Advertising your club/society and gaining sponsorship is a really important way to help your club/society grow and develop. Building up your finances can help fund new kit or equipment, pay for coaching courses, and ensure that your activity remains sustainable over the next few years. This part of the handbook is aimed at helping you do this.
Before you start advertising your club/society you need to make sure you have a clear idea of how you want it to look. Brainstorming is a great idea to help with this, it will allow you to paint a visual picture and write down your thoughts and ideas that you and the rest of the committee can discuss. Keep it simple, not too much text and make sure it’s visually relevant.
It’s a really good idea to investigate other Students Unions websites, maybe get in contact with similar clubs/societies and pick their brains in terms of what worked for them etc to give you a better idea of what you need to aim for.
It’s really important to make your advertising eye catching and want to make students join your club/society but remember to not make it too overpowering with too much text and visuals, you want students to be intrigued and not put off by boring lengthy text.
Make sure you have taken into account the costings (If any) before making decisions on how you’re going to advertise your club/society and events you’re going to run or promotional material you’re going to create.
Make sure you consider the environment at all stages of your planning/ development/ production and advertising. Waste reduction and reducing our carbon footprint is extremely important to us and our green impact campaign. Try to make sure all club/society clothing is Fairtrade if possible. It’s important you keep this in mind when starting new projects.
You may wish to try and find a commercial sponsor to invest in your activity – this can really help to grow your activity but you have to be really careful in what you promise to deliver as a result. Get as much detail in any agreement in advance so that it will be clear later whether both yourselves and the sponsor have delivered on your promises. Staff in the Students’ Union will be on hand to help with developing agreements, and no agreement should be signed until it has been approved by the Students’ Union’s Business and Finance Manager.