How to Get Sponsorships for Your WICS Society

Part 1 of the Series: Creating a WICS Society

Hi everyone! I’m going to be starting a series with tips on how to create a Women in Computer Science society at your university!

I am the Founder of Women in Computer Science society at St Andrews which I founded in January 2018 - and I want to share some tips with you for how to create a WICS society at your own uni or if you’ve already created it - improve your WICS society. First in the series is How to Get Sponsorships for Your Society 💵.

Sponsorships are great for a number of reasons. Firstly, you can host much bigger, more exciting events in collaboration with sponsors and with a bigger budget. Often, sponsors will host pub quizzes with free drinks, talks with free pizza 🍕, and almost always there will be free SWAG for the society’s members! It can be intimidating to approach big companies but most of the time they want to find societies to sponsor and are very friendly!

1. Create a sponsorship packages document

First things first - create a sponsorship packages document. This is the sponsorship package document that I created back in 2018 when I first founded WICS. You can use this as a template for your own sponsorship packages! I created this document after looking at some sponsorship documents online and started with fairly low sponsorship prices mainly because we were just starting out and didn’t have that many members. The 3 sponsorship levels were Platinum (£500+), Gold (£350+), and Silver (£200+). As the sponsorship level goes up, all the previous levels’ benefits are included in that sponsorship level. Good things to include in sponsorship packages are company-sponsored events and the company’s logo on your society’s stickers, merch, and website. It’s good to include your society’s email and website so the potential sponsor can browse through and see what your society is all about!

2. Reach out to companies both in-person and online

It can be intimidating to try and reach out to someone at Google or Bloomberg to sponsor your society even if you’re quite small, but I would say just go for it! I reached out to Bloomberg at their sponsorships email just by going to their website and I got a response from a very nice recruiter there and ended up acquiring Bloomberg’s sponsorship for WICS! I also acquired a Google sponsorship for WICS and I did this by going to a tech talk that Google did at my school and staying afterwards to ask the speaker if she would be interested in sponsoring WICS. Turns out, she was very interested and we ended up hosting a huge Virtual Google CV event! Also, you might be lucky enough that someone from a company reaches out to you to sponsor your society - that was the case for me when I acquired Softwire’s sponsorship for WICS.

In sum, reach out to people both in-person by attending your school’s tech events and online by reaching out to companies by finding their sponsorship emails. It takes work to both find and acquire sponsors, and it was difficult for me in the beginning but once you form a good relationship with sponsors you’ll be able to host valuable and large events for your society’s members!

Below is an example of the first email I sent to Bloomberg to see if they would be interested in sponsoring our society way back in April 2018 when I was President of WICS - you you can use this as a guide for what to send companies!

3. What type of events can I host with sponsors? 💻

There are tons of events that you can host with sponsors! Sometimes the sponsor will propose their own event but most of the time they’ll want you to come up with something. Here are a few events that I hosted during my time as President of WICS:

• Tech Talks:

  Tech talks are a great learning event for your society’s members and they can be on any range of topics. For my WICS society I hosted a “Diversity & Inclusion in Tech” Talk with Bloomberg, followed by a Q&A and networking session with Bloomberg representatives.

• Pub Quizzes:

  Pub quizzes are such a fun event and although you might not be able to host an in-person pub quiz you can definitely host a virtual one using quiz websites.

• CV/Career Workshops:

  Career workshops are great, helpful events for society members who may be looking to get an internship or a job! Like I mentioned before, I hosted a virtual Google CV workshop back in November 2018 where people were able to book 20 minute CV review slots with the Google rep and it was a huge success!

I would also like to mention that a key part of getting people to attend your events (sponsored or not) is marketing! During my time as President, I created all the graphics for WICS using Canva and picking a fun design will make people more likely to attend your event! Some examples of the Facebook event banners and events I hosted are available on my website here if you’re looking for some inspiration.

That wraps up the first post in this series of how to get sponsorships for your WICS society! A last piece of advice I would give is be friendly when you reach out to companies and really emphasize how sponsoring your society will benefit both them and your WICS society. I hope this helped any of you out there who are keen to start your own WICS society or are looking to expand and get sponsors to host bigger and better events! 👩🏻‍💻 Drop a comment below or DM me on Instagram if you have any questions and thank you for reading! 😊