JOGLE sponsors.........

prb007

Planning JOGLE for next May.....
http://joglemay2011.blogspot.com/
doing it for charity..
http://www.justgiving.com/Peter-Bowen-JOGLE

and was hoping to get some sponsors on board,
clothing companies, snack foods, energy drinks etc.,
e-mailed quite a few companies with the idea, most either
haven't bothered responding or have said no, usually politely.

Anyone had any experience/success in getting sponsors
for this kind of event; any tips or contacts gratefully received.

cycladelic

Most sponsors will want to know what you can offer them, mainly publicity. Are you writing something for a popular publication? Will you get featured in any newspapers? If not, you won't find many offers.

amaferanga

Its not exactly a round-the-world expedition - why would you need sponsors? :?

I can't see what's in it for any company and if you can't afford to buy your own clothes and food then you maybe shouldn't be doing it.

vernonlevy

Getting sponsorship for any charity fundraising event is not a given.

A LEJOG ride is quite common and needs to have a unique selling point to attract the attention and money of sponsors.

It's too easy to forget that commercial sponsors expect some sort of return in terms of publicity/increased sales. What relevant publicity can you offer potential sponsors.

Try a role reversal and imagine how you would respond to requests for free goods and services from total strangers. Money is tight all round and companies are fighting to stay solvent and have little to spare.

prb007

amaferanga wrote:

Its not exactly a round-the-world expedition - why would you need sponsors? :?

if you can't afford to buy your own clothes and food then you maybe shouldn't be doing it.

Are you normally this offensive, or did you make a special effort for me? :evil:
I did think to treat the remark with the contempt it deserves & ignore it, but I couldn't!

If you'd bothered following the links, you'd see that I'm hoping to get around 10 or so people to raise in excess of £10,000 between us for Ty-Hafan children's hospices, by a combination of fundraising efforts, one of which is to seek corporate sponsors, several of which I have on board already.
I was looking at clothing companies to kit us out with 'team' kit or jerseys and some snack/energy type companies for sustenance en route (kudos to 'Eat Natural' for their generous contribution).
I was seeking advice, not glib critique, go and annoy someone else.

2600milespoppyappeal

i recently did a 2600 mile cycle round europe for charity, im a student so dont have much money so i needed to get sponsors for atleast a bike, i tried everyone but got nothing. i then started going on radio programmes being interviewed and in papers, i then got a call from a local bike shop saying that they would lend me a bike and trade prices on equipment in return for me wearing their name on my jersey and on the bike along with giving them mentions in articles and interviews.
these peopl are runing buisnesses and they wont give you anythign for free, even if it is for charity. but keep trying, write to as many people as you can, better yet, go into stores etc and ask to see managers etc to pitch your idea, the worst they can say is no.
good luck!
Phil

prb007

Thanks for that Phil - I'll keep plugging away, plenty of time, yet!

Monkeypump

prb007 wrote:

amaferanga wrote:

Its not exactly a round-the-world expedition - why would you need sponsors? :?

if you can't afford to buy your own clothes and food then you maybe shouldn't be doing it.

Are you normally this offensive, or did you make a special effort for me? :evil:
I did think to treat the remark with the contempt it deserves & ignore it, but I couldn't!

If you'd bothered following the links, you'd see that I'm hoping to get around 10 or so people to raise in excess of £10,000 between us for Ty-Hafan children's hospices, by a combination of fundraising efforts, one of which is to seek corporate sponsors, several of which I have on board already.
I was looking at clothing companies to kit us out with 'team' kit or jerseys and some snack/energy type companies for sustenance en route (kudos to 'Eat Natural' for their generous contribution).
I was seeking advice, not glib critique, go and annoy someone else.

But he has a point.

What's your USP?

prb007

Does anyone have a USP for JOGLE or LEJOG?

and he didn't have a point, he was just being glib.
Constructive criticism I can take, glibness, I can't.

Monkeypump

Not everyone has a USP, but not everyone is asking for sponsors.

Why should anyone sponsor you if they can see little or no return on their investment?

Good on Eat Natural for giving you something, but I'd see that as a good-will donation and possibly the minority response rather than the norm.

MrChuck

prb007 wrote:

Does anyone have a USP for JOGLE or LEJOG?

and he didn't have a point, he was just being glib.
Constructive criticism I can take, glibness, I can't.

He does have a point though. With the best will in the world, all sorts of people do JOGLE all the time without sponsorhip. On a personal level it's a noteworthy thing to do, in the great scheme of things it isn't really out of the ordinary or newsworthy and lots of people do it as a holiday. I don't mean this nastily but ask yourself objectively just why should a kit or nutrition company sponsor you?

ralex

Lejog/Jogle cycle rides are ten a penny, they are of little significance to anyone other than those that are doing it and their immediate friends/family. You don't need sponsors and there's no reason why anyone would sponsor you in the way you are wanting them to. Sure, people may give money to your cause if you ask them, but I wouldn't expect or ask for the stuff you are looking for, buy them yourselves.

