Before You Make Your Next Sponsorship Request
Updated: Oct 11
After 25 years on both sides of the ask, I’ve learned that the strongest partnerships connect shared goals with a realistic plan to deliver.
I recently came across an old photo album among my mom’s keepsakes. She saved everything but wasn’t the most organized about it. She passed away in 2023, and finding these memories was a gift.
My Mom was a natural connector, deeply involved in her community and always seeing opportunities to bring people and businesses together. She was a real estate agent by profession, and she was ALWAYS networking. Once, on a flight down to Atlanta, she swapped phone numbers with her seatmate because he worked in restaurants, just like her daughter. I’m sure he was relieved I never called.
So, to my delight, tucked inside one of her many albums was an invitation and a handwritten note I’d sent her in 2000 about my “first big event.” I’d just labeled and sealed 825 invitations for the grand opening of a Borders Books & Music store in Atlanta.
Borders was opening 44 U.S. stores that year, and field marketers were charged with connecting this big-box brand to its local community. I focused on finding meaningful partnerships.
For our grand opening, I partnered with My House, a local nonprofit. They would have been more than happy with a cash donation, but we went a step further. We invited customers to purchase books during the event to donate, increasing the impact for everyone involved.
Our team was invested in making the store part of the local community. Earning Borders’ Best Grand Opening award—based on sales, revenue, media coverage, and attendance—was a proud moment for all of us.
When I moved into a larger role, I wanted to see if the idea could scale. We tested it against our business goals and what our stores could realistically handle. Then we stretched a one-day, one-store event into a month-long campaign across Georgia’s stores. We kept it simple enough for staff to run on a busy shift and made it easy for customers to participate.
The result: over 10,000 donated books, along with an additional contribution from the $50,000 in sales. We now had a playbook. The model was later adopted nationally.
I didn’t have a name for it then, but that was capacity-first thinking. Understanding what we could handle helped us see how the idea could grow.
My career began in service, through AmeriCorps with Hands On Atlanta. Since then, I’ve held marketing and communications leadership roles across nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Along the way, I’ve built partnerships for national launch campaigns, co-branded events, referral programs, community engagement, and fundraising.
Digital technology has since transformed how we reach audiences, build relationships, and measure results. We can reach people more directly, personalize communications, and understand what drives action in ways that weren't possible 25 years ago.
The tools have transformed, but the fundamentals haven’t.
Q4 is here. So are the requests.
Gift cards. Volunteers. Donations. Sponsorship packages.
For nonprofit leaders, Q4 brings pressure to secure year-end support while keeping programs, fundraising, and daily operations moving.
Businesses are making their own decisions about where to invest their time, money, and attention. Some have formal processes for evaluating requests; others rely on the interests and availability of a few busy people. Either way, commitments come with expectations on both sides.
It's easy to focus on more. More partners. More opportunities. More commitments.
But more isn't necessarily better. When evaluating partner requests, I want to understand the goals, the potential return, and the resources required to make it work.
Here are three questions I'd encourage nonprofit leaders to consider before pursuing their next partnership.
1. What goals are we trying to achieve?
Before pursuing a new partnership, get clear on what your organization needs. Funding? Volunteers? Awareness or access to new audiences? Community engagement?
Be pragmatic. Not every partner fits every goal. Keep a list of current and potential partners, what they care about, and what they could contribute. Over time, patterns emerge. You’ll see where goals overlap, and when to reconnect.
Business owners and executives have plenty competing for their attention. Your organization may not be top of mind, and that's worth remembering before making another ask.
Be selective about fit, and remain open-minded about the possibilities. A relationship that isn't the right fit today may be exactly the one you need six months from now.
2. What does each company bring to the table?
The best opportunity (and intentions) on paper may look different once you understand what resources a company can realistically contribute.
Spend real time in discovery. Ask a lot of questions. Do this company's business objectives, audience, and interests align with yours?
Yes? Great! Go further.
Ask who else this company supports and what's worked well in those relationships. Do they have an established community engagement program, or are decisions made informally? What kinds of commitments have been successful, and what has been difficult to sustain?
You can appeal to one person's heart, but understanding (and demonstrating) how a partnership with your organization supports their business goals builds a stronger case.
I've spent much of my career on the business side of these conversations. A request that connects to our company's goals has a stronger starting point than a generic appeal for support.
3. Can we both deliver?
This is where a promising partnership becomes a practical decision.
A business can say yes to a partnership it doesn't have the time or resources to support. A nonprofit can secure a corporate partner without having the staff to manage the relationship and deliver on its commitments. Either way, a yes without the capacity to follow through can become a strained relationship rather than a lasting one.
I learned this firsthand while leading partner marketing for a tech company. Our nonprofit partner asked if they could email office volunteer requests each month. I said, "yes" without thinking through what we could handle. The requests came at random, often at the last minute. It simply wasn't practical.
So I turned that open-ended yes into a single, existing annual volunteer event . Almost twenty employees took part, had a blast, and shared photos with the company on Slack. The next year, we had to add volunteer slots, and employees were posting about it on their own social channels. It became an annual volunteer day the team kept going after I left the company.
We hadn't increased our commitment. We'd made it easier to deliver consistently and created something employees wanted to repeat.
The most valuable contribution isn’t always the obvious one. Finding it starts with knowing what both sides can actually deliver.
Build the foundation to keep growing.
The real gold is in the testing and refinement. Understand what worked, what didn’t, and what’s worth repeating. That’s how one grand opening became a statewide campaign, and how a stream of last-minute volunteer requests became a tradition that outlasted me.
If you’re a nonprofit leader, I can help you assess current partnerships, clarify what you need from new ones, and shape a stronger case for business support—with a realistic plan to follow through.
Schedule a 30-minute discovery call with me.
Finding that old album reminded me of something my Mom understood instinctively: meaningful questions create connections and possibilities.
The work is turning those possibilities into something that lasts.
Ellen Peacock, Marketing Readiness & Growth Strategist Circle 4 Marketing
