I shared this in my Instagram stories but I thought it may be useful to save it here too. I was prompted to write this after I received yet another impersonal request for event sponsorship this week.

I can only fulfil a tiny percentage of the requests I receive: Make yours count!

Advice on Asking for Sponsorship

1. Send your request via email. Instagram messages get buried and can’t be searched.

2. Address the owner of company directly by name. Using the company name or a generic greeting doesn’t make anyone feel valued. Yes, it takes more time to send individual emails but as you’re expecting someone to give you their time and money, I think it’s only fair you give them a little of your time.

3. If you're using a template email, make sure you remove any [insert company name here] reminders. Yes, mistakes happen and we're all human but please see the above point about value/time. If this was the only issue in an otherwise lovely email, I wouldn't mind, but it rarely is.

4. Have you bought from the business or supported them in any way? If not, why do you feel they should sponsor your event or giveaway? I appreciate that you can’t buy from everyone but if no-one on your organising team has bought from them, are they really aligned with you or your audience?

5. What is the sponsor getting in return? Sponsoring an event is a huge investment for small businesses and we like to know that we’re actually getting something back. Include relevant statistics and links to websites/Instagram accounts. Make sure the promises you make are ones you can keep!

This may not be relevant to smaller requests e.g. for an individual’s Instagram/YouTube giveaway but please send links as above, and refer to point four.

This also doesn’t apply to charity raffles but please give details of the charity and any personal connections - my heartstrings are easily tugged!

6. If they've sponsored your giveaways/events in the past, it would be nice to acknowledge this and pass on any positive feedback from winners/guests/followers.

7. Ask well in advance, particularly if you are overseas. Many small business owners such as myself are working multiple jobs and won’t have a lot of time for stuff like this. International postage can take up to five weeks.

Please don't take this as a hard and fast list of rules, this is just my personal opinion and I hope it provides a little food for thought. I know most of this is common sense but these are all based on actual requests I’ve received.

When I first started Pink Coat Club I was so amazed and flattered that anyone thought I was cool and successful enough to sponsor an event that I jumped at the chance. Two years down the line, I've finally learned that it almost never benefits my business! Sad but true.

I have had to disable blog comments as I received hundreds of gibberish spam comments. If you have any questions or comments, you contact me here or via Instagram.