Sponsorship: Finding Contacts
Tips for listing potential sponsors and finding the right points of contact!
Author: Allyson King (@allysonking)
“Surrounded by data-minded professionals and aspirants, TAMU Datathon is a great way to challenge yourself, meet people, and immerse yourself in the world of big data.” — 2019 TAMU Datathon Attendee
TAMU Datathon 2019 offered introductory data science courses, insights into the use of data science at major corporations, networking opportunities with professionals and students, and challenges to test our participants’ skills. Get this… attendees were able to take part in and enjoy the event for FREE! How was this possible? Thanks solely to the generosity and support of our 15 corporate and 5 departmental sponsors who contributed over $50K in donations.
Finding a diverse set of high-profile sponsors to donate to our inaugural event seemed like a daunting task when we first set out to do so. Below are some tips from our first go at deciding which companies to reach out to and finding contacts at those companies.
1. See what companies are sponsoring similar events!
As a first time event, we found it invaluable to reference existing events to help in our sponsorship search. For example, we used the Grace Hopper conference for ideas as to what companies were prevalent sponsors of tech conventions. Looking at Texas A&M’s engineering career fair sponsors also proved beneficial, as it revealed to us a pool of sponsors targeting students in Texas. In doing so, we were able to build a list of sponsors who were both a) active sponsors of technical events and b) recruiting students from Texas.
2. Ask your applicants who should sponsor!
A strong sponsor line-up motivates interested students to apply for TAMU Datathon. Attendees get to network with sponsors at the event, learn about internship and job opportunities, and give their resume to company representatives. Thus, we decided to go straight to the source and ask our attendees who they want to see at TAMU Datathon 2020.
3. Compile a list of known recruiters!
Our rock-star TD leadership team members knew a lot of recruiters from career fair visits, summer internships, and personal connections. We asked our leadership team to write down the names, emails, and phone numbers of their contacts so that we could make initial contact with a known company representative.
4. Use departmental connections!
The Texas A&M departmental sponsors we partnered with early on aided us in our sponsor search by contacting their corporate affiliates for us. Having a university department reach out to corporations made our new organization appear bona fide in the eyes of our Fortune 500 potential sponsors.
4. Attend career fairs!
“The SEC Engineering Career Fair is the premier recruiting event for the Dwight Look College of Engineering. The career fair is planned, organized, and staffed by the Student Engineers’ Council and is the largest student-run career fair in the nation. Historically, over 450 companies and 10,000 engineering students have attended the career fair during the Fall and Spring semesters.” — Texas A&M Student Engineering Council
Everything’s bigger in Texas — including career fairs! Having an opportunity to connect face to face with company recruiters was advantageous for us during this process. Handing out TAMU Datathon business cards and flyers was a helpful trick too!
5. Use LinkedIn as a last resort!
For our dream sponsors who we had no contact for, we hopped onto Linkedin with the goal of getting in touch with an employee. We searched in particular for campus representatives, recruiters, or data scientists who lived in Texas. We were able to make a few connections this way that lead to sponsorship, but this method often resulted in no response.
These 5 steps helped our team get off on the right foot in our sponsorship search, which ultimately landed us sponsors in the likes of Facebook, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and ConocoPhillips.
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