Sponsorship Vent
I’m a one-person development team, and our organization of just over $1m has a fairly diversified funding portfolio. We’ve had a very successful corporate sponsorship program for businesses who can give $2,500+ per year, but we recognize that it is less dependable. For example, one of our leadership givers recently sold their business out of state and that annual gift vanished immediately.
We introduced some smaller sponsorship levels for specific events we run, and I made what I thought was a fairly conservative estimate of what it could generate. However, the state of the economy has meant that we may not meet my conservative estimate. I feel like all the businesses in our community, large and small, have just decided to tighten their belt, cinch up the purse strings and ghost us.
I’m meeting tonight with some friends/colleagues also in fundraising and we regularly compare notes. I really don’t feel it’s anything our org has done or my approach (which has been successful in the past). I think it’s just the volatile economy right now, and I suppose that means I’ve done things right and done all I could, but that doesn’t help our budget. Sigh.