Survivor Weekend Strategic Partnerships

2025 Calendar

January

  • It’s taken this long and will take just a little longer for me to really have some things to stand on:

    • Onboarding with HOPE

    • Wrestling with our agreement and my own state of life (thank you for your patience!)

    • Establishing messaging and communication templates for sponsor leads

    • Creating lead management docs, processes, and basically an entire program

    • Meeting with biz leaders for their connections and feedback

    • Creating marketing: LinkedIn, updating Pitch Page, etc

  • I’m learning early on that it’s 100% about who I know! My strategy is all about connecting with people who can send me down a path to the “right person” inside the brands.

    Connecting by email, text, call, or carrier pigeon with people who can intro me to their connections!

    • 10% of $250k committed by sponsorship or donation

    • Asking for personal Introductions from: my network, the HOPE Staff & Leaders

    • Mining Campus Changer databases to find brand connections

    • Asking Vision Sunday attendees to make intros

    • Cold-approaching brands directly

    • Specialty group exposure (like C3 Leaders)

    • Pushing the SW story out to my socials

    • Attending industry conferences

    • Parents & Volunteers via survivorwknd.com > registrations, web sponsorship link, email marketing, etc

    • Google via sponsorsurvivorwknd.com/ search rankings

    • From YouTube channel

    • Brand awareness: the event gets big enough to be discovered by brands

    • From 2k students posting to their accounts. If 2k post and they have an average of 750 followers, that’s 1.5M impressions

    • Pushing the SW story out to SW channels

    • Sign influencers to come to the event

 February

    • (Preferably by late January)

    • I cannot do my job without this tool, so this has been a high priority. Every other piece of Survivor Weekend marketing is designed for students, so this is HUGE

    • Using the Pitch Page as our “hook” AND as our hub of resources for sponsor evaluation

    • 25% of $250k committed

  • As I connect with people and get their impressions, feedback, use cases, etc I will make tweaks to sharpen this tool.

 March

  • Ongoing. I should be gaining momentum at this point.

    • 50% of $250k committed

  • I need to be at Survivor Weekend 2025 overseeing, coordinating, etc for all things “sponsorships.” Here are my proposed duties:

    • Sponsor Liason

    • Event Quality Control

    • Content production strategy collab with Franke & Co

 April

    • 75% of $250k committed

  • I booked a flight down there for it already. I feel like I need to absorb the movement vision myself (I haven’t been to one of these in a long time), be seen, and be available.

    • Maybe there’s something we do to take advantage of capturing big biz connections from the people in the room (after the event?)

    • I’ll need to overnight with someone :)

  • Starting to develop an plan for them at the event. Opening conversations with Austin & Co

 May

  • Description text goes here

    • 100% of $250k committed

  • As many as possible by end of month because there’s other things that need to happen over the Summer.

  • Payable to Campus Changer Network. What are the payment options?

  • Final talks with Austin & Co

 June

  • How we looking after the May 31st deadline? Adjust accordingly…

    • Missed our goals

    • Hit our goals

    • Flew past our goals

  • Deadline: June 27th (front end of the 4th of July 2-week zone)

 July

  • Because I need to feed Franke & Co “who we got” for event marketing

  • We need to know who (if any) of them are attending. Headcount and brand activation zones finalized

  • Branding Collab with Franke & Co

 August

  • I’m hoping for a 3 week window whereby all ‘25 sponsors are booked, and I can turn my attention to ‘26 (by saying all of this year’s slots are booked, so ya better get on this!)

    • But make sure booked sponsors are taken care of.

  • During that 3 weeks, we may still need sponsors. I should have capacity for a last-minute push:

    • Mostly following with those who haven’t made decisions, etc

    • But make sure booked sponsors are taken care of.

 September

  • Get to the event, and get there early enough to coordinate/oversee for event quality and VIP logistics

    • Coordinate quality oversight and sponsor VIP logistics with Austin & Co

    • Collab with Franke on content strategy

    • Send sponsors “check this out” photos & links live from the event

    • (Leave Sunday afternoon)

    • Update all marketing with new media for ‘26

    • Social media campaign for ‘26

    • Develop official thank you strategy & method

    • Troy paid 10% commish from any sponsorships beyond $250k

  • Lets review.

    • What went well.

    • What didn’t.

    • Did I add enough value to stay on for the ‘26 season?

 October

    • Include new promo video when it drops

    • $50k in NEW sponsorship committed

  • Let’s do an audit of our core imagery and messaging. Maybe this is where we hit big Campus Changer themes

 November

    • $50k in NEW sponsorship committed

  • By Thanksgiving. I want to go into the holidays with our ‘25 sponsors commited.

    • $250k

    • If sponsors don’t renew, we need to know why

 December

    • $25k in NEW sponsorships

    • Heading into ‘26 with $375k committed