School prospectus vs sponsorship invitation

School prospectus vs sponsorship invitation

15/11/2022

While a school prospectus sums up what your schools offers and what makes you unique to prospective sponsors, students and their families, it is also important to look at the marketing collateral your school has in place to ensure your key messaging is conveyed across all marketing mediums.

It’s helpful to consider the kind of digital and printed material your school needs, especially if you have new branding and need to update things.

School marketing collateral can include:

  1. School Prospectus – make the right impression
  2. Stationary – For a consistent look and feel
  3. Digital templates – To save you time
  4. Banners and leaflets – Get your school noticed

Sponsorship Ready can save you time by creating all your required collateral, from a striking School prospectus design to useful digital templates. We will organise it all and tie everything in with your school brand, so you can hit the ground running. Ask us how!

Sponsorship Ready can support your school in producing a range of social media templates that encompass your brand identity while acting as an extension of your school prospectus. Learn more here. 

Sponsorship Ready provides schools with the right strategy, tools, and support so that schools can manage their sponsorship program themselves.

Best practice: school branding refresh checklist

Best practice: school branding refresh checklist

9/11/2022

Rebranding is a big deal, so it’s important that you take the time to get it right.

The first thing you must understand is that your brand is so much more than just a logo.

Your brand identity is the entire spectrum of touch points between your school and its stakeholders. It is your identity.

Your brand should encompass your school’s heart, personality, story, and values; these specific characteristics are what resonates with your audience and differentiates you from any other school. It is what makes you unique.

Think of your brand as your school’s DNA. Your logo, values and identity are the genes that collectively make up the complete DNA molecule.

With a brand refresh, you don’t want to completely start from scratch – but rework, revisit and develop what you currently have, including but not limited to:

  • Values
  • Mission
  • Logo
  • Motto
  • Website
  • Brand Guidelines
  • Social Media
  • Newsletters
  • Enrolment collateral
  • Letterheads
  • Photography
  • Staff Email Signatures
  • Signage

Competitive Advantage

  1. Have you researched what some of the best schools are doing from a branding, marketing, and online perspective?
  2. Have you factored in what is happening within the education sector currently?
  3. Have you planned out how you’re going to advise and communicate with your existing parents, students, and teachers on your school’s brand refresh?

The key to great branding and conveying it successfully is having a clear message that links back to your school visions and values. If your audience feels like they know you and what you stand for, they are more likely to trust you. This is vital for attracting new students and forging ties in the community.

Sponsorship Ready has developed a brand refresh checklist for school’s wanting to professionally convey their school’s purpose, vision, and values to the community.

If your school requires support in producing or refreshing its brand guidelines, Sponsorship Ready can help in bringing this to life, ensuring all is in conjunction with your school’s key values and objectives.

Find out more about Sponsorship Ready’s branding guidelines here.

Common mistakes schools make with sponsorship

Common mistakes schools make with sponsorship

2/11/2022

Schools play a huge role in their community, yet many struggle to convert that to sponsorship revenue.

If you’re wondering why, keep reading as Sponsorship Ready covers off the most common mistakes schools make with Sponsorship.

  1. They talk to benefits instead of understanding objectives

​All too often a school will engage with a prospective sponsor and just start offering benefits like signage, or apparel positions or activation opportunities but they are making a BIG mistake. How could they possibly know their marketing and business objectives without having this ‘discovery’ meeting. Your school will find once they explore the prospects commercial, brand and community engagement objectives it will be decidedly easier to find the right sponsorship platform.

  1. They confuse fundraising and sponsorship

If your school can deliver on business objectives it can succeed in sponsorship and change the narrative from a $500 donation to that of genuine sponsorship. Schools are powerful conduits to thousands of people in a catchment and this is worth more than mere donations. Think in terms of what the prospect is spending on its current marketing activity and raise the bar!

  1. They go to market and pitch for Sponsorship with collateral which misses the mark

An invitation to sponsor the school is an opportunity to engage with the community, improve outcomes for students, showcase programs the school is running, professionally promote its purpose, vision and values and good governance and so much more. It has some specific and unique ingredients which includes but is certainly not limited to a) great photography and an image bank that captures the heart of the school (and not all enrolment facing images!), b) compelling copy and c) defines the schools reach and impact.

Some other key reasons include:

  • They have not considered what they really have to sell
  • Their selling tools do not target the audience
  • They are simply not sponsorship ready when they approach the market
  • Who is going to manage a sponsorship program once its created?

