Re: Attracting sponsors

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi Dulmandakh,

DULMANDAKH Sukhbaatar wrote:
> It's not just connected to GNOME, but community events at all. Here,
> in Mongolia, I organized first Linux Install Fest in 7th of April, and
> will organize many of them.  But everytime I initiate some ideas or
> community events I end up having problems with funding.

Getting sponsors for small community events is hard. It's ironic that it
is easier to get $5,000 or $10,000 in sponsorship from a big company
than it is to get $1,000. And getting money from small local companies
is hard in general. But there are a few tricks that you can try.

> And the questions are how I can attract sponsors and what benefits can
> I offer them? How can I encourage them to be our sponsor? Please give
> me some suggestions.

First, you should prepare a pre-conference document which outlines the
goals of the conference - who will be there, what kind of presentations
you'll have, if you're having a trade show, what types of stands are
available, and roughly how many people you're expecting (although I've
always been honest about how many people I'm expecting, I'm an optimist.
It is not unusual to overestimate attendance for small events by up to
50%, since it's difficult to count attendees anyway).

This document (which you really shouldn't spend too long on) will help
get you past the first level of person, the secretary who doesn't have
any decision making authority but filters incoming requests, or the
marketing person who has never heard of free software (I'm generalising
a lot here). The document on its own will not get you sponsorship, but
not having it will lose you sponsors.

Second, if you're having a trade show, set your prices about double what
you consider reasonable - if stands are too cheap, people will not
consider that there's any interest in them. You can always negociate
with someone who wants to take a big stand. To price your stands, try
and find out what commercial conferences are charging in your region,
and undercut them a little (by 20 - 30%). I'm not a big fan of trade
shows in free software conferences though, and they're usually more of a
pain to organise than they bring in in money.

Third, aim big for sponsors. Don't ask for the few hundred dollars you
need, ask for a few thousand. You can say "At USD$5,000 this is the
cheapest keynote sponsor spot you'll see for this type of conference -
you'll get top billing in a conference with lots of influential techies".

Aim for the regional or global people who may have heard of you or your
project, rather than the local sales office, where they probably
haven't. So let's say you decide that RedHat or IBM might be interested,
see if you can get the email address of an "open source strategist" or
"director of open source operations" or something like that - these
people will usually be visible on mailing lists and websites, and as
keynotes at conferences (look at the OSCon speaker list, for example),
and they may have a blog. Ask them directly, in a casual and informal
manner. If your request looks too formal, it risks being sent to the
trashcan as a mass-mailed spam (even if you spent several hours working
on it). Conversation gets attention.

The first step is to make a list of possible sponsors, in order of the
relevance of your conference to their business, and then ordered by the
chances of getting money.

For a sysadmin conference, the Unix producers (HP, IBM, Sun, Fujitsu?,
Bull?) are likely to be the most relevant, but then filter on their
current results - Sun are about to do a layoff, so your chances of
getting money off them are likely to be slim to none.

Then the hardware producers and resellers (things like printers, UPSes,
racks, storage devices).

Then the Linux distributions.

Then the local government offices (try to get the direct contact for the
chief information officer, and the phone works better for government
contacts than email).

Then the commercial software creators (if you're willing to sell your soul).

For each company, try to put a name opposite, and try to measure your
chances based on your responses. If you don't get a reply, don't
hesitate to resend a polite and short ping a week later, and every week
until you get a reply.

Hope this advice helps - perhaps it should go in the conference
organisation cheat sheet that Paul Cooper is going to work on (isn't
that right, Paul? ;-)

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
David Neary
bolsh gimp org