I don’t know about you, but when the month of July hits, we know we are about to head into the thick of our event season! This is the time that I begin to see the folks behind the scenes start to scramble to pull together all the things that they missed, or are catching up on, and oftentimes this includes sponsorship fulfillment. The trick to successful sponsorship fulfillment while not losing your mind is organization! I don’t say this easily because those that work with me know that I seem to have my own personal organization system that doesn’t always make sense to others, which admittedly in the past would cause me to scramble or cause unwanted extra work. After I realized this about myself, I took some very necessary steps to systemize our sponsorship fulfillment process behind the scenes, and I am going to share with you some of the tools that we have used to make our lives easier! The best part? Most of them have free versions!
ASANA
Asana describes itself as “the work management platform teams use to stay focused on the goals, projects, and daily tasks that grow business.” I describe it has a great way to keep track of where sponsors are in the pipeline. It has great features like being able to tag team members, track notes, monitor deadlines for tasks and projects, as well as creating templates so you don’t have to recreate the wheel every time. You can get the basic version for free! https://asana.com
Airtable
Think of Airtable like the way better looking and comprehensive version of Excel. This tool boasts that its “fields can handle any content you throw at them. Add attachments, long text notes, checkboxes, links to records in other tables—even barcodes. Whatever you need to stay organized.” We use it to manage the social media side of our sponsorships. It allows you to create easily understood databases that can list the event, sponsors, the approved copy and links, and even allow you to attach the files. Like Asana you can tag and categorize so that searching is easy. There is even a calendar feature so you can get a snapshot of what needs to happen on what day. They also offer a free version — https://airtable.com/invite/r/DwJgfD0L
SignNow
I don’t know about you, but we spend a lot of time tracking down agreements and getting them signed. So when we broke down and actually decided to use SignNow it made our life a lot easier, and saved us so much more time! There are many tools out there like SignNow, which allow you to upload your agreements so that you can get them electronically signed and filed. However, when doing the research it ended up being the most cost effective product for our needs at only $8 a month. It’s very simple to use, just upload your agreement and place the different sign or info boxes where you want them, and type the email address to where it’s going. You can even list in what order people will receive the file. This tool also will allow you to track where the agreement is at, and lets you send reminders if it’s been sitting with someone too long. Like we mentioned before, this isn’t a free tool but you can check it out with a free trial! https://snseats.signnow.com/purchase/business_plans/pricing?referral_code=dGVyZXNhQGdyZWVuY2FjdHVzY2EuY29t
There are so many awesome tools out there so if you have any to share please let us know about them at [email protected]. The three we have listed above are actual tools that we use. We are not paid to endorse the products, but if you use the link provided we will get credit, and appreciate your support! Hopefully these tools can help you the same way they have helped us!