Get Kids Into Survey — should we become a sponsor?
I’ve been trying to find good ways to better market SurveyorConnect, but without degrading the quality of our membership. What I mean by that is to market this website to actual surveyors or those with a specific interest in surveying, not the general public. I’m proud of our high level of surveyor members here, even though it keeps the overall member numbers lower — but our number is real. Many might remember that rpls.com had around 40k users at one point, but it was painfully obvious that the vast majority of them were spammers. But I digress.
One of the ideas I recently stumbled upon is the Get Kids Into Survey program — they offer sponsorship packages, which include some pretty great features. We would have a SurveyorConnect character featured on one of their posters, along with logos, mentions and listings for SurveyorConnect from their printed materials and online campaigns. For what it’s worth, I was thinking about a squirrel or sloth as the character, since nobody else has used either of those.
Anyway, It’s a one-time fee, so we wouldn’t have to keep paying for it. They are finishing up their last (ever!) posters and need a few more characters. I’m seriously considering a sponsorship, but it would be about $1,700 USD.
Being that there have been several mentoring threads here lately, it really got me thinking that the GKIS program might be a worthy endeavor for us. One of the key thoughts I seem to read in our mentoring threads is that we need to find ways to get younger people into surveying — and to this website. We have quite the assembly of experience here and many members have a mentoring attitude.
But to say I’m concerned about the entry fee would be an understatement. It’s not so much the actual price as it is where the funding comes from. What I mean is, many people here have supported us monetarily and it has helped immensely with keeping the lights on. But diverting any of those funds to the GKIS program might not be what our supporters have in mind. However, many of those funds have also come from advertisers. I’m struggling with how to handle this, should I decide to pull the trigger.
So… as per usual, I come to you with this issue for your consideration, feedback and advice.
On one hand, I was thinking we could start a special fund just for GKIS — any overage above the sponsorship price could be donated to help further their cause.
On the other hand, I could just dip into the advertising income to cover the sponsorship price.
But, generally speaking, I’m looking at the potential benefits of having SurveyorConnect plastered all over the GKIS website, printed materials, social media, email campaigns and in schools all over the world, encouraging kids to get into surveying. But I wonder how much benefit we’d get in return? Would our membership numbers increase enough to justify the cost? Would the increase in traffic lead to more advertisers?
I love the idea but am not completely sold on it yet. What do you think?
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