WE ARE PARKS AND RECREATION BOOM!: How To Make Your Event Sponsorship Explode By Mark McCullers H ow do you take a small gathering of neighborhood residents in a local park and turn it into the largest Independence Day cel-ebration in the Midwest? The simple answer: vision and years and years of hard work. The more complicated answer: savvy and sponsorship. When Red, White & BOOM! launched, it was humbly funded by neighbors’ donations. Today, as Co-lumbus, Ohio’s largest single-day community event with 400,000 at-tendees, a parade, a street festival, multiple live music stages and a leg-endary fireworks display, its annual expenses top $750,000. The nonprofit organization that now oversees BOOM! generates the revenue to cover those expens-es through customized, strategic, values-driven sponsorships with brands like NBC, Pepsi, iHeart Ra-dio, U.S. Bank, Ford, State Farm, Meijer and Smirnoff. Here are a few pages out of the BOOM! playbook: 2 1 Develop a strong value propo-sition – Your sponsorship pitch starts with one key question: Why should they care? Your value prop-osition has to answer that question, and the answer needs to be more than just exposure and signage. You need to think in terms of how your event can help sponsors solve problems, reach target audiences and align with values. For BOOM!, it includes community connection, brand integration, new custom-er engagement, data capture and revenue generation. Knowing and expressing your compelling val-ue proposition is a big first step to sponsorship success. Strategic sponsorships fund Columbus, Ohio’s massive Red, White & BOOM! Independence Day event. 3 4 Create a board or steering committee – Forming a board or committee of influential stake-holders can add credibility to your event and help open doors, cre-ate connections, solve problems and provide influence. Committee members — whether they’re com-munity members, business leaders, sponsors or partners — can provide insights, connections and support. Their networks can be invaluable in identifying and recruiting sponsors, and their involvement signals that your event is worth investing in. Organize your assets – You like-ly have more to offer sponsors than you realize. That’s why it’s so important to conduct a full inven-tory of every asset. This includes not only things like signage, access, email lists, media channels and hos-pitality, but also things like exclusive designations, intellectual property rights, community engagement, net-working opportunities and board positions. After that, it’s essential to organize your assets into categories with clear rights and pricing. Having a thorough, well-organized, tiered sponsorship structure gives you the flexibility to customize packages to meet your sponsors’ unique needs. And it shows them you’re more than a pitch; you’re a partner. Know your demographics – Sponsors need to know your audience aligns with their goals. Col-lect and present as detailed a demo-graphic and psychographic profile as you can from sources like attendee 8 Parks & Recreation PHOTO COURTESY OF RED, WHITE & BOOM! | APRIL 2026 | PARKSANDRECREATION.ORG
Parks Recreation Magazine April 2026: Page 8