2600milespoppyappeal

just another thought, i didnt have a USP either, but try and work the ''local boy'' thing. go to local papers, radio stations etc. also try smaller local shops or shops that are only in your area or were first set up where you live, they wil be more inclined to help you then a national company, thats where i got my luck, halfords who could have given me a bike without losing any money at all didnt bother but a small local bike shop did, and they got alot of advertising for it

amaferanga

prb007 wrote:

amaferanga wrote:

Its not exactly a round-the-world expedition - why would you need sponsors? :?

if you can't afford to buy your own clothes and food then you maybe shouldn't be doing it.

Are you normally this offensive, or did you make a special effort for me? :evil:
I did think to treat the remark with the contempt it deserves & ignore it, but I couldn't!

If you'd bothered following the links, you'd see that I'm hoping to get around 10 or so people to raise in excess of £10,000 between us for Ty-Hafan children's hospices, by a combination of fundraising efforts, one of which is to seek corporate sponsors, several of which I have on board already.
I was looking at clothing companies to kit us out with 'team' kit or jerseys and some snack/energy type companies for sustenance en route (kudos to 'Eat Natural' for their generous contribution).
I was seeking advice, not glib critique, go and annoy someone else.

Don't worry, I'm always this offensive. Nothing personal

I think I do have a point actually. Cycling from JoG to LE is not a big deal. It does not require special equipment. It does not require special food. So why would you need sponsorship? The only reason I can see is so you save some money on the things you'd need to buy for yourself. So you're asking other people to give money to the charity while you yourself are trying your best to do the ride as a freebie!

On a slight aside, this country has gone mad with charity events. It seems these days that anything that is remotely challenging has to be done for charity. And if you do it for yourself you're almost made to feel guilty for not doing it for charity. I got very bored during my LEJOG with bemused looks when I told people I wasn't actually doing it for charity.

Hoopdriver

I totally agree with Amaferanga. This country is charity-mad. I do a lot of expedition touring - Asia, Africa, Australia - and yes, LEJOG - and always on my own, buying my own kit, food, everything, no exceptions. I happen to like it that way. But one thing that really annoyed me whilst doing LEJOG (and later CTC) was the number of people who assumed that I was riding for charity and then gave me quizzical looks when I said I was out there simply because I liked riding my bike, not for any worthy cause.

It doesn't cost much to do LEJOG, truly. Stump up the cash yourself and then, if you really want to, ask people to donate to your charity. It's nicer that way.

ralex

Why do you plan to take a support vehicle? That just makes it even less of a 'challenge', and if you're taking turns driving it then you won't actually be cycling the whole way, which is the whole point surely?

prb007

ok, where to start......
1.It IS a big deal for me - I'm the wrong side of 45 and the wrong side of 100kgs, so it will be a challenge.
2. I'm coercing 8 or 9 friends and colleagues into it and I like to think that when we're up against it, doing it for charity may be the extra impetus we need.
3. If I suggested JOGLE to said mates and colleagues, they'd wonder why we weren't doing it for charity.
4. None of us are experienced at this sort of thing, so having a van (especially when offered one for free by Corus UK) is a bit of a security blanket for us.
5. Freebies they may be, but several more companies (Mule Bar, Power Bar, Brecon Carreg water and our LBS) seem to disagree and are all willing to help out, as well as our pre-1st day digs (cheers all at the Bridge Hotel, Helmsdale for the half-price B&B)
6. We hope to raise over 10k between us, but at the same time none of us want to blow £5/600 to complete it(most of us are family men with kids - hence the choice of charity)

Leapfrog

Definitely keep going and keep raising money. That is ultimately the most important thing.

I do however agree with the postings that suggest that material, kit and lodgings should be your own expense. From your thread it could be perceived that the saving you make on not buying kit or pay for accommodation would be yours to keep. Perhaps you could clarify that to sponsors as I suspect it will help overcome facing similar adverse feelings you have encountered here. (I trust you intended to top up the fund with the saving as that is a must!! i.e. an indirect way of fundraising)

Also, if you already have a van, think about camping. It may sound daunting, but pictures of the group sitting around a campfire will be far more memorable than those taken in a local restaurant. Your local scout association may be able to lend you some sturdy tents.

amaferanga

Leapfrog wrote:

From your thread it could be perceived that the saving you make on not buying kit or pay for accommodation would be yours to keep.

Based on this comment:

prb007 wrote:

6. We hope to raise over 10k between us, but at the same time none of us want to blow £5/600 to complete it(most of us are family men with kids - hence the choice of charity)

....it sounds to me like the plan is to get all the freebies to avoid forking out any of his own cash.

