Art exhibitions aren’t just a way to display an artist’s work and make sales — they’re also an opportunity for your community to engage with contemporary art and artists. But planning a successful exhibition includes scouting for a venue, catering, beverages, and other vendors, which can rack up the event’s bill. Securing sponsorship for your art exhibition will help cover these costs.
We’ve created a one-stop guide to help you narrow down potential sponsors, approach them, pitch your event, and land the sponsorship deals you need.
How to find sponsors for your art exhibition
Sponsorship isn’t just about money. Consider different types of sponsorships that benefit your event and help build relationships with other organizations.
The four main types of event sponsorship are:
- Financial sponsorship — provides capital to purchase what you need for your event
- Media sponsorship — also involves providing capital, specifically for advertising or other media coverage to promote an event
- In-kind sponsorships — provide goods or services in return for those your organization can offer
- Promotional partnerships — a company may provide either cash or goods to have their product promoted during the event
When exploring the most suitable sponsors, look for organizations with a common audience. There’s an advantage to reaching out to potential sponsors you have a relationship with, but try attracting other sponsors whose values align with yours. Consider organizations known to support the arts, or whose products and services attract the type of person you want to see at your exhibition. Create a list of ideal sponsorships and narrow it down based on how good of a fit they are.
Some types of event sponsors include:
- Beverage suppliers to provide drinks, particularly for opening night when you want to draw the biggest crowd
- Art publications interested in covering your event for their journal or website
- Catering companies to provide food and/or serving staff
- Galleries that donate venue space for your exhibition
- Museums tied to the art world — they can provide several sponsorship options, including venue space or promotional partnerships
- Printing shops that provide prints of the exhibition’s original artwork to sell to attendees in exchange for promoting their brand
- Art supply stores that provide materials you need for staging the exhibition or capital in exchange for promotion. It’s likely many attendees are other artists or aspiring artists — a demographic art supply stores want to reach!
- Large corporations looking for opportunities to support the arts and demonstrate their capacity for philanthropy
- Other local businesses can provide space, goods, or financial sponsorship. Why not partner with local businesses to make the exhibition a community event?
How to approach potential sponsors
Once you have a list of suitable sponsors for your art event, you may think it’s time to reach out. But before you hit send, take these steps toward success.
1. Do your research
Making a good first impression is crucial, so come to sponsors informed and prepared. Some quick research can reveal if the companies have sponsored art exhibitions or similar events in the past. This information also helps determine the most appealing sponsorship package for the company. For instance, if there are a lot of past examples of a company providing financial sponsorship rather than in-kind sponsorship, you’ll want to approach them with financial opportunities.
If you don’t reach the correct person immediately, your message might take a long time in email limbo. Use LinkedIn to find the sponsorship point person at each organization and reach out to them directly.
2. Create your pitch deck
Before connecting with potential sponsors, put together a pitch deck to promote your event. This deck should be a cleanly presented sales brochure for the art exhibition. It can be a hard copy brochure or digital, but should be well-designed and contain clear, informative copy.
Details to cover in the deck include:
- When and where your exhibition will take place, together with info about your artist(s)
- Data demonstrating why a potential sponsor should want to work with you, such as demographic information and sales numbers
- High-quality media — think images or video clips from previous exhibitions or the artists’ work to give sponsors an idea of what to expect
- Sponsorship package options, which we’ll cover below
- What’s in it for them — access to potential customers? Data? Promotion?
- Dates and timelines, including hard dates by which you’ll need sponsorship deals finalized or when you’ll need to receive goods, finances, or promotional images/copy
3. Define your sponsorship proposal
Your specific art exhibition sponsorship proposal should outline what you expect from this potential sponsor and what you intend to provide in return. These details will differ depending on the type of sponsorship package — you’ll want to offer a variety of these and different price points.
Consider different tiers or levels of sponsorship with increasing commitments on the part of both you and the sponsor. Some sponsors might not be able to provide a lot of capital or goods, but establishing a relationship with them could be mutually beneficial. Lower sponsorship levels can have benefits such as their company logo printed in your exhibition brochure and other promotional materials.
4. Meet with your potential sponsor
When you reach out to your contact at a potential sponsorship organization, offer to set up a face-to-face meeting to discuss details. This allows you to sell your event, and you’ll want to have everything in place to “wow” them. Present your pitch deck at the meeting, customized to suit the potential sponsor’s needs. Leave a copy of your brochure or deck behind for them to review. Take note of any questions they might have, and be sure to send more information over in a timely fashion.
5. Expect to follow up
You’re busy putting your event together, but your potential sponsors have a lot going on too. Expect to have to follow up with your sponsorship contact to find out what their decision is. Consider asking them when they would prefer to hear from you after your initial meeting, or let them know they can expect to hear from you in a specific time frame. Remember: just because you don’t hear from a potential sponsor immediately doesn’t mean they’re not interested.
Opening night
The opening night of your art exhibitions is when you can expect to get the most people through the doors and sell the most artwork. Invite your sponsors to attend the premiere night, and encourage them to invite their customers and contacts by providing complimentary tickets.
Consider promoting all your sponsors, no matter what level of support they’re providing, on your website and event signage (if that isn’t part of a specific sponsorship tier). Be sure to highlight and thank any sponsors supplying items for the event, such as food, beverages, or auction items.
Throughout the exhibition
Regularly communicate with your sponsors during the exhibition, so they feel included. This will solidify your new relationship. Consider providing images or video clips of the event or impressive data like attendee or sales numbers from the opening night. This content will show sponsors that investing in your event was the right choice.
If any speeches or announcements are made at the exhibition, ensure you thank your major sponsors. You never know who might be attending from those organizations.
After the exhibition
Once the event is over, there’s still work to do. Create a sleek report that includes attendee data and sales numbers to share with sponsors. Follow up with attendees and send them a post-exhibition survey to learn more about them and how they felt about your event. This is further information that you can share with sponsors to demonstrate value.
Attendee contact information is easily accessible via Eventbrite tools. Be sure to follow any privacy guidelines that apply to your location when using and sharing data.
Find your sponsors
Now you’ve got all the event sponsorship knowledge you need, it’s time to start identifying and securing sponsors for your next art exhibition. Create a free event page with Eventbrite today to start selling tickets.
