About 10 years ago, I took up ceramics. The first class I took at one of the country's premier institutions, Philadelphia's The Clay Studio, host to the upcoming NCECA conference, was a hand-building course. I learned all sorts of techniques for creating pots, and the one I loved the most was using slabs of clay. Eventually, I began making tiles.

To make a slab, you flatten a chunk of clay to a desired thickness, using either a slab roller or a rolling pin, the same type more commonly used in kitchens to make dough. Because I'd done some woodworking earlier in my life, I gravitated to slabs because it's possible to create similar kinds of pieces using both media. However, the trickiest thing for me about slabs was reminding myself that this smooth, evenly thick material wasn't wood. ...

PNC, Subaru & others activate at the Philadelphia Flower Show

After a couple blizzards, trudging around in snow, pretty at first, gets tiresome. The recent Philadelphia International Flower Show reminded me that spring indeed will arrive.

Another reason I attended the show was to check out the sponsorship activation. The Flower Show is one of the best sponsorship developers in Philadelphia, and I always appreciate the obvious guidance and hard work of their staff.

PNC gets a round of applause from me for their dedication to Philadelphia's arts & cultural scene. The financial institution whole-heartedly supports important arts organizations and invests philanthropic dollars to nurture the passions of future arts and culture lovers. At the Flower Show, they benefitted from a strong association through their presenting status and did a good...

FedEx gets 'mileage' out of Tai Shan

The Washington Post reports that hours after he landed, Tai Shan, the panda who grew up at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and returned to China on Friday, had acquired a corporate sponsor: Sichuan Auto Industry Group.

Remarkably the reporter states: "It's unclear what Sichuan Auto gets out of it."

Are you kidding me? How about world domination!

Who doesn't love a Panda? And for a country with a growing business sector but no internationally-known brands, association with a globally-recognized and beloved animal that is associated with China and a symbol of 40 years of U.S.-China relations is a pretty smart investment.

Having recently traveled to China I can tell you that China takes its national symbols very seriously – like most cultures do. For a national brand to ...

Consistently one of the most-asked questions from consulting and coaching clients is about the nature and content of corporate sponsorship letters and solicitations. The tendency or urge that you may have is to send copious detail to a stranger to substantiate why your sponsorship opportunity is worthy and to be efficient by providing so much detail so as to be thorough.

These seem like great reasons; however, if you consider that the person at the other end of the spectrum may only have a nanosecond to skim your information, maybe your approach needs reconsidering.

Yesterday, I received a sponsorship solicitation that I'm sharing with you (with the sender's permission) to illustrate an alternative.

For the record and as I've told the sender and written about before, generic, ...

As we wrap up the first decade of the new millennium and one of the most challenging years for sellers and buyers of corporate sponsorship, I urge you to spend some time reflecting and really putting 2009 behind with greater awareness of how you'd like to move forward.

Selling sponsorship – selling anything – during easier economic times is, well, easier. When times are tough, all our shortcomings show up in technicolor. So what did you see about your operation in '09? Where do you need new skills? A stronger operation? More ideas? More support? Jot your notes now so you can focus on them throughout the new year.

Here are 10 suggestions and areas to consider:

Be able to articulate your event/festival or nonprofit organization’s value to the corporate sector.
Develop an operati...

A recurring attitude I sometimes hear among nonprofit leaders is contempt towards the corporate sector. Actually it's contempt mixed with self-righteousness.

Some individuals are of the belief that corporations are the ruin of society – greedy, destroying the environment, exploitative of workers, profit-mongering, etc. Yet, many of these same individuals are curious about corporate sponsorship and wonder if they can accept corporate dollars with some sort of broad disclaimer about the corporation's actions and behavior.

Surely there are some corporate leaders – just like some nonprofit leaders – whose ethics are dubious. But it's probably better to assume that corporate leaders are motivated, inspired, stirred, and moved by many of the same human drives that nonprofit leaders are....

Late last week, on my way to a 9 a.m. meeting, I encountered two rogue sponsorship programs, one by Clear and one by Chase.

Clear, a brand I'd never heard of but which evidently really likes green, had taken over a park, locally known as Love Park, that Philadelphians both love and hate. We love it because it's pretty, has a great fountain, but we're wary because of its past – the City cracked down on the homeless people who called the park home and on the skateboarders who found infinite challenge here. Consequently the park has a more steady stream of visitors, but there are way better, more popular parks.

Nearby, Chase Bank representatives on segues and foot were chasing down morning commuters, handing out Zagat restaurant information.

The sudden barrage of information (an...

When you enter Nancy Gilboy's office at the International Visitors Council of Philadelphia, a big poster reminds you of something that's easy to forget in our increasingly electronic universe: "Face-to-face is better than fax-to-fax." This operational value is an important element of IVC's work: to "welcome a stranger, send home a friend." Building trust is implicit in IVC's mission.

When you think about ways to build trust for your brand, three best practices, among others, come to mind:

1. Being reliable. Consumers want to know what to expect, to be able to count on your brand to deliver in a consistent way. If that means that you constantly innovate (think Apple) or constantly introduce new products, services or programs (think Trader Joe's), that's OK, as long as consumers kno...

Several readers of my quarterly e-newsletter, called BowerPower Papers, submitted questions that they were wondering about during this challenging economic year, as I wrote my guidebook, How to Jump-start Your Sponsorship Strategy in Tough Times. The book answers these questions – and more – and I'm sharing the answers here (sometimes with more detail) in case they clear up something you're wondering about, too.
Q: On sponsor recruitment, are there specific tips for finding and getting involved in the right industry groups or finding other networking opportunities? From Pam Weisz, Director of Corporate Sponsorship, Pro Bono Net, Inc.

A: First, you have to be clear which industries you’re targeting and how those industries work. Always research thoroughly.

Then, you want to be wh...

For some mysterious reason, my company regularly receives solicitations from corporate sponsorship seekers from all over the country. The other day, for example, I received an unsolicited email from producers of a Thanksgiving parade letting me know that they've put their sponsorship packages "on sale," as if they were Walmart or Target. Thinking through the implications, it boggles the mind to imagine how many email and other solicitations corporations that actually deploy sponsorship must receive.

I've written before about why this sort of unsolicited, generic approach is a waste of time. Solicitations of nearly any sort by email, unless you have express permission to email the person, are counterproductive because they are so easily confused with (or lumped into the same categorie...