Stewarding Sponsors: The Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management
SHRM-Atlanta, the Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, was founded in 1965 and currently enjoys a membership of over 2500+ members representing over 1300 companies’ human resource professionals. While affiliated with SHRM National, the Chapter operates independently to provide a wide variety of professional development and networking opportunities for Atlanta area HR professionals. The Chapter's diverse membership represents more than 1,300 large and small organizations in the metro area, ranges in experience from entry to senior level, and varies in practice from specialist to generalist roles.
Challenge:
ACI’s parent company, Meeting Expectations has provided professional managed the Atlanta Chapter, the fourth largest SHRM chapter in the nation, since 2002, including overseeing the association’s day-to-day operations and strategic planning efforts in conjunction with the chapter’s board. Last year, the SHRM-Atlanta board turned to ACI’s consultants for solutions to increase sponsorships—but at the same time, relieve their volunteers of the burden of sponsor marketing.
Solution:
Our consultants evaluated the existing sponsorship marketing and stewardship process and suggested hiring a full-time staff person to exclusively handle SHRM-Atlanta sponsorships who:
- Works to secure all corporate sponsors both annually and per event
- Develops and implements a full marketing sponsor package, the Partner Resource Program, to address the annual sponsor package and all events (over 100 per year)
- Conducts face-to-face communication with potential top sponsors (VP level and above)
- Implemented and maintains a new kind of sponsorship opportunity for major fall conference that offers track sponsorship to eight concurrent programming tracks.
- Maintains and updates prospect lists
Results:
Since the implementation of the sponsorship manager in early 2008, SHRM-Atlanta now enjoys an increased number of sponsorship opportunities and revenue.
- Advertisement Income: 33% increase
- Exhibitor Income: 10% increase
- In-kind Donation Income: 128% increase
Intangible benefits from implementing this new role include better account and relationship management, consistency for sponsors past, present and future and an alleviated burden on SHRM-Atlanta volunteers who can now focus on developing new initiatives and helping the chapter grow.