Sponsorships are a great way for you to increase the profile of your society and generate income!

How do sponsorships work?

A sponsor will usually provide a lump sum to your society in exchange for benefits such as having their logo included on your stash, your society making sponsored social media posts to promote their business's services, or you agreeing to do a number of events in collaboration with the sponsor. For example, local law firms will often sponsor the law society in exchange for events with the law firm promoting their graduate roles. 

Sponsors can also offer different benefits such as cash incentives for hosting events in their venue. For example, local bars may give you an extra lump sum if your society spends a certain amount at events in their venue or hosts a certain number of events. 

How can I find sponsors?

You may be lucky and already have some companies that have agreed to sponsor your society in previous years, in which case you can reach back out to them. However, if not, think about companies whose values or services most closely relate to your society's themes and aims. For instance, if your society is about coffee appreciation, a local coffee shop would be a natural partner. 

You can make your offer more appealing to potential sponsors by giving key information like the number of members you have, the number of accounts your social media posts reach or by including highlights of your society's achievements. However, remember to keep first emails short and punchy as the company may receive a lot of emails! 

If in doubt, you can always search for example sponsor emails on Google or ask the activities team to read through your email draft and make suggestions by emailing activities@exeterguild.com. 

How do I accept a sponsorship deal?

Once you have an offer for a sponsorship deal, most companies will produce a contract for someone to sign on the society's behalf. Even if the company doesn't offer to produce a contract, always ask for one to be made; this protects your society from signing up to unfair terms or the sponsor not keeping up their side of the agreement.

Sometimes, an organisation will ask you to draw up a contract for them to sign instead. In this instance, we have a sponsorship template which you can use.

As a Guild registered society, your society is a part of the Guild, and you cannot sign any contracts on the Guild's behalf. Therefore, once you have a contract ready to be signed, you need to email it to activities@exeterguild.com for it to be signed by a member of staff on your behalf. This also gives your society an extra layer of protection as we will make sure the terms you are agreeing to are fair and do not promise anything you can't deliver. 

How do I receive money from a sponsor?

To be paid by an outside organisation, including any sponsor organisations, you will need to complete an invoice request form. This form asks for the details of who is paying and the amount they are paying. We then send this to our finance team, and they will create an invoice and send it to the sponsor on your behalf. 

Societies cannot produce their own invoices as our finance team needs to have all incoming funds accounted for and have a clear paper trail to show to auditors. 

Sponsorship and VAT

When arranging sponsorship, check whether the agreed amount includes VAT or is exclusive of VAT. 

Make sure this is clearly recorded in your sponsorship agreement, as it will affect how much your society receives. 

For example...

Sponsorship fee includes VAT 

Sponsor pays £500 

VAT: £83.33 

Society receives: £416.67 

Sponsorship agrees to pay fee + VAT 

Sponsor pays £600 

VAT: £100 

Society receives: £500