Sponsorship, Raffle Prizes and other freebies..

[george]

Just wondering if anyone else gets asked a lot for raffle prizes, sponsoring teams etc? We get at least one of each a week, and it always seems to be from people who are not, and never have been, to my knowledge anyway, customers.

Obviously we have a football site but just wondered if everyone else gets plagued with requests for donations.

As a rule we only donate to the club we run, our local juvenile league, and The Tartan Army Sunshine Appeal which I am a member of the Steering Group.

PS Every year I have to source sponsors for our strips and trophies and I simply HATE the task. So much so that the last couple of things we've needed FH have paid for them, such is the wasted man hours `networking` etc. Just been told we need some t-shirts and stuff for next season and wondering at what point and why has it become `my` problem.

[pinbrook]

Surf-wax regularly gets begging emails too. It had never occured to me to consider that these emails would come from customers, I assume people just trawl the www looking for potential sponsors. The fact that most requests are cold makes it quite easy to reject them.

Whilst we do read the requests we ditch the vast majority, we tend to restrict our donations ot local charities only.

[Jan]

We do more or less the same as you George, we support local charities and occasionally give our freebies to people that we like the sound of - usually people enquiring to buy actually rather than asking for donations.

I was thinking of writing a charity program, in others words one where all proceeds from sales are donated to a particular charity, but I wasn't sure what the rules and regulations were about that.

Regards,

[leehack]

but I wasn't sure what the rules and regulations were about that.

More red tape than you could ever imagine. Make an annual donation to a charity or charities and put it in your company books is the simplest way.

[completerookie]

not quite actinic, but we agreed to go into a calendar for the local ambulance service after my father was taken ill and received fantastic care - what a mistake, every tom, dick and harry phones us up saying things like "this years submission is ready, where do we send the bill" - what submission?? I didn't order anything

you sponsored the ambulance, what about ????, - you name it wev'e been pestered, weve been inunndated, so much so that we have become quite shirty about the amount of time we waste on these calls (shame but some people take the ****)

Now, we choose who WE give to and WHY, and because of the bad taste left in our mouths, some very good deserving causes don't get a look in.

Although the majority of people understand our reasoning, there are some "fund raisers" that are just that and the reasoning, thoughts, feelings just go out of the window.

[leehack]

Totally agree with that Kevin, by giving in one area, it often opens up the floodgates. I used to donate monthly to Oxfam and they pissed me off so much that i scrapped it. Endless leaflets and crap through the post, i began to think that my donation was paying for them to constantly hassle me via post. If you looked into how much in each pound actually goes to where you want it to, i don't think you'd give anything personally.

One annual donation to RSPCA or CIN and be done with it is my way now.

[buspassjohn]

Way back in my distant past I worked as a shipping agent for an Indian ship owner and was employed by a famous charity to ship a bulk load of relief food to India, first from Copenhagen to Hamburg to Rotterdam to Tilbury to Zeebrugge to Calais etc etc., each time the charity claimed a shipload of food going to India - the same shipload!
I gave up on charities after this, most of our freebies go to the guys and gals in Irag, Afganistan and The Falklands at Xmas,when we get the chance, although the chocolate willies to Iraq were confiscated for some reason!

[jont]

I now have a section entitled "Charity Donations" which explains we have nominated charity and focus all our efforts that way and a note wishing them good luck in their endeavours.

[george]

I now have a section entitled "Charity Donations" which explains we have nominated charity and focus all our efforts that way and a note wishing them good luck in their endeavours.

Which then redirects them to a competitor! Amazing!