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Sponsorship Highlights Webinar with Sylvia Allen

August 17th, 2016, 1 pm – 2 pm

How successful are your sponsorship selling efforts?  Great?  OK?  Mediocre?  Non-existent?  Attend this webinar and watch Sylvia Allen profile a real Ohio community and demonstrate how you can be great.  This is a prelude to the full day seminar being held on September 14 in Vermillion, OH.   Discover what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong … it’s a simple formula for success applied to a real situation.  Don’t miss it!
This webinar is pending approval for 1 AIA continuing education credit.
 

Heritage Ohio Members Register Here

Not a Member? Join Heritage Ohio now to get access.

 

PRESENTER BIO

c9255ea1-69eb-4f15-8ff9-3fd60188cbdeSylvia Allen
Sylvia Allen, President of Allen Consulting located in Holmdel, NJ has run her business for 37 years.  Her marketing and public relations firm has produced more than 5,000 events during that time and raised millions of dollars of sponsorships for her clients each year.  She was on the faculty at New York University for 20 years and has taught seminars on sponsorship public relations and sales around the world.  
Considered one of the world’s PR and sponsorship experts, she is the author of HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT SPONSORSHIP SALES and A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SALES SUCCESS.  Allen has received numerous awards and honors, including being named to the International Festivals and Events Association Hall of Fame; honored as one of the Top 50 Women in Business in New Jersey; named Garden State Woman of the Year; received the Governor’s award for her work with the Freehold Center Partnership and was recipient of the Humanitarian of the Year Award for her work with Sylvia’s Children, a 501(c)3 organization she founded 12 years ago to help orphans in Uganda.  (These are just the highlights!)
In addition, 14 years ago she formed Sylvia’s Children, a non-profit working Uganda by supporting the Mbiriizi Advanced Primary School.  In that period of time she has raised over $1,000,000, developed the school from four buildings to 26, built a chicken farm and pig farm, plus 6,000 sq. ft. medical clinic and four bed hospital.  In that period of time over 1,500 children (of which 25% are orphans) have been given an opportunity to come out of poverty.
Oh, and five years ago, in her spare time, she bought a 1903 Opera House in Northern Minnesota where Judy Garland got her start!   She has first hand experience with sponsorship is a small town!  (www.allenconsuslting.com, www.sylviaschildren.org, www.thebutlerbuilding.org)

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Top Tips from the 2013 National Main Street Conference

Heritage Ohio staff and about 40 Ohioans, including Main Street Managers, and downtown revitalization advocates attended the conference, hosted this year in New Orleans.  Having just completed 5 days of inspirational and educational sessions, I thought I would share my top ten things learned, in no particular order:
 
1.      The JOBS Act of 2012 allows for locavesting and crowd funding, providing more options for financing businesses to create jobs.  There are many more platforms than I realized, and they are all slightly different, so finding the right match is important.
 
2.      The Entrepreneur – the term is thrown around so much we’ve begun to lose sight of who we mean. It can be anyone: a car mechanic, a gardener, a knitter, a computer geek. Think small, not so big. Make your downtown welcoming to anyone with a business idea; create an environment of support where business can thrive.
 
3.      Sponsorship – believe in the value of your program and its activities. Develop relationships with your sponsors with as much thought to the follow-up as to the ask.
 
4.      Streetscape projects can be challenging for downtown businesses.  Effective communication, frequent progress meetings and a creative attitude will get the community through the process.
 
5.      Business Enhancement Committees can create a Recruitment Manual to give them structure month after month to make the best use of your market analysis data and help you find the new businesses that belong in your community. Court your new business candidates.
 
6.      Fundraising isn’t so hard when everyone is able to share the story of your downtown.  Use your revitalization statistics. Tailor your story to the listener’s style.
 
7.      What is trending in 2013? Diversity, young talent, young women, deliberate spending, shortened commutes, health and wellness, main stream technology.
 
8.      Transportation – Reduce our car-centric decisions. Walkable communities are the future.  Healthy and hip, they attract the young people, your town’s future.
 
9.      Millennials (under 30 yrs.) – get them on your board and committees, or you may go the way of the dinosaurs.
 
10.    New Orleans is a party city.
 
Thousands of communities across the country are doing creative work in revitalizing their downtowns and neighborhood commercial centers.  You too can be part of this amazing process, it’s all about the can-do attitude.