Do you remember selling candy bars, setting up lemonade stands and hosting bake sales to fund your little league team? Or perhaps it was your pee-wee soccer, basketball, or football team. The point is, crowdfunding isn’t a new concept. But it is a concept that’s more accessible and has grown exponentially in recent years thanks to the internet and companies like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo that make it easy and accessible.
Well, now there’s a crowdfunding site that wants to bring together athletes, teams, fans, and sponsors.
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Sponsorise.me, founded in 2013, is currently the leading sports dedicated crowdfunding site in Europe and they are working to grow their presence on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
So many athletes – whether amateur or professional – are underfunded and with Sponsorise.me they have a platform where they can raise the money they need to be competitive. With the platform athletes and teams around the world can raise funds from their fans, friends, family, and community for training, equipment, and competition fees, among other projects. Athletes work with a campaign manager from Sponsorise.me to define their story and develop a social media strategy. Each campaign features photos and videos from the athletes in addition to customized rewards for various levels of contribution.
The average campaigns are 30-45 days, with the first five days being critical. Clay Smith, Managing Director – Americas, told me teams that raise 15-25% of their goal in the first five days, have an 80% success rate. It is an all-or-nothing model in that if the campaign doesn’t reach its goal, the athlete doesn’t get any funding. Overall, Sponsorise.me campaigns are tracking at a 70% success rate across the world and they hope the worldwide success will continue with the recently launched US site.
As you look through the various projects, you’re bound to find a few that you’ll want to root for, and perhaps contribute to. I was drawn to a project in which Street Soccer USA is teaming up with the New York Cosmos to repair a dilapidated field to make it a quality soccer pitch that will serve the community and underprivileged children in the area. There are also many compelling stories of Olympic hopefuls needing funding to train for Olympic qualifying events.
One US-based campaign that has already reached its goal is Team Bolger/Shevitz, two young women who are raising funds to travel to the 2016 470 Sailing World Championships in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The World Championships is their first Olympic qualifying event. Sponsorise.me isn’t just for current athletes. Former athletes have turned to the site for projects like autobiographies, films, and youth academies.
Leveraging the 2016 Olympic Games, Sponsorise.me launched a unique partnership with PowerAde to support selected teams as they work to make their way to Rio. The selected teams are featured on a PowerAde-branded section of Sponsorise.me and receive support from PowerAde including matching funds, social media publicity, and PowerAde products. PowerAde also initiated a social media competition in which athletes have the potential to earn $250.00 if their project has the most social media shares and contributions to their campaign in a given week.
The PowerAde ‘Fueling Olympians in Rio 2016’ campaign is in six markets: Brazil, Mexico, Great Britain, France, Spain and South Africa. While it’s not a US-focused campaign, Smith says it’s a great example of what’s to come for the US market. Brands benefit with new avenues of engagement as well as generating content from the athletes’ stories. This new sponsorship model is a great complement to the traditional sponsorship and allows brands to reach fans on a grassroots level. It also allows athletes to get a boost in their project with the additional support from the brands.
As anyone who’s ever done any fundraising knows, it’s easier to raise $10 a thousand times than it is to raise $10,000 one time. Sponsorise.me lets athletes benefit from this fundraising strategy so they can be competitive at the elite levels. Check out the athletes’ stories, and who knows – if you decide to contribute to a campaign, you may be sponsoring an Olympic Gold Medalist.