How To Directory
- 1. How to Use Groups Hub
- 2. How to Manage Health & Safety
- 3. How to Make Your Society Inclusive
- 4. How to Book Facilities and Transport
- 5. How to Manage Your Money
- 6. How to Manage Equipment
- 7. How to Manage Communications
- 8. How to Run a Sports Club
- 9. How to Handover and Democratic Processes
- 10. How to Organise Events
- Involving Alumni
- Running an internal or external event
- Considering Health & Safety for your event
- Involving external speakers
- Adding an Event the the SUSU Calendar
- Requesting Box Office Tickets
- Promotion from SUSU
- Running an event outside SUSU premises
- Running your own charity event through RAG
- Creating a balanced programme of events
- Running an event on SUSU premises
- 11. How to Start a New Club or Society
- 12. Adopt a Society
Seeking External Sponsorship
Local businesses are often keen to sponsor student clubs/societies in return for advertisement or guaranteed custom. This can be a very successful way of guaranteeing a lump sum of money, but it can also have risks attached if you aren’t fully aware of what you’re both signing up for.
Always make sure you know what you are committing to and that you do anything you say you will, otherwise sponsors might want their money back, or it could damage the reputation of your club/society or SUSU as a whole.
SUSU have created some handy documents to help guide clubs in gaining sponsorship. These help to explain the steps you should take in gaining sponsorship, as well as some of the pitfalls to watch out for. Please see the documents below:
- External Sponsorship Guidelines Document
- External Sponsorship Framework Breakdown
- Example Sponsorship Contract Template
If you like some further information or any support in obtaining sponsorship, please contact the activities team on the email address below.
Below is a summarised list of guidelines and tips for sourcing external sponsorship:
- Think of relevant companies. Don’t just go to the same old pubs and clubs (they will be inundated with sponsorship requests). Be innovative, try to think of what kind of company or organisation would want to target the students in your club/society.
- Be realistic. Companies are very savvy; if you’re a small club/society don’t go asking for thousands of pounds!
- List the benefits that your club/society has to offer. Each club/society is unique - what makes yours attractive to possible sponsors?
- Be astute; don’t go into any meeting or phone call unprepared. Any possible sponsor is going to have a lot of questions as to why it should part with its cash. Make sure you can answer them first time around. If you can’t, another club or society will!
- Check with the SUSU Activities Team (suactivities@soton.ac.uk) before signing up to anything. Before contacting (or if you have been contacted), check to see if the company in question is legitimate – for example, they may be against SUSU’s ethical policy, or they may be bad debtors.
- Check with SUSU what you can offer. Some companies will try to avoid paying sponsorship or advertising costs to the Union by gaining campus access through student groups.
Although SUSU encourages external group sponsorship, it doesn’t allow companies access to campus, the Student Union buildings, bars or events, halls of residence, Freshers Week, the Wessex Scene, the website, or any of our publications/publicity via clubs or societies. It’s fine for companies to sponsor you (e.g. your shirts, hoodies, posters, flyers, websites, events etc.) but they cannot use a club/society to directly market itself or its products without prior approval from the SUSU Team to limit/prevent conflict of interest or undesirable company practices. Likewise, members of the club/society may not carry out marketing or promotions on the company’s behalf off campus and/or without prior approval from SUSU. When in doubt, please email suactivities@soton.ac.uk and susales@soton.ac.uk.