Sponsorship Ideas

[Geoff]

Well, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to set this up fairly. Here is what I came up with. For clarification, I am proposing "double banner" and "single banner" which basically just gives double exposure to "double banner" sponsors. We just put their banner in the rotation twice, nothing high tech or anything.

Level One Supporting Sponsor (or another equally important sounding name).
- There will only be four of these. Right now I would say DSI, APE, Livernois, and possibly ARE or Advanced Auto.
- Each Level One Sponsor would support one race (thus four sponsors or five if we do autocross or something), and receive title credit at the event.
- They would get double banner billing and an event banner starting one month prior to the event.
- The four title sponsors would be allowed to compete against each other, but no level two sponsors could be in direct competition with them. I thought about this one long and hard, and I think it would be unfair to allow another Race shop or parts store to come in as a level two (this would include Ramchargers if Advanced becomes a sponsor too).
-Cash contribution would be enough to fund our race series by the end of this year.

Level Two Associate Assistant Supporting Sponsor
- Would include uptain.net, diamond, harlan, speed style sound, Modern Cylinder, etc.
- They would get a single banner.
- They would get to run GP's and specials.
- Cash contribution would be less than level one.

I think this is fair to all sponsors, meets the needs of the club for racing and the members as far as value from smaller sponsors. It also sticks with our idea that we are going to formulate an entire business plan for next year and use it in our sponsor presentation (to justify the money we are asking them for).

I'm a big boy, I can take it, let me know what you think.

-Geoff

[Geoff]

Anyone.... Anyone.... Bueler.....

[Sparky]

Sounds interesting. I like the idea of limiting the Level 1 to 4 or 5 sponsors and rather than them bellying up cash in general, their cash commitment would be tied directly to an event with additional benefit. Nice. A couple of things:
- are you thinking that they would fully fund the track rental? If so, do you thinkg the sponsor market can bear that level of cash commitment?
- On the auto parts side, I think you have room for two (if one of them is RamChargers) almost all of the stuff you can at RamChargers you will not find at a regular auto parts store, and vise versa. I think you could have one "speed shop" and one "auto parts store" as title sponsors.

Other advantages of title sponsors: only they go on our t-shirts, they have the ability to use the MM logo in their advertising, etc.

2nd tier generally sounds good but please come up with a shorter name - I'd never remember that!!

Mark

[Geoff]

I don't think it should be a full funding (unless they really want to get into the whole plan). But it should be enough to cover all of the deposits we will need to make by this winter. I am guessing somewhere in the $1000 to $1500 range. We would take all the deposit money we need and divide it by the amount of sponsors, tack a little extra for whatever, then that would define the amount we need. So like we talked about in the sponsorship meetings a few months ago, we need to incorporate our proposal for sponsors into the big picture for next year.

Tom, is there any news on the racing front yet? If we could just get the deposit requirements and rates for the different tracks you want to run next year, it would be enough to put together our sponsorship proposal for this fall.

Thanks, an I am working on some offical sounding names.

Geoff

[Sparky]

I agree, I don't think you could ask for more than $1K. However, if a sponsor did want to step up for the full boat, we could do it as a charity event and give them full exposure.

What does everyone else think?

Mark

[cASe SenSiTive]

I like the way it sounds. Nice work Geoff.
$1000 sounds OK. I know Phil tossed that number out one time when talking about sponsorship.

[Sparky]

Ok, wrap the final proposal up in a bow and send it to us to vote on!

Mark

[Geoff]

My only question: is $4000 going to be enough money to book the tracks we want? That is my only concern with just throwing out a number. I was hoping to base it on a actual track rental requirements. I know that sounds a little nit picky but I think it will really add credebility to the sponsorship pitch.

$1000 and $500 are the obvious amounts to throw out. But remember, if we give some kind of exclusivity to the top sponsors, we can't just go out and round up more sponsor money as eaily next year if the finances get tight for whatever reason. That's my only concern.

[2001-WS6]

I think we do need to pull the business plan together a bit more before we put the level 1 sponsors at $1.5-$2K

It's going to come down to how many events we want in the points series. If we are looking at 4 events with 1 of the level 1 at each event then we might need to push for $2K (approx 1/2 the track) with 50 cars at $40 an event to give you the other $2K to pull off the event.

That leaves the payout issue for the event and the series up to sponsors too.

Lets think 3 classes at the event with Quick 16, 12.49-Faster Bracket, 12.5-Slower Bracket for example. Figure payout 1-$150, 2-$100 3-$50 for a total per event of $900 on top of the $3.5-$4K for the track. Series payout for the point leader is the same and you can only win a series in one of the brackets.

Just some numbers to toss at the business plan. If we can show it working out for a 4 event season, I believe we have a good chance at getting the $2K level. If we can't get to that commitment, then we pull back to three races and $1.5K per shop with shared billing for all three races with the 3 or 4 Shops that committ.

Rick

[2001-WS6]

Ok, straw person budget on the way to help visualize the business plan. Itss big and its over the top for the first year but it will give us a place to start.

Rick

[Sparky]

Agree -

1K is enough for a deposit at Norwalk, Stanton and Milan - we know that.

With a well laid out business plan, we can certianly approach the sponsors with a 2K figure. We just need to think of all the "advantages" that we would give them for being this level of sponsor.

Possibles:
- Ink in all our club literature
- Logo's on t-shirts (just the Level 1's)
- Web links and exposure
- What else?????

Mark

[Geoff]

First off that spreadsheet is awesome! It really takes the whole year into account. I really think that the sponsorship amounts are too high though. Remember one thing about this year, Tom raided the coffers trying to do those big payouts at BG and look where we are now.

Maybe we could pitch the level ones that they are also "urged" to provide prizes at their events? I know Speedworks gave a set of LCA's for the Z28.com race and they weren't even a sponsor. At the APE dyno day, they gave away tuning or a nitrous kit. I think Livernois is raffling off a nitrous kit or something too.

We could also try to do a race jointly with another club or website to defray the costs too. The LS1 race in Bowling Green was not a bad idea, it was just poorly executed. Imagine if we could get 70 or so people from that group plus 50 from Motown. If we did one at Martin 131 along with the LS1Tech crew (pro stock john is from chicago), we could get a huge race locally and get some big exposure. Tom?

I'm just trying not to get us in trouble by setting goals that are a little high. Baby steps, right?

-Geoff

[2001-WS6]

Yep, the idea was to pitch what I thought would be the max that we could ever do so we could see it on paper. Now we can work backwards from there with this being the two or three target.

I think with 2 or 3 races with one possibly a joint event we can get back to the more reasonable 1st year target of 1.5K for Level 1.

Rick

[Geoff]

So, can I take the spreadsheet and start talking to Kirk, Greg and Phil, Livernois, Advance, Lidio?, whoever? I don't think it would hurt to let them know what we are trying to pull off next year.

Also, I was thinking (I know, dangerous), that if we ask them for the money in pieces, it might be more feasible. Like if we said that we need $1200 this fall, and another $800 two months before "their" event, it seems a lot better than just saying we need $2000 from them total.

Tom (Race Director), any hard $$ numbers on track rentals yet?

-Geoff