Deciding where to focus your attention on developing sponsorable properties within the campus community is critical to the success of a marketing-driven corporate partners program. Once you identify a sponsorable property, the level of acceptance or resistance within a unit to bringing this type of program on board determines the type of approach to developing that relationship.

Jacobson has encountered internal resistance from some units to leveraging their marketable assets with corporate partners. Even within an individual campus unit that may encompass multiple smaller units with their own distinct organizational cultures, there may be varying levels of acceptance or resistance that must be addressed.

“The easiest to pitch is the Arts,” he said. “These public units provide the metrics that traditional advertisers look for.”

Recently, Jacobson provided assistance in the development of a major corporate sponsorship for the Fowler Museum at UCLA and their current exhibition “Steeped In History, The Art of Tea”. Within six months of joining UCLA in his new position as director of corporate partnerships, Jacobson secured a presenting sponsorship worth $30,000 in cash, $10,000 in in-kind support and additional support through in-store promotions delivered by the sponsor, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

Despite the promise of cash, in-kind, and support for the Museum’s development efforts, some within that unit resisted the exploitation of the exhibition’s marketable assets by a corporate entity. “Some resisted the corporate message,” said Jacobson.

IEG defines strategic philanthropy as the extension of a philanthropic relationship between a commercial entity and a nonprofit to include a sales, marketing and/or promotional relationship. For example, a company might leverage a corporate gift to a nonprofit by promoting the association in its advertising and promotions.

A corporate sponsor may be looking to more directly exploit the marketable assets of the sponsorable property. In some cases, the corporation’s foundation and the marketing team will work together to not only pursue its philanthropic goals but also to gain as much exposure for the brand as possible.

Jacobson cited his experiences at UCLA with ad agencies representing corporations interested in reaching their sales and marketing goals through sponsorship of UCLA properties. “They are tasked with delivering measureable impressions”, he said. “I have put these benefits into place and on the table for them.”

While the opportunities in the Arts are diverse and numerous, choosing where to invest limited time and other resources in helping these units is critical to the overall success of his unit’s operation. “I was warned at the beginning when I started in this position that I would be barraged by small groups with sponsorable assets that could be sponsored at the $500 or $1000 levels. These don’t rise to the $25,000+ level packages upon which we are now concentrating the majority of our efforts.”

He will offer direct assistance or consulting to the smaller groups, however, so that they can internally maximize the return on their investment in corporate sponsorship marketing of their programs and events.

Some properties don’t lend themselves well to the traditional corporate sponsorship model—another consideration when deciding where to focus attention. Conferences hosted by UCLA units seeking sponsorships from their industrial affiliates need specialized packaging of benefits that are largely unique to the needs of those affiliates which can include access to research programs and recruitment of graduating students.

“It’s about making choices based on the fundamentals of relationship building,” Jacobson said. “We must establish trust and be honest with them if it doesn’t fall into a traditional sponsorship model and they need to take another approach. We will suggest how they could move forward in other ways.”

Jacobson brought our conversation back around to the importance of developing cooperation and new internal relationships.

“I looked across campus for potential value to corporate partners,” he said. As a private sector sponsorship marketer would build in sponsor benefits provided by a media sponsor, Jacobson looked to UCLA print publications, The Daily Bruin and the UCLA alumni magazine. “The alumni magazine has a 300,000 readership and I wanted to include these in the offering. I worked with the sales staff of these two publications, looked at the open rate and negotiated a rate 50% below the open card rate.”

This arrangement provides a longer term advertising component to the sponsor’s benefits that wraps around the sponsored event. An example would be an event that takes place in March where the sponsorship includes a four month ad campaign: one to two ads run in January, one in March close to the event, and one in April as a thank you ad.

The university publications benefit from this arrangement. “The alumni magazine has mostly local ads from businesses and alumni—only four to five ads per issue and they should be running 35% of their space at a minimum,” Jacobson said. “It builds credibility and stature in relation to prospective advertisers when you have a Toyota and other nationally recognized brands advertising in your publication.”

