Sponsors, kit and the club's own site

The local builder has sponsored the under-11s shirts for three seasons. Every year the invoice goes out late, somebody chases it, and it gets paid. Then in the spring the builder asks, quite reasonably, what they actually got for their money. The honest answer is a logo on some shirts and a thank-you on a Facebook post from August.

Most grassroots sponsors are local people doing the club a favour. They aren't expecting a marketing report. What they would like is to see their name somewhere people look, and to be asked back properly next year.

Where sponsorship goes quiet

Sponsorship usually rests on one person's contacts. That person knows who sponsors what, what was agreed and when it runs out. Nobody else does, and it is written down in an email thread at best.

Then there is where the sponsor appears. Shirts are seen on a Sunday morning. Pitch boards are seen by whoever is on the touchline. The club's website, which is where parents actually go to check fixtures, often has no sponsors on it at all, or a page of logos nobody has touched since it was built.

What a sane setup looks like

• A short list of packages, written down: pitch, shirt, kit, player. Each one with a price, what the sponsor gets and how long it runs.
• Every sponsor on one list the club owns, with the renewal date next to their name, so the next person can pick it up.
• The sponsor's name on the club's own site, next to the team or the thing they paid for, where supporters are already looking.
• No other adverts sitting beside them. A local sponsor should not have to share the page with somebody else's banner.

Three things to do this week

• List every sponsor the club has now, what they pay, what they get and when it ends. If that takes more than an evening, that is the problem worth solving.
• Pick two or three packages and put a price on each. Sponsors find it easier to say yes to something clear than to a vague ask.
• Send every current sponsor a short thank-you with a photo of what they paid for. It costs nothing and makes next year's conversation easy.