For several years, MIH Solutions has been assisting individuals, teams and organisations through sponsorship. This ranges from one-off events, through to fully supporting activities over the course of any given year.

 

Initially, we had some healthy scepticism for providing our capital and/or resources to assist with these ventures. However, after actively participating for a couple of years, the benefits were clear to see and continue to grow year on year.

 

It can be difficult to identify your strategic goals for any sponsorship activity and, similarly, your KPIs related to any activity. You and your organisation should spend the time to identify and drive toward whatever goal you set for the activity.

 

The simplest form of sponsorship could be a local event, where your brand is identified as a partner, giving you brand exposure and possibly having your literature distributed to attendees. These are normally financial packages of support at different levels for varying degrees of exposure, both to attendees and the wider audience interested in that event.

 

More complex forms of sponsorship could be supporting a team or an individual with financial backing, goods or services on a long-term basis, say over a full year.

 

For MIH Solutions, a large part of the sponsorship we offer is to help teams and individuals succeed in their chosen sport or activity, where our resources can make a real and tangible difference to the outcome of their activity. We decided to support young talent at a local and national level, as that fits with our organisational goals and values.

 

Some of the benefits we have seen are:

 

• Staff and client engagement via participation or attendance at events
• Increased sales
• Brand awareness
• General engagement with us as an organisation

 

The bottom line is that sponsorship can be a large investment of finances, time and effort. The rewards are not always guaranteed or fully predictable, and you should go into any agreement with eyes wide open to the fact you will have to work alongside a sponsorship deal to capitalise on it as an organisation. However, some of the rewards are immeasurable in the way they are delivered back to you - the ability for a team to participate and grow, where without your help they couldn’t, for example. We are also able to offer services which, other than via sponsorship, the team or individual just wouldn’t think to utilise - partly due to cost and partly due to a lack of understanding on what could be achieved by using them.

 

If you are thinking of venturing into sponsorship and would like to talk things through, please get in touch (info@mihsolutions.co.uk, 01283 215605). Maybe our experiences could help you decide your next steps.