The publisher of the magazine has provided his unit with a discounted per page ad rate that he can include in a sponsorship package. Jacobson has negotiated an internal page rate with the magazine that provided his sponsorships with a 50% discount off the open rate.

Some sponsors don’t do print advertising if it doesn’t fit with their business model and in those cases, Jacobson finds other assets that do fit with their model. “Knowing the capacity of each unit’s reach to consumers is important”, he said. “Some units have had their corporate partners programs in place for a long time. Many are well, but there is always room for growth. We bring new thoughts of how to leverage those assets in new ways.”

Jacobson formed a group of important allies on the UCLA campus who understand the value of making their sponsorable assets more marketable and available to corporate sponsors. This group serves as a brain trust and advocacy group. In his article “Innovations in Service May Require Disruption”, thought leader, author and columnist Dale Dauten described a similar group at Cardinal Health as one “to weather the storm of the status quo that will give an Old Testament testing of any good idea.”

Jacobson and his team are winning over the UCLA campus community and bringing in much needed sponsorship revenues with this marketing-centered approach to a campus-wide corporate sponsorship program.

In his recent syndicated column titled, “Innovations in Service May Require Disruption”, Dale talks about the need to build “a culture of innovation” or “a culture of disruption”. He cites the example of Kim Gravell, vice president of innovation for Cardinal Health who calls it, “breaking the china”. Dale stresses that while ideas are essential to innovation, they must also be “pounded, dragged, charmed or sneaked into existence” and recounts how Gravell built a team of people who could talk numbers and processes to get buy-in within her organization.
Corporate sponsorships of programs and events and corporate partners programs in higher education institutions and in municipal governments are slowly getting acceptance.

There are some examples of successful programs, but there is within any organization a hesitance to “break the china” and a tendency to hold on to the status quo. How to implement an innovative idea like corporate sponsorship of non-athletics programs and events across a higher education institution?

I spoke with Eron Jacobson, Director of Corporate Partnerships at the University of California, Los Angeles. I wrote about the work Eron and his team is doing in my article “Corporate Sponsorships in Higher Education Institutions”

He said that UCLA adopted a new tone in regards to corporate relations. “Our vice chancellor told us that we have to be thinking creatively and differently. What has worked the past 100 years does not necessarily work now. What’s worked in the past may not be what is needed now.”

The UCLA administration realized that the Athletics model of a corporate sponsors program could be adapted and applied across much of the institution. UCLA Athletics had enjoyed success in this area for decades and the administration acknowledged that the wealth of this vehicle had not been used for non-athletics campus programs and events. At the time, developing support from corporations outside of Athletics was only being done from a philanthropic perspective and not a marketing perspective.

The administration understood they needed to leverage those marketable assets in different ways: online, putting sponsors’ products and services into the hands of consumers, and delivering to the UCLA community the brand experience of UCLA’s corporate partners. “Corporate America wants to put their stamp on it (the University community) and they are willing to invest in it,” he said.

How did the institution respond to this new initiative? Jacobson said that he has encountered some uncertainty from UCLA units to this program and faced the challenge of getting them to understand the benefits of incorporating a corporate message or brand directly into an academic or administrative program or event.

He cited his greatest success so far as the development of a group of important allies on the UCLA campus who understand the value of making UCLA’s sponsorable assets more marketable and available to corporate sponsors. With this group of allies, Jacobson has been able to do something along the lines of what Dale Dauten talks about in his column and what Kim Gravell of Cardinal Health is accomplishing across her large and diverse organization. With his group of allies, Jacobson is getting this new corporate partners program positioned with UCLA units as something that will bring value to them.

One benefit of this approach is the packaging of larger sponsorable properties that combine assets across multiple units on campus. “We find things with a common thread across units,” he said. “All Things Green—sustainability, is one theme. We can then embed a corporate partner for that”. Jacobson said that by identifying the market value for each unit’s assets that are contributed to the package and gauging the overall value of the sum of its parts, he is able to equitably divide up the sponsor’s cash and in-kind investment among the contributing units.

