Sponsorships For Hackathon

Wondering how to find sponsorships for a hackathon? 

Hackathon has advanced to online formats, after the Covid-19 pandemic. Hackathons are live events that involve programmers and participants competing to solve challenges. Hackathon addresses real-life business issues and social problems. Such events run for one day or maybe two to three days- it all depends on crowdsourcing solutions and innovation. 

Well, it is not easy to run such a big and live event, hence we need support from the team and others. Hackathons create an environment where people’s ideas come to play. Such innovations can benefit society in multiple ways. During such events, sponsorships are a complement to innovations and help to make your event successful.

Sponsorship for a hackathon is not just beneficial to event organizers but also to sponsors for hackathons in many ways. Sponsors can take firms to next level by giving sponsorship for a hackathon. 

Hackathons are mostly virtual events. After the spread of covid-19, it has become extremely easy to get virtual event sponsorships for your virtual or hybrid event. Try this out.

Here are some tricks that every hackathon organizer should keep in mind when finding sponsors for a hackathon. 

Essential Hackathon Sponsorship Tips for Organizers

Sponsorship for a hackathon requires different amounts of funding. Here are the questions to ask yourself on how to get sponsors for a hackathon: 

• How many participants and audience you are expecting?
• How much you are giving to each hacker?
• Are you providing any travel reimbursement?
• How much prize money you are giving away if monetary prize?

These are the basic points you need to discuss with your team and make a realistic budget to seek sponsorships for a hackathon. Along with such questions make a list of things you need and want. Here are some hackathons sponsorships tips you definitely pay attention to:

• Venue
• Internet connection and electronics 
• Refreshments
• Furniture 
• Transportation
• Stationery 

Other things that need to be taken care of are customized goodies. Every hackathon has its swag-backs and customized t-shirts. This has become a trend and you cannot ignore it. There are many such event engagement ideas to provide your attendees and sponsors with something to look forward to.

Tip: Your pitch and presentations matter. So, make attractive and effective presentations with relevant presentation templates. 

Sponsors for Hackathon- Internal Leads

Each hackathon coordinator generally battles to track down new leads for sponsorships for a hackathon. Let me tell you this, the best way to find sponsors for the hackathon is within your team. Discuss with your hackathon team members, who they know can sponsor the hackathon, and make a spreadsheet with all the details of potential sponsors for a hackathon. 

Draft an email invite, let them know who you reached them through your mutual connection. Surprisingly, many sponsorships for a hackathon come from internal sources. Try your luck with your team members, you will strongly get something out of it. 

Build Long-Lasting Relationship 

You need to think about long-term relationship building with your sponsors. Your hunt for sponsors is not limited to one event only. In the future, you will be organizing more hackathons. Find event sponsors– work on maintaining and building long trustable relationships with all the sponsors you have met. Build relationships with past sponsors as well as existing ones. Include the sponsors who did not contribute to the particular event. Keep the record of all the potential sponsors for your future events. So, post-event engagement is extremely important for sponsorships.

Tip: You can send pre-event surveys and post-event feedback forms to build a trustworthy relationship with your sponsors and audiences.

New Sponsorships for Hackathon- From Team

People grow and get promoted in their respective organizations. People also leave and someone else fills their position. There should continuously be a few groups that are completely onboarded the prior year, who know how to run sponsorship and what organizations know what, to change to the upcoming years. This will help you maintain a long-term relationship with the company. If you maintain a good relationship with the individual person as well, they might help you get sponsorship from the firm they moved to.

Creative Hackathon Sponsorship Ideas 

Sometimes companies don’t want to give money for sponsorships. Ask them to sponsor a particular session or part of your hackathon. For example, ask them to provide hackathon merchandise, dinner, or internet connectivity. Ask for anything that can cut short your budget a little and get their name in the event.

One of the popular sponsorship ideas is to give the unique event theme and provide your sponsors a space in your virtual theme. Here, event management software companies will be a great help to you.

Get Your University Onboard With You

If you haven’t considered your university departments, it’s time to get them on your side.  Connect with your science and technology schools/departments to vouch for you. When you have support from your school, it makes a job a little easier. Also, it builds relationships of trust with other schools so that your future events get maximum participants. Set an event tech trend and make your hackathons go popular.