Understanding Your Sponsors
Before setting your goals and starting to reach out to sponsors, it's extremely necessary to understand them and their perspective towards supporting hackathons.
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Before setting your goals and starting to reach out to sponsors, it's extremely necessary to understand them and their perspective towards supporting hackathons.
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Sponsorship is one of the most crucial parts of every hackathon. When you're reaching out to sponsors, it's necessary to understand their perspective of supporting your hackathon and the outcome they're expecting out of it. You should consider this as a sales pitch for your hackathon. To understand it further, let's first understand the different types of sponsors hackathons generally target to.
Financial/ Monetary Sponsors — Companies that pay for services like having their logo on your website (most sponsors fall into this category).
Presenting Sponsors — Companies that co-host or co-brand your event (be careful not to give up too much control here). Think of them as a premium Fiscal Sponsor.
In-kind Sponsors — Companies that donate services or goods like hardware or platform credits for free.
Strategic/ Media Partners — Companies that help with marketing and promotion; often publications.
Community Partners — Companies that can help you recruit hackers, mentors, judges, or volunteers from their community for free.
Please note that these are all broad categories and there will be sponsors that can fit into multiple categories at once as well.
We often see companies attempting to give away free credits or swag to avoid paying a sponsorship fee. We recommend steering clear of these engagements or evaluating these opportunities on a case-by-case basis using the guide we wrote for you below.
Once you have enough information about what category a sponsor fits in, you should try to understand what their goal or primary reason might be to support your hackathon.
To get real-time feedback on their products, especially APIs and development tools. To find people with these goals, target job titles containing Developer Relations/Dev Rel or Developer Advocate. These people generally are familiar with hackathons and have a budget to attend them, but is usually a more niche/harder to find role.
To recruit interns and full-time employees, especially during the fall season. To find people with these goals, target job titles like Hiring, Recruiting, Talent Acquisitions, or HR. These people typically have the budget, but will likely need more explanation on what a hackathon is.
To raise awareness (or change the perception) of their brand/ product or service. To find people with these goals, target job titles containing Marketing or Public Relations, or an Employee Resource Group related to your primary event demographic. These people typically have a budget, but will need more information on how they are making a difference. Photos from previous events will help more with these pitches.
Apart from these three primary reasons, sponsors may want to support an event because they align with your community values, want increased engagement with their product, or have region targeted goals. Sponsors in this last category are typically companies that have a strong local presence at your college and/or career fairs. Working with them to send specific stats about your event to help their process can be a great way to improve your chances of sponsorship.
We typically recommend not reaching out to a random Software Developer/Manager(or like title) at a company as it is hard for them to get budget approval to support a hackathon. If you have alumni connections, see if they can help connect you to the job titles in the bullet points above to get the needed budget!
Understanding how to target and cater to your sponsors is essential to forming your approach to addressing the most common concerns they raise.
Attendee Value
Are your hackathon’s attendees a good fit for the company in terms of recruiting, marketing, etc.?
How hard is it for companies to reach this audience without your help? What unique bridge does your event offer between the sponsor and their target population?
Who else is sponsoring?
Depending on the sponsor, your other backers will matter. Some companies prefer to sponsor events their competitors sponsor, whereas others want to ensure they’re the biggest name on your roster.
Package Value
Are they getting their money’s worth?
The Force (a.k.a. their gut feel)
How do the sponsors feel about your competency: is the event well-organized so far? Have you been professional in all communications?
While setting your goals, take all of these points into consideration and make different categories of people you need to target. Creating specific Sponsorship Prospectus for different target companies can be a great way to help them understand the value of associating their brand with your hackathon.