Sponsorship Packages

AQUINAS SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

Who are Aquinas?

Aquinas is a long established children’s football club in the greater South Belfast area. We take most of our members from the Malone/Balmoral/Stranmillis/Finaghy/Dunmurry area but are open to all and have players from all parts of Belfast and adjoining countryside.

We have roughly 320 members organised over fourteen league teams and a seventy to eighty strong mini soccer school where players rotate between our own in house training and tournament on a Saturday morning and the IFA run smaller sided Development Leagues at unders 8, 9 and 10.

Aquinas was formed in 1969 and has grown over the intervening forty years into one of the biggest and most successful clubs involved in children’s soccer in Northern Ireland. Membership involves an hourly training slot once a week at the third generation pitches at the DUB and PEC and at the YMCA and a Saturday match. We, currently, have league teams from under 10 to Senior in four leagues.

Further information on the club can be obtained from the website, www.aquinasfc.net or from the magazine produced to mark our fortieth anniversary in 2009, copies of which are available on request.

Why should you consider sponsoring Aquinas?

As you can imagine, running a football club of the size of Aquinas is a massive undertaking and involves a lot of expense. A copy of the accounts for 2009/2010 is available on request. Sponsorship helps us to reduce the money leaving the club and, therefore, allows us to plough more resources into the training and development of the children.

As you will see from the accounts the bulk of expenditure falls into the two most important categories of our activity, training the children and playing in leagues. Administrative costs are kept to a minimum. In other words, your sponsorship will go to help the children not to cover unnecessary administrative costs.

What sponsorship do we need?

A club like Aquinas can benefit from a variety of sponsorship packages. For example, a sponsorship could cover:

-Kit. This is always needed year on year, as new teams come on stream and old kit wears out. A kit includes sixteen sets of jerseys, shorts, socks and the embroidery, i.e. your logo, our crest and numbers on the jerseys and shorts. A senior kit, from under 15 upwards will cost approximately £800. A junior kit, up to under 14, will run in the region of £650.

-Balls for a squad. This will include approximately twenty training balls, i.e. one for each players, as recommended by the IFA, and run to approximately £200. Your logo can be put on the balls.

-Equipment for a squad. This will include basic disc and witches hat cones and the normal Speed and Agility items of equipment, e.g. ladders, hurdles, slalom poles etc. The basic package will cost around £200 and can be supplemented, if desired, with other equipment items such as pop up nets, target arches etc. A flag with your logo and the message that you have sponsored team Xs equipment will be flown at the Black’s Road pitches on a Saturday morning.

-Bibs for a squad. Twenty bibs of two colours, with your logo on them, will cost approximately £100.

- Training tops for a squad. Aquinas is keen to ensure that a neutral environment pervades its activities so that all members feel welcome and safe. With this in mind we introduced training tops some years ago and encouraged all members to avail of them. A novel sponsorship package would be the provision of training tops for the entire squad. Your logo would go onto the tops. Depending on age, i.e. up to under 14 and over under 15, this would run to approximately £420 - £500 for a squad of twenty, including the managers.

-Tracksuits for a squad. Similarly, the club is keen to push the wearing of tracksuits, particularly on a Saturday morning to matches. A team turning up in matching tracksuits projects a professional image and shows the players and club in a good light. Twenty tracksuits, with your logo and our crest and players initials would approximately £700.

-The mini soccer school. Aquinas runs a very successful, IFA accredited, mini soccer school every Saturday morning. Between the full time members and the players rotating between the school and the development leagues, we cater for between seventy to eighty children. The school constantly requires new balls and equipment. The size of this operation means that sponsorship is more costly, but at the same time, a sponsor has access to more publicity. A full sponsorship package for the school would amount to £1,500. This can, of course, be broken down into its constituent parts, as preferred, e.g. balls, some £800, bibs, roughly £300 