The UCLA Office of Corporate, Foundation and Research Relations takes only the standard 6% administrative fee that the office charges to process the revenues through their system. All revenues are funneled through the Foundation and the packages are tailored so that all fall under the IRS guidelines for qualified sponsorships and avoid Unrelated Business Income Tax.

In part 2 of this article, I’ll report more on how Eron Jacobson and UCLA are innovatively drawing upon the assets of multiple units to create value in higher education corporate sponsorship packages.

Eron Jacobson, Director of Corporate Partnerships, develops corporate partners programs with academic and administrative units to make their sponsorable assets more marketable and available to corporate sponsors. Depending on the need, he may take a lead or support role to identify opportunities, package them, develop a pipeline of prospects, and when appropriate, pitch those prospects and close sponsorship deals. His focus ranges from UCLA’s professional schools to their Office of Student Programming and Development’s Welcome Week and Bruin Bash.

Recently, Jacobson provided assistance in the development of a major corporate sponsorship for the Fowler Museum at UCLA and their current exhibition “Steeped In History, The Art of Tea”. While the Museum’s development staff had secured foundation funding to support the exhibit, the group had no funds to market the program.

Only six months into his new position with UCLA, Jacobson secured a presenting sponsorship worth $30,000 in cash, $10,000 in in-kind support and additional support through in-store promotions delivered by the sponsor, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Development staff indicated that the sponsorship allowed them to drive incremental traffic to the museum and to reach a whole new profile of guests and prospective donors. It also helped them to raise the level of programming for their donor parties and public programs.

Jacobson’s work was also key in securing sponsorships and implementing promotions for Welcome Week and Bruin Bash which had major event components that included an A-list concert lineup. Among other endeavors, he is currently focused on marketing corporate sponsorships for education programs and medicine.

New to the world of academia, Jacobson was recently quoted in an article in the newsletter of the Network of Academic Corporate Relations Officers. “It’s exciting to see the level of opportunity across this campus,” said Jacobson. “There are a tremendous number of programs that will fit into a traditional sponsorship model here at UCLA. We are able to provide advertisers with a solution that reaches a highly desirable and elusive demographic while associating their brand, product or service with an event that aligns itself with their core marketing strategy.”

University at Buffalo, State University of New York, took their Athletics program as a model to create a campus-wide sponsorship marketing position in their foundation office that is responsible for clearing corporate inquiries and assisting non-Athletics units with developing their corporate partners programs.

Elizabeth Siderakis, Director of Corporate Sponsorship Programs, works closely with UB-SUNY units across campus to help them understand the difference between sales and marketing and philanthropy, bring prospects to the table, package assets, negotiate and close deals, guide campus units through the sponsorship process, and renew sponsorships.

This is a recently new approach–corporate relations “with a marketing twist”. Here the sponsorable assets of a university, found in its academic and administrative programs and events, are leveraged to help corporate sponsors achieve their sales and marketing goals. On the opposite end of the continuum from philanthropy, corporate sponsorship allows corporations to exploit these assets in exchange for cash and in-kind investment. These arrangements give the added benefits to universities of stronger corporate relations, added promotional value and enhanced donor relations opportunities.

At the University of Arizona this year as Marketing Coordinator in the Office of External Relations, I had discussions with the University administration about these developments and presented the results of a research project I conducted on the University’s current landscape of corporate partners programs and corporate sponsorships, and the possibilities for a campus-wide business system. In this era of state budget cutbacks, the UA administration is looking for ways to backfill the funding hole that’s been created, but that in itself is the topic for a future blog.

Learn more about these new developments in university corporate relations in the Breakaway Media white paper, Corporate Relations with a Marketing Twist. What do you think? Does this hold potential to help solve the funding crisis that higher education institutions are facing?