind donations, but that really isn’t a fundraiser.

A group can make MUCH more money if the go out and sell gift certificates for us. We sell them $20.00 gift certificates for $6.00. They are then free to sell them for whatever amount above that they would like and keep the difference. Think about how many they could sell if a 15 person team went out and sold for 3 weeks. Maybe 20 each for $15.00? That comes out to $2700. But it seems that most people go with option #2, where we have a sponsorship night and donate a portion of the proceeds. It’s unfortunate, but it seems the people here don’t want to work too much for their fundraisers.

For option #2, we donate 20% of their gross sales. They can bring in as many people as they want and we provide “tickets” for them to distribute. When somebody comes in with a ticket we mark their gross sale amount down. The only rule is that they can’t pass them out anywhere near the store during the event.

The most any group has done with #2 is $1500 in sales. So they went home with $300 (but it was easy). Most often, groups do around $800-$1000 in sales. If it were my group, I’d have my kids out working for their sponsorship money.

I feel this just shows that neither the kids or the parents want to work for the money; they’re not looking for fundraisers, they’re looking for donations.

Every month we get a few people in asking for donations to have a banner at the field (usually for $500) or an ad in their program. I had a HS basketball team that wanted $800 for a full page ad in their program… with 12 home games! Yeah, right.

For me it’s not even about budget. This sounds a bit harsh but if I was going to make an straight $800 donation where I’m not expecting anything back, I would donate to a much more worthwhile cause than a HS basketball team.

When I was playing youth sports I remember hitting the streets door-to-door every year selling candy. I have never seen a group here doing that. When did it become “go get handouts from businesses?”

Sorry to kind of go off on a tangent there, but I can 100% feel Kris’ post. I get aggravated with people asking for handouts when I have two fundraisers that they can do a little WORK for. At least tell me you’re going to have an end-of-year party at my place; my dining room seats 65. Nobody has ever said anything like that to me though.

BTW, I’m not directing this post at you PJgirl… your situation is a little different being an employee there. I’d be much more willing to help out a long term employee than somebody off the street, but it would be closer to $100 than $700.

 

[scootersgym]

I have coupons printed for a medium 1 topping pizza and a large 1 topping pizza which I give to the group wanting to raise money. They sell the coupons at face value ( rounded off) which the customer can redeem at anytime. The organization selling the coupons then get a percentage of the sales. I have been doing this for numerous years with great success and everyone who buys a coupon thinks it is a wonderful thing I am doing helping out what ever organization is selling them.

 

[papajgirl]

NO offense taken. That’s what I love about this forum…complete honesty directly related to the business I’m working in.

As for the person who posted the fundraisers…I am VERY excited about this, and am going to be presenting this to my boss (and being we only have about 10 seats for dine in…and it’s just set up bar style, option 1 would be MUCH better for us).

I mean, I even told him that I would be willing for him to withdraw $100 from my check every week to pay for whatever portion he didn’t want to pay…so he knows I’m MORE than willing to help out…but the fundraiser idea is great!

He also had an idea which I am implementing now…having a $25.00 one time fee to help for the cost of the uniforms. He is going to sponsor the team, and at $25.00 for each girl, that will pay for 3/4’s of the uniform order. Also, if you have some “monetary involvement” from the parents, the girls will be more apt to feel OBLIGATED to play…so I am presenting this to the parents like this.

Great ideas, I love 'em…keep 'em coming! And THANK YOU!
"Piper:

BTW, I’m not directing this post at you PJgirl… your situation is a little different being an employee there. I’d be much more willing to help out a long term employee than somebody off the street, but it would be closer to $100 than $700.