Hi everyone!
I’m excited to launch Sponsor My Community.
Building a strong community is hard. Building a community business can be even harder. As a co-founder of a community business (Propel), I’ve had to lean on the wisdom of more experienced community builders as well as figuring out a lot of things myself.
In conversations with dozens of other online and offline community builders, I heard that turning a community into a community business can be devilishly difficult. But making that first dollar empowers you to defray your costs, think longer term, and build a more sustainable community.
Meanwhile, companies are looking to get involved in communities to learn from and reach their target customers.
That’s why I built Sponsor My Community, a marketplace for community sponsorships (obvious names are my specialty).
If you’re a community leader looking for a (values-aligned) sponsor, submit your information and we’ll find you a great sponsor match. We already have a bunch of companies that are eager to sponsor your community and we’re accepting more on our website now!
Oh, and it’s free for (at least) the first month. Looking forward to hearing your feedback!
Brands are quickly catching on that online/offline communities are a great way to contribute meaningful tools, resources and dollars to an audience that precisely matches their products/services and more importantly - their values. As a community builder, I know just how difficult it is to keep members happy and engaged, maintain solid programming, and be mindful of growth. Identifying, contacting, and negotiating with potential sponsors can be a very heavy lift for a small team.
Very excited to see this marketplace come to life, a much needed resource in this evolving space!
@scottamenta This is spot on. We're seeing a lot of interest from brands these days - and they want to work with us to keep the sponsorship engaging and non-spammy which is AWESOME.
Love the simplicity. This is so needed. I feel like the toughest thing about this is that for this type of sponsorship, the sponsor's values really need to be aligned with the community's (i.e. I run a community for Founders, and random dev shops always want to sponsor -- but we'll never do that). So what's the thought process on matching sponsor matches that actually make sense?
Also, I feel like community leaders have no clue whatsoever what a fair price for sponsorship is. Would you be open to transparently sharing some going rates you've been seeing?
@aaron_cohn Thanks, Aaron! We vet the companies and the communities and figure out the best matches on the back end. Both parties are free to decline any proposed matches.
Re: pricing, it really varies case-by-case - we hop that we can establish some baselines here. We have a few packages but will work with communities to help them figure out what's fair as we discover market rates!
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