Pitching your Non-Profit: Audience Insights to Help You Stand Out

September 19, 2023
SponsorPulse Staff

Image courtesy of Christina WOC in Tech Chat via Unsplash

Learn how leveraging audience insights can help your sponsorship proposal, plus download a free copy of our sponsorship pitch deck proposal template.

When it comes to securing new sponsorships the process can often feel like a black box, making it difficult to know how to recreate results, let alone coach and guide a team to do the same.

The world of sponsorship often demands more of causes as they are asked to produce the same business ROI for brands while simultaneously delivering impact metrics that demonstrate the outputs and outcomes of the investment.

Communicating the Return On Investment

Sport and entertainment properties, for example, are set up to deliver in-depth data on audience insights and the multitude of sponsorship benefits brands will reap when engaging with them. Many causes on the other hand, while experts in measuring and communicating the impact of a dollar towards their mission, may not have the in-house expertise to help them quantify other key sponsorship benefits that brands are looking for.

What if there was a way to provide causes with key data insights to support them in building the business case, making the additional impact metrics a competitive advantage as opposed to supplemental data?

Audience Insights with SponsorPulse

If you are working at a non-profit in sponsorships, chances are you have, or are in the midst of building, a compelling sponsorship deck that does a great job of selling the organization’s mission and impact.

You can talk about the organization’s programs or services for days, touching on everything from storytelling, to lives impacted, to in some cases, long-term outcomes from investing dollars with your non-profit.

When the conversation moves towards the marketing metrics however, things can get a little shaky. This is where SponsorPulse becomes an essential tool to helping your organization communicate its consumer impact with as much conviction as your mission impact.

Audience Insights

One of the most important things when it comes to setting the stage for your sponsorship opportunity is knowing your audience. This doesn’t only mean the Brand you are trying to pitch, it also means your consumer audience.

With World Mental Health Day around the corner, let’s take on the role of a Corporate Partnerships Manager at a mental health organization and explore how SponsorPulse can help prospective sponsors understand the opportunity to connect with new audiences.

Engagement

Part of knowing your audience is knowing how big it is - how many people are engaging with your cause and at what frequency?

For instance, 38% of Americans - that’s over 81 million people - have engaged with mental health research and support causes in the past year. A staggering 36% of those individuals engage weekly, or in some cases, more than once a week.

Engagement data helps to establish the size of the prize to prospective sponsors, showcasing just how much of the population is in fact connected with your cause.

Demographics

You can take your pitch to the next level by understanding the Brands key audience and providing the data to demonstrate how your cause can help them breakthrough.

While we’ve established that 36% of Americans engage with mental health causes, this percentage climbs to 46% when we look at Millennials and up to 51% when looking at Gen Z. SponsorPulse provides over ten key demographic filters, including filters as specific as small business ownership, which by the way, bumps up engagement to 62%.

Property comparison

Knowing the value of your property is key but it is also important to remember that your organization is never the only one pitching. Property Comparison enables you to demonstrate just how compelling your opportunity is to prospective brands and demonstrate how your cause either mirrors or outpaces other properties.

When comparing Mental Health research and support causes to the most recent Stanley Cup Winners, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, and one of the most popular music festivals worldwide, Coachella, it outperforms these two comparators on almost all 7 key metrics that SponsorPulse uses to measure property health.

Stand Out in a Crowd

Audience insights are the first step in helping your cause stand apart amidst a crowded sponsorship space. Knowing your total reach, who your audience is and how your cause stacks up to competitors (whether in the cause space or not) help set the stage for the Sponsorship Benefits that will help you seal the deal.

Stay tuned for our next blog post that will dive into Sponsorship Benefits.