Sponsors matter. Give them credit.

By STU CLAMPITT
Publisher’s Perspective

There are abundant community events happening every week in Hamilton County. Some of them are hosted by local non-profits, some by departments inside local government agencies, some by local businesses and chambers of commerce.

Almost all of them are sponsored by businesses, individuals, and organizations other than the event organizers.

Without sponsors, most local community events would never happen.

I could spend thousands of words detailing many of the fine organizations in Hamilton County that do exceptionally good work, and I would only scratch the surface.

Let’s pick just one of those as an example: Hamilton County Harvest (HCH) Food Bank.

HCH does a lot, all year round, to fight food insecurity in Hamilton County. Every summer they have a program called “Meating the Need.” During the 4-H Fair, they buy 4-H project livestock at auction. They have that livestock processed into individual portions of protein and they give it away to families inside Hamilton County that struggle with food insecurity.

How do they do that?

With the support of their sponsors.

HCH does a great job of listing every single sponsor who makes the Meating the Need program possible. In recent years, they also list every individual advertiser in The Reporter’s 4-H Special Edition because our advertising money from that publication turns into a big donation check to the program.

This newspaper struggles to get sponsor lists from many local event organizers. Sometimes it is not easy. Sometimes it is impossible to get an event organizer to just tell us who donated to make a community event possible.

It should not be a struggle.

Without sponsors, there would not have been an event.

I know of another publication – which shall remain nameless – that has told reporters to NOT list event sponsors because not everyone on the list is a paid advertiser.

My head almost exploded like that guy in the movie Scanners when I learned that.

This newspaper is more than happy to list sponsors for any event we preview, promote, or cover. All of them. Every single one.

Alas, event organizers do not always give us those lists, sometimes not even when we ask for them.

At some events, sponsors get a sign at the event or a verbal shoutout to people in attendance. And that’s great, but it is not nearly enough.

To event organizers I say this: If you hang a sign at an event, maybe 400 people will see it. If you list your sponsors in this newspaper in a press release, those sponsors will be seen by the thousands of people who read The Reporter, and it will cost you exactly zero dollars.

We have thousands of print readers each week, thousands more in digital subscribers, and over 14,000 followers on social media, where we post a link to the entire newspaper five times a week.

So here is the deal, event organizers:

If we preview, promote, or cover an event, The Reporter wants to give your sponsors proper credit by listing every one.

While space is at a premium in our weekly print editions, I will personally guarantee that we will find space for a list of all of you in our digital editions. If there are too many for any event covered in print, we will include a note to see a full sponsor list on our website.

And I’ll take it one step further.

Dear event sponsors:

If we ever cover an event and you are not given proper credit, email me directly and I will place a note in The Reporter that will read something like, “The Reporter recently covered X event, which was sponsored in part by Sponsor Y. While X event organizers chose not to mention who helped make this event possible, Hamilton County’s Hometown Newspaper knows it could never have happened without sponsors like you. Thank you, Sponsor Y, for all you do for our community.”

Stu Clampitt loves both wisdom and efficiency. After nearly 30 years of chasing wisdom, he has not caught much, which means he is neither wise nor efficient. You can reach him by email at News@ReadTheReporter.com.