Identification of Potential Sponsors

Our sponsor targets will be different for every program. In general, we have found the following types organizations to be of interest for each program:

• DojoGrants — philanthropic foundations (esp. with DEI focus), new science ventures, individual donors (e.g. Schimdt’s Futures, Intuitive Foundation)
• DojoHouse — VCs, local startups, event sponsorship with venues/technologies, etc.
• DojoExplore — VCs, early-stage incubators, local startups
• Pop-up events — region-specific VCs, incubators, entrepreneurial programs
• In general, no one really likes to fund “general operational costs”. We should be targetting sponsors with a specific program of interest, and can use leftover funds to cover our operations

Guiding questions + general tips

• What are the motivations of x organization? How can we provide them with incentives by collaborating with Dojo?
• Look at similarly run programs (e.g. hacker houses, entrepreneurial programs, new grant programs) — who are these funded by? Look at their sponsors list.
  • Same thing for successful bio-related initiatives (e.g. science fairs, student clubs like iGEM)
• Use Twitter, LinkedIn to your advantage (Jenn has lots of experience with this).
• Keep an eye out for any potential sponsors for Nucleate Dojo at your local events — you never know whether they’d be a great fit.
• Ask current team members if they have any warm connections to any target sponsors.

Initial Outreach

A few things to note:

• Most organizations have deadlines for their annual spending budgets. For a lot of foundations, this is at the end of the year in December. Reach out early.
• Track all outreach in our CRM!

Contact Point Identification

This is the hardest but most important part of the entire sponsorship process. Finding the right contact at an organization is save you a lot of time and put you on the top of their list. A couple ways to approach this, warm and cold.

Establishing warm connections