how to

One of the biggest questions people have when they start searching for a sponsor is getting around the anxiety of drafting that initial contact letter. You need to look organized, professional and worthy of sponsorship.

Ready to take the step to find yourself a sponsor? Be organized and break it down into simple steps and it won't be difficult at all to do or for your potential sponsor to understand exactly what you want.

First of all, understand what proper letter format is and if you don't, learn it. It's important that when you write a sponsorship letter that it looks as professional as possible. Start off with the title of the person and underneath that, the address the letter will be delivered to.

Choosing a corporate sponsor can seem overwhelming, however if you break down exactly what you want from a corporate sponsor, you will find it's not as hard as it sounds to attract a corporate sponsor to support your athletic aspirations or nonprofit organization.

Do a Little Research Before Your First Contact

When aspiring Olympic athletes were told that there was no money for them to be sponsored, they went to a Corporate sponsor as more and more athletes are choosing to do, Olympic bound or not.

Don't be afraid to reach out to larger corporations to sponsor your athletics. Start with companies you frequent the most you'll be surprises at how often companies like Hooters, Kroger and other large companies actually have sponsorship budgets and are more than willing to sponsor athletes.

The giving spirit is within most people and helping a child is one of the most compelling needs we can answer as humans. However, there are a number of less than worthy child charities that are looking for sponsors as easy marks for money instead of actually sponsoring a child. In many cases,neither the charities nor the children actually exist.

The economy isn't the best and although it may not seem like a very opportune time for asking for a business to sponsor your charity, in all actuality, the timing couldn't be better.

Remember, a business may give your charity funds to meet the needs of whatever your charitable cause is, but you give something back to the business for their funding. They are getting extremely low cost exposure (advertising) and you need to promote that fact to them. If you're having a fund raiser, be sure to tell your potential donors that you will be promoting their business as well.

There are a lot of great opportunities out there for sponsoring a child in need through a non-profit organization but unfortunately, there are a lot of scams. We have some great tips to decipher the good from the bad when you want to sponsor a child.

First of all, how transparent is the non-profit as to where your sponsorship will be used? An organization on the up and up will be able to tell you how your sponsorship will be used, give you examples and show you examples of other sponsors. If you get dodged on an answer, raise your eyebrows and proceed with caution.