Sponsorship is Cool!

Figure.1 A Picture of me

Introducing Sponsorship!

Alright, kids! Listen up, Coach C. is speaking! Today we're going to talk about corporate sponsorship. Whats that you ask? Well, Have you ever been a part of a sports team ? Or a school club? Well, have ya? if you have, you'll remember seeing different company names and all sorts of logos on the back of the game jerseys and I bet you wondered what the heck that could possibly mean and why did the coach give us a shirt with names that don't have anything to do with us! This is what we call corporate sponsorship(CS). There are plenty of types of sponsorships but the one we going to be talking about is sponsorship with a nonprofit, I will explain what a nonprofit is in the next paragraph. Sponsorships do not only apply to little guys like you but, also to professional athletes or anyone famous. Remember seeing all those baseball teams wearing the same brand of uniforms? Either Nike or Adidas? well, that's because the baseball teams are sponsees of Adidas or Nike. It is all pretty simple. I will explain it all in the following paragraph.

How it Works

Figure. 2 Sponsorship in Play!

The way sponsorship work is pretty simple, there is a sponsor and a sponsee.The sponsee in this particular event is a nonprofit. A nonprofit is a club or company that does not make money off of what they do, like a little league team. Let's say your local sporting goods store is the sponsor and our little league baseball team is the sponsee. The sponsor offers to pay for the team's jerseys in exchange the sponsee put their company names on the back of the jerseys! Its basically they scratch our backs we scratch theirs. You might be asking "Why would they benefit from putting their company name on the back of a jersey?" Well, if you people from the local community see the local sporting goods store, the sponsor, helping out the little league team with their baseball jerseys and everything else they will be more likely to go to that shop to buy sporting goods. Why? Well because the sponsor is helping out the community by investing in your future! So your parents and your community will support them by shopping at their store. Think of your best friend and how you always help each other out, well the sponsor/sponsee relationship is like that, they have what is called a co-dependent relationship (2). Sponsorship doesn't only happen for sports teams or school clubs, it could be for anything it could be for a for a park clean up or just to help out the local community. If it weren't for corporate sponsorship, a lot of little league sports teams would not be able to afford those cool game jerseys, or some school clubs would not be able to do all the fun things that they do.

Is it Advertisement?

Figure. 3. Advertisements Everywhere!

Sponsorship is not advertisement, an advertisement could be shown anytime anywhere and the ad could be selling anything while. A good example is that you could be watching a cartoon and then be shown an advertisement selling air fresheners. While in there is no relationship between the two. Where in a sponsorship, you could be at the World Cup soccer, which is a huge sporting event, and see that Adidas sponsors this event. As many people know, Adidas sells sports equipment so it makes perfect sense to buyers that Addidas would sponsor a sporting event (1).

Conclusion

Sponsorships are a great way to raise awareness, they can support and improve the quality of programs around you like environmental programs, park or city clean-ups, recycling, and restoration. Not only this, but it could also support and improve the performing arts at your schools, scholarships for low-income students who want to go to college, and all sorts of activities for kids like you! like after school programs, and much more. The possibilities are endless. Who knows, maybe when you're older and own a business you'll be sponsoring the next little league team!