The very worst kind of charity fund-raising IMO. You want to ride JOGLE and you see doing it for charity as a way to do it for free. Do the right thing - add up the costs that you're saving from the donations and donate that amount to charity out of your own pocket instead of blagging a cheap holiday.

Hoopdriver

Absolutely.

lastant

amaferanga wrote:

It seems these days that anything that is remotely challenging has to be done for charity. And if you do it for yourself you're almost made to feel guilty for not doing it for charity.

Hoopdrive wrote:

It doesn't cost much to do LEJOG, truly. Stump up the cash yourself and then, if you really want to, ask people to donate to your charity. It's nicer that way.

This. And this!

I planned my LEJOG as a 'self-indulgent' thing to do. In the end, after almost getting fed up of people asking 'who are you doing it for?' I decided to set up a JustGiving page and ended up raising around £1,000 for the Stroke Association (which I think was probably the amount I spent all in, including four mechanicals!).

Looking back, I'm glad I raised the money now but it certainly wasn't the main purpose for my trip. I got no sponsorship apart from the charity donations, and did it all solo...the support would probably have been nice, but it's a lovely warm feeling knowing I did it all by myself!

As a serious suggestion though, your best bet is going through the places you work / contacts you have through work. There was a lady blogging her exploits around the time I went, can't remember the address now but I know she got bits from The Fabulous Baking Boys (flapjacks etc.) and Udderly Smooth (chamois cream) so probably worth contacting their PR Departments and explaining your plans...

EDIT - Also just seen that you're planning on taking it in turns in the support vehicle. Personally I think it would look better if you didn't do that and simply had a 'named driver' and saved rest days for if people really can't handle the day's cycling...

MrChuck

amaferanga wrote:

Leapfrog wrote:

From your thread it could be perceived that the saving you make on not buying kit or pay for accommodation would be yours to keep.

Based on this comment:

prb007 wrote:

6. We hope to raise over 10k between us, but at the same time none of us want to blow £5/600 to complete it(most of us are family men with kids - hence the choice of charity)

....it sounds to me like the plan is to get all the freebies to avoid forking out any of his own cash.

The very worst kind of charity fund-raising IMO. You want to ride JOGLE and you see doing it for charity as a way to do it for free. Do the right thing - add up the costs that you're saving from the donations and donate that amount to charity out of your own pocket instead of blagging a cheap holiday.

This is too harsh I think. I don't get the impression that the OP's charity angle is just about a cheap holiday, and I hope he has some luck with sponsorship.

MrChuck

amaferanga wrote:

It seems these days that anything that is remotely challenging has to be done for charity. And if you do it for yourself you're almost made to feel guilty for not doing it for charity.

I do agree with this though, and it's a bit sad that people have come to see things like this as some sort of ordeal that only a madman would do for the hell of it.

summittoppler

amaferanga wrote:

It seems these days that anything that is remotely challenging has to be done for charity.

Because it works mate, people donate money to that given charity for people to challengle themselves!

Since my 4 year was diagnosed with cancer, charity's have been great to my family. That is also the reason why I cycled the length of Wales for a charity that has supported us during the last few months.

Just because something may be a 'walk in the park' for you, does not mean its a piece of p for someone else.

If he wants sponsoring who are you to whinge about it?


prb007 - All the best

1footedninja

summittoppler - anyone has a right to 'whinge' about anything - who are you to write a reply saying about someones right to not or to reply in response to what someone says here on this forum - are you an administrator? are you some kind of omnipotent entity ?

My stance is this:

great go for it! - doing for charity - brilliant - as long as that money goes 'directly' to helping out those who the charity is for and doesnt dissapear into 'administration' costs etc, like a lot of money does for the bigger well known charities.

Amerferanga has a VALID point, its correct, JOGLE / LEJOG - cycletouring in general thru the fact that people always 'seem' to be doing it all for charity, gets looked upon 'en masse' as something only as people are doing it for charity, when of course it isn't. I can share in that feeling of being asked for the 1000th time 'oh what charity you doing it for' when you talk about your cycle journies etc.

I raised 30 pounds for a local charity by cycling JOGLE - thats 30 pounds that charity might not have got if I hadn't cycle JOGLE and I'm glad I raised it. However people do their way of raising some money is up to them and also if they just cycle cos they like to , hey they can do that also.

and please don't have a go at me either summitoppler, I completely agree with your viewpoint and can see why you 'share' a similar viewpoint to myself, except I also believe everyone has a right to speak and voice their opinion without feeling they do not have a right to say it.