Sponsorship Ready’s leading and proven 3-step framework provides peace of mind for school’s wanting to successfully deliver on business, brand, and community engagement objectives, while effectively conveying their school’s purpose, vision, and values.

Find out how your school can become Sponsorship Ready with a FREE 30-minute strategy session and start succeeding in sponsorship at your school today.

Top 3 questions that schools ask Sponsorship Ready

Top 3 questions that schools ask Sponsorship Ready

7/10/2022

Can our community alliance program run alongside our sponsorship program?

Yes, it sure can.

Keeping in mind there is a big difference between fundraising, donations, philanthropy & genuine sponsorship.

While there are a select number of schools that seem to have an event series that underpins the basic structure to a community engagement initiative or alliance, the revenue derived from them is often negligible, notwithstanding they serve their purpose for sure.

To realise real sponsorship revenue, it’s crucial that a considered and strategic approach is required and that is where Sponsorship Ready’s 3-step framework comes in.

How do we manage our existing sponsors if we introduce a new strategy?

It seems many public and independent schools have some semblance of a sponsorship program in play.

Some even have a family of sponsors with a reasonable sponsorship revenue baseline.

The catch is – how do you unpack an existing program? Do you even have to? How do roll existing sponsors into a new strategy?

All this is part of the Sponsorship Ready program scope.

What support can you give my staff tasked with driving sponsorship?

  • Educate them on how to talk to sponsors about their objectives rather than just trying to sell them on benefits
  • Help them understand what your school has to sell
  • How to ‘change the narrative’ when selling sponsorship. For example, position for perception of ROI versus Philanthropic donations.
  • Provision of a framework or scaffolding and ongoing support
  • Preparing your school to go to market both strategically and with transparency.

Find out how your school can become Sponsorship Ready with a FREE 30-minute strategy session and start succeeding in sponsorship at your school today.

A sponsorship win for St Patricks College, Mackay

A sponsorship win for St Patricks College, Mackay

3/10/2022

Sponsorship Ready is a professional development and capacity building program, with an unwavering solutions-based approach to sponsorship in schools.

Now in its third year of operation, Sponsorship Ready continues to go from strength to strength, with over 25 schools throughout Queensland since supported in driving sustainable revenue solutions in school sponsorship.

One of the many schools supported includes Mackay-based St Patrick’s College, Mackay and Mercy College, Mackay.

Assistant Principal of Curriculum at Mercy College and Confraternity Carnival Convenor, Scott McSherry engaged Sponsorship Ready after being granted hosting rights for the Confraternity Carnival and QISSN for 2022.   The brief was set the host school up for success in monetising the carnival and then to bring to life a sponsorship strategy for the two schools that are merging in 2023.

“As an active participant in elite sporting competitions for many years, sourcing financial support from local businesses has always been crucial to help reduce costs for students,” Scott said.

“When we were granted hosting rights for the Confraternity Carnival and QISSN for 2022, we realised that our previous efforts were not going to give us the financial support required to deliver a top-quality carnival,” Scott continued.

“Sponsorship Ready has not only provided us a fresh take on how to attract education sponsorship opportunities, but it’s also helped us to form mutually beneficial relationships with businesses while creating an income stream beyond our expectations.

“The education and support provided by Sponsorship Ready has been outstanding and has truly transformed our thinking when it comes to funding school team competing on a state and national level.

“This also enabled us to deliver excellence in co-curricula opportunities for our students that are commensurate with any school in Queensland, now and into the future.”

Sponsorship Ready’s leading and proven 3-step framework provides peace of mind for school’s wanting to successfully deliver on business, brand, and community engagement objectives, while effectively conveying their school’s purpose, vision, and values.

Find out how your school can become Sponsorship Ready with a FREE 30-minute strategy session and start succeeding in sponsorship at your school today.

A common misconception: sponsorship vs. fundraising

A common misconception: sponsorship vs. fundraising

2/10/2022

“We play a big role in the community but so far cannot really convert that to sponsorship revenue” 

Sound familiar? There’s often a common misconception for schools when it comes to fundraising versus sponsorship. 

While fundraising still plays an important role in schools, therein lies a common disconnect regarding the role Sponsorship Ready plays when it comes to supporting schools across their Sponsorship journeys. 

So, what’s the difference between Sponsorship and Fundraising? 

Well, Sponsorship in general is a relationship, similar to advertising. 

