Sponsorship hunting...

[audidudi@mindspring.com (Jeffrey J. Goggin)]

>I am currently on my last breath with this project. I have a couple
>of corporate sponsors that I am trying to entice with the help of a 
>charitable foundation.

For an event like this, you'll probably have your best luck using this
approach ... otherwise, you're simply another person looking for money to go
"racing" and for several reasons, you have to approach this in a much
different manner than it would appear you've been doing.  BTDT too many,
many times...  :^(

>Also if any of you out there have knowledge of how this process works I
>sure would like to hear from you.

I've had modest success in securing sponsorship over the years (in the past,
I've gotten tires from Yokohama, pre-production Beretta GTZ from General
Motors(!), shocks & struts from Koni, etc.) but haven't been all that
successful in getting help from non-automotive businesses (a few hundred
bucks here-and-there but that's been it).
 
Like I said, it requires a different approach ... if you're serious about
this, you need to buy yourself "THE BOOK" about finding sponsors for racing
activities: Sponsorship and the World of Motor Racing, written by Guy
Edwards and published in the UK in 1992.  I don't know if it's still in
print but I do know it was expensive: Mine has a price of GBP100 printed on
the flyleaf!  Needless to say, it's worth every penny.

>The STATS: To sum it all up!
>           I sent out some 40+ letters including Audi of America with 
>           which I followed up with some 30 phone calls to AOA alone!
>           I finally got ahold of someone who's response was "I never
>           received the info, try again." I did and they wont return my
>           calls?  Makes you kind of crazy!?

Unless you're running a current model of car, I would be surprised if Audi
would take any interest in this ... believe it or not, but you'd probably
have had better luck asking them to lend you a car (an S4, perhaps?) for the
event then asking them to help you with the cost of preparing your '86 5ktq.
Remember, they make money by selling cars and unless they start a vintage
program like Nissan did with the 240Z, they're not likely to have too many
'86s left to sell...  ;^)

BTW, when I started my last project -- my as yet unfinished project! -- I
specifically decided against getting any sponsorship since I decided I
didn't have the time necessary to service the sponsor properly and wanted to
leave the doors open for the future.  Good thing I did, too, because I don't
think they'd be very happy today, what with my car still a long way from
being finished ... on the other hand, if I had more money, things might have
been different.

(I guess what I'm saying is that if you make promises and then fail to
deliver, you screw things up for all of us and not just yourself since the
next time that company is approached by someone, they're not likely to look
upon another sponsorship proposal with an open mind.)
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   / |      _| o    | \       _| o  Jeffrey Goggin
  /__| | | / | | __ |  | | | / | |  audidudi@mindspring.com
 /   | |_| \_| |    |_/  |_| \_| |  http://www.mindspring.com/~audidudi/
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