And sometimes if you look more closely at those arguements you think you do not agree with you might find actually that they make perfect sense also(not always like, but occasionally sometimes )

Buckled_Rims

Sorry but I'm with the sceptics with a large number of charity events. There seems to be no originality or commitment. I once suggested to someone they use a fixed speed bike for their JOGLE and was laughed at. The USP was they pedaled every single step of the way. No, they wanted a fairly high grade bike (can't remember what they got) as it was over 1000 miles!

I also suggested using a local bike charity to supply a bike (good for their publicity) and cycle the JOGLE on that. Ignored again because they wanted a "good" bike.

Let's be honest, most on here could do the JOGLE with a £70 Halfords biked shaped object and a moped as support. Instead, most seem to want 5 or 6 support staff and a bus following.

If it was me, the cost of the whole route I'd do for less then £250 including bike, food, and wild camping.

prb007

summittoppler wrote:

amaferanga wrote:

It seems these days that anything that is remotely challenging has to be done for charity.

Because it works mate, people donate money to that given charity for people to challengle themselves!

Since my 4 year was diagnosed with cancer, charity's have been great to my family. That is also the reason why I cycled the length of Wales for a charity that has supported us during the last few months.

Just because something may be a 'walk in the park' for you, does not mean its a piece of p for someone else.

If he wants sponsoring who are you to whinge about it?

Summittoppler....thanks for the support.
Curious - 700+ visits by forum members
and not one penny of sponsorship money.
Plenty of opinions, they are cheap enough.
No donations, because thay are not.

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." - Aesop



prb007 - All the best

prb007

Summittoppler....thanks for the support.
Curious - 700+ visits by forum members
and not one penny of sponsorship money.
Plenty of opinions, they are cheap enough.
No donations, because they are not.

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." - Aesop

Double post; sorry.

Hoopdriver

Perhaps I'm a little confused. What exactly are YOU contributing - outside of your share of pedaling and perhaps 12-14 days of holiday time? You said in an earlier post that you weren't prepared to 'blow' £500-600 on making the journey.

It is a fine thing to raise money for a worthy cause - but if you want others to follow your lead here, you have to do a little leading yourself. What you seem to regard as an act of sacrifice, or giving, or at least your share of the contributing - pedaling a bicycle the length of Britain - is to many of us the idea of a splendid holiday. I certainly found it so when I did it, at my own expense I might add. So do hundreds of others each year.

If I am wrong here, or have misread things, and you are in fact coming to the party and opening your wallet, then I apologize - although I have to say I am still not a fan of these charity expeditions.

At any rate - good luck with your ride.

1footedninja

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." - Aesop

prb007 - as much as I like this quote and what it represents I also would just like to point out, as you most probably know, so in no way am I trying to teach anyone to suck eggs here , life isnt so cut and dried and simple , like thinking hey if I go cycle the UK people will sponsor me. Of course , go for it! do it, prove everyone wrong etc but at the same time realise, at the very least that others have their way of doing things also.

oh, your 'plenty of opinions,they are cheap enough' quote - ouch! now that could be misconstrued a whole heck of a lot! - in one swift deft move you destroy all the hard work of freedom and democracy

Sometimes a person can believe they are doing a kind act when in fact the opposite is happening. I'm not going to go greatly into detail because I can see that just opens up theological / atheological / sociological / constitutional etc issues and can be argued objectively as well as unobjectively all day long - yawn yawn yawn.

One example is the current trend for recycling of peoples waste into little plastic bins. Belief is that this uses less energy , costs less etc. It doesn't and if you look into it you soon realise that landfill etc costs far less and definately consumes less energy. But hey you have a nice warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy right and an all knowing rosy glow of being right-on and saving your planet yeah..... and hey I'm all for that good feeling, but Ive found mostly that good feeling comes at a price, and that price is someone duping you somewhere along the line, that doesnt make me bitter, it makes me aware and not wishing to be duped.

Another example of what I am talking about here from the charity/faux charity angle:
Aesop was a slave from in the mid-sixth century BC in ancient Greece. Therefore a quote utilised by him has no bearing on a modern day world which is far more complex

Scrumple

1st thing I thought when I read the title to this is that every man and his dog is doing it.

More riders, more interest, more doing it.

After reading the thread, nothing has changed my opinion. Unless you can get massive publicity, then forget it. I am starting to get annoyed with some charity events that cost a fortune, and are indulgent. Giving cash should be free. Doing something as a sacrifice should be the only charitable event worthy of being sponsored. Events that do cost money, therefore taking money away from charity in part, should be of a magnitude where the cost is far outweighed by the return.

Lejog is firstly a personal event - and secondly a charitable vehicle. By all means raise money, but I'd not think others should pay for your trip. Unless you make it worth their while.

If you can raise a million, you'll get attention, and you'll get a sponsor. By then you will have earned it.

Nothing personal at all - just my opinion.