That means sponsors want to see a return – whether that’s measured in marketing value, generating new business, brand recognition or delivering on community engagement objectives, it needs to be there. 

This has always been clear in the more transactional world of sponsorship, but increasingly individual donors are seeing their philanthropy as an investment, too. 

Whereas School Fundraising is more about identifying and giving to causes that people care about and tapping into altruistic motivations. 

Understanding this difference will drastically impact how you approach your school community when it comes to school sponsorship. 

Schools are extremely capable of delivering on business, brand, and community engagement objectives of its sponsors, and in many cases more effectively and certainly cost effectively than other mediums like print or radio or billboards. Schools and their leadership are powerful conduits and advocates within their respective communities

 But schools need to understand to gravitate from donations or fundraising to that of genuine sponsorship their narrative needs to change!

So, how do you change the narrative?

  • How are you defining your schools reach and impact?
  • How are you professionally promoting your school’s purpose, vision, and values?
  • How are you capturing and connecting the heart of your school?
  • Can you talk to sponsors about their objectives rather than just benefits?
  • Have you effectively positioned your schools sponsorship program to run alongside your more philanthropic program/s?

If any of these questions are challenging to answer concisely, Sponsorship Ready could be the right solution for your school.

Sponsorship Ready does not include selling sponsorship in schools.

Sponsorship Ready provides schools with the right strategy, tools and support so that schools can manage their sponsorship program themselves.

So, what are you waiting for?

 

Your Invitation

We invite and encourage you to speak
with Sponsorship Ready for a no-cost
30-minute strategy session.

BOOK YOUR STRATEGY SESSION
Sponsorship Ready: meet senior marketer Kelsey

Sponsorship Ready: meet senior marketer Kelsey

24/9/2022

If a tree falls in the forest with no ears to hear, does it make a sound?

The same philosophy can be applied to school marketing.

Many schools wish to successfully be able to deliver upon a sponsor’s business, brand and/or community engagement objectives while also effectively conveying their school’s purpose, vision, and values. A desire to articulate their reach and impact on the local community also a motivation.  As such, adopting an integrated marketing approach is a necessity for schools.

That’s why Sponsorship Ready has since introduced various marketing services that are tailored to best support schools. These services include:

  • Photography & Video

We offer tailored Photography and Videography solutions that support schools in building their image banks while capturing content that captures the heart of their school.

  • Brand Guidelines & Logo Refresh

Brand consistency is at the forefront of what drives loyalty today. Having updated brand guidelines enables schools to deliver against marketing collateral that reflects a consistent look and feel while connecting and compelling your school communities.

  • Capacity Building & Professional Development Marketing
    T Those counting school marketing and community engagement in their portfolio of responsibilities are often very time poor.  We can support by adding hours back into your day by offering curated content solutions and training support to professionally upskill and optimise your time more effectively in the marketing space.  So, whether your schools challenge is related to capacity or capability, we have a professional development solution in this space.

Leading Sponsorship Ready Marketing Services is Senior Marketer, Kelsey McAlpine.

With over 13 years’ experience as a senior marketer specialising in digital, retail, asset management & FMCG industries, Kelsey has worked with many major corporates.

From leading a portfolio of ten JLL shopping center’s in strategic digital marketing to supporting 187 Queensland stores as State Marketing Manager for Coles Supermarkets, Kelsey has a strong background across all marketing disciplines.

“As a marketer, I’ve always found the definition of “marketing” to be incredibly broad and ever-changing and unless you’re living and breathing marketing, it’s really challenging for businesses to stay on top of trends and truly understand what works for them.

“And this is where I have found my marketing niche and passion.

“I have always seen myself as a problem solver and working with Sponsorship Ready was a no-brainer in terms of the support and value I could be offering within the space of Education.

“When I look at all the data and insights available surrounding Education here in Australia, there is always one thing that has stood out.

“That educators are incredibly time-poor yet, research shows a strong desire to be doing more when it comes to marketing in schools.

“That’s why being able to offer professional marketing support and capacity building solutions in schools is where I now derive the truest form of career satisfaction.

“Not only that, but I’m also able to capture and curate content that professionally and strategically positions your school within its various communities while adding time back into the days of educators.

“This means teachers efforts can be best spent educating and improving outcomes for students.”

Sponsorship Ready Marketing services can also work successfully in conjunction with your school’s sponsorship framework while amplifying key messaging across digital marketing, social media marketing and various other forms of school marketing collateral.

Before you start having a new school website developed or start posting to your school’s Facebook page why not take a step back from the tactical areas of your school marketing and have a conversation with Kelsey at Sponsorship Ready?

For an initial chat please contact Kelsey McAlpine via Kelsey.McAlpine@sponsorshipready.com.au or call 0434 495 948.

It could help you reassess your school’s course of action from a strategic perspective, while ensuring maximum success and return from your marketing spend.

You can also view Sponsorship Ready’s full list of marketing services here.

Make sure you also check out and follow our new Sponsorship Ready LinkedIn page for all of the latest updates.

Build a connected school community

Build a connected school community

8/6/2022

​Schools that have rich community engagement programs are more likely to create vetter sponsorship educational opportunities for students, teachers, parents, and the wider school. School sponsors can help play a part in this as well as deliver incremental revenue for the school.

​Share your schools purpose, vision, values

​By sharing your school’s purpose, vision and values effectively to your schools community, it drives positive impact on brand visibility and awareness for both sponsors and schools.

With your community in tune with your schools vision, it’s easier to connect with the right sponsors that represent similar values and secure the right sponsorship educational opportunities.

Understand what a sponsors objectives are

​All too often schools miss out on building these relationships because they present benefits without understanding the motivations of prospective sponsors, so to enable your best chance of finding the right sponsorship platform – remember this! Schools have so much to offer!

Understand that your schools sponsorship strategy should sit alongside other key strategies

Strategic partnerships, communications strategy and marketing strategy​. Engaging with sponsors, bringing them into your sponsor family is therefore a great opportunity delivering more than just revenue.

Leverage your school’s impact

Leverage your school’s impact

20/5/2021

​Sponsorship of schools can be linked to improving outcomes for students and to funding variety of initiatives including but not limited to:

  • Excellence programs
  • Extra-curricular programs
  • Community engagement programs
  • Infrastructure projects
  • Additional learning resources

​By articulating your school’s reach and impact to potential sponsors, your school can attract real sponsorship dollars through sponsors as well as a great opportunity to promote your schools mission and values in the community.

Tips for clubs with > 400 members

Tips for clubs with > 400 members

18/10/2020

Golden Rules for clubs with > 400 members…

  1. Sports clubs have an engaged, passionate audience – but perhaps they could do better to allow sponsors to leverage this…. Consider the ways your club can help put an SME’s product or service in danger of being sold, create a list or register of all your clubs possible sponsorship assets, get the key people in a room and flesh this out. Its critical, and ideas will flow. Guaranteed. But you need to think about how your club can deliver on their brand, commercial and community engagement objectives and you need to get more creative than signage and logos on apparel. Use the inventory prompt ‘what have you got to sell’ to kick start the process.
  2. Sports clubs have plenty of volunteers, a history, and a story to tell – but struggle articulate it for sponsors …. publish this content, tell the story, and capture it in your professional pitch material. Your selling tools need to be professional, a must. I cannot stress this enough it – in my professional opinion, and I have pitched to hundreds of people representing many sports – it is the difference between winning and losing a sponsor.
  3. Sports clubs and Associations know their organisation makes a positive impact on their respective communities and people’s lives – but cannot define it, this too needs to be told and captured in your selling tools. This type of content is what sponsors are looking for to deliver on community engagement or corporate/social responsibility objectives. Consider strategic alliances with organisations in health/social space in your community. It will help your conversion rate.
  4. Clubs suspect they can provide significant ‘reach’ for prospective sponsors – but cannot demonstrate it…..this is just so key to success, if you can demonstrate quantitatively in your selling tools the reach you have you are then demonstrating ROI versus other mediums sponsors would already be spending on such as radio, print, digital etc
  5. Clubs know their organisation has a good brand, reputation, and governance – but fail to really showcase it in their pitch. Again, these are key components in your selling tools and seriously consider a survey of your member base to get rich data on what members think of the brand so it can be used in your pitch. Why not try getting data on what your members think of prospective sponsors!?!
  6. Fewer, bigger, and deeper relationships with sponsors makes sense – but they tend to have multiple lower value partners with high servicing costs. Consider making the change in your sponsorship strategy to fewer, bigger, deeper. Those already on board subscribe to your club and its impact so take steps to grow their investment and bespoke their partnership platform.

Want more useful tips? Download here for more information.

Author

Terry Johnston from ​Sponsorship Ready

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