The sponsorship package
The document your email points to — what goes in it, and how to build a tier table that makes saying yes easy.
By the end you can
- Assemble a sponsorship package covering costs, milestones, and impact
- Build donor incentive tiers that give a company an obvious entry point
- Know which numbers to include and which to leave out
Somebody has read your email and wants to know more. What you send them next is the sponsorship package: a PDF attached to the email and hosted on your website, and the thing they will actually make a decision from.
Why it exists separately from the email
An email has to be short enough to read on a phone in thirty seconds. A funding decision needs far more than that. Splitting them lets each do its job: the email earns thirty seconds of attention, and the package rewards it.
It also solves a practical problem — images rarely survive email well. They get stripped, blocked, or crushed. The package is where your photos belong, and photos are a large part of what makes a team feel real.
What goes in it
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Who you are. Team number, region, how many students, how long you have run, and your nonprofit status. One page.
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What you do, with photos. The robot, the build space, students at outreach events. This is the emotional core of the document and it should be mostly pictures.
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Your impact, in numbers. Students on the team, children reached through classes and demos, events attended, awards. Numbers are what a sponsor quotes internally when justifying the decision.
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Annual operating costs. The shape of your season budget — registration, hardware, events, travel. This is the honesty that makes the ask credible, and it comes straight from your budget work.
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Season milestones. What happens when: kickoff, build period, competitions, championships. It shows the money has a schedule and that you have planned past the current month.
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Donor incentive levels. The tier table. This is the page people actually turn to.
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How to contact you and how to give. Make this trivially easy, a name, an email, and a link that works on a phone.
The tier table
The tiers do the real work of the document. Without them, a sponsor has to invent a number, and "how much would even be appropriate?" is enough friction to end the conversation. With them, you have converted an open question into a menu.
| Tier | Typical benefits |
|---|---|
| Supporter (entry level) | Name on the team website and season newsletter |
| Bronze | Above, plus logo on the pit banner |
| Silver | Above, plus logo on team shirts and the robot |
| Gold | Above, plus social media features and a team visit or demo at your site |
| Title | Above, plus prominent placement everywhere and named recognition in outreach |
Set the actual amounts against your own budget. A few principles:
- Make the entry tier genuinely low. The goal is to remove every reason to say no. A small first sponsorship converts into a larger second one far more often than a cold prospect converts at all.
- Step the tiers clearly. Each level should visibly add something, so moving up is an obvious trade rather than a judgement call.
- Only promise what you will deliver. If you are not confident you will produce a monthly newsletter, do not put it in a tier.
- Include non-cash equivalents. State that product and service contributions are welcome and count at their retail value — otherwise a company that would happily donate goods reads the table as cash-only and stops.
"Logo on the pit banner" is vague enough to disappoint somebody. A small diagram of the banner with tier placement marked removes any ambiguity, takes ten minutes in your brand kit, and looks far more professional than the text alone.
Numbers to include, and numbers to leave out
Include: your total season operating cost, the cost of specific line items a sponsor could fund outright (registration, a mechanism, the banner), students on the team, and people reached through outreach.
Leave out: exact amounts other sponsors have given, and anything you cannot support if questioned. Naming what a competitor paid is a fast way to lose both.
"It costs $X to register our team for the season, and your logo goes on our robot and our shirts" is a far easier yes than "we need $Y for the year." A sponsor funding a thing can picture the outcome and describe it to their own leadership. Break at least three concrete fundable items out of your budget and name them.
Keep it current
A package with last season's roster, an outdated robot photo, and a broken link is worse than none — it demonstrates the exact lack of follow-through a sponsor is screening for. Rebuild it once a year at the start of the season, and keep the editable source in your shared drive so next year's finance lead is not starting from a PDF.
Templates and resources
You do not have to invent the format. FIRST publishes material specifically for this, and it is worth reading before your first draft.
- FIRST Fundraising Toolkit, the official starting point, covering sponsor solicitation, business planning, and grant writing.
- FIRST Fundraising Guide (PDF) — written for FRC, but the sponsorship structure, tier logic, and approach material apply to FTC unchanged.
- FTC Team Management Resources — fundraising and marketing guidance alongside the rest of the team-operations material.
Read three real portfolios and packages before writing yours
Many established teams publish their sponsorship packages publicly, and open alliance teams publish nearly everything. Reading three good ones will teach you more about structure and tone in an hour than any template. Ask a veteran team in your region directly, most will send you theirs.
Check yourself
A local company wants to support you but says they cannot release cash this quarter. Your tier table lists dollar amounts only. What is the fix?
Next
Sponsorship covered. Next: grants, where the money is already set aside, and the matching funds most teams never claim.
Finished this lesson?
Mark it complete to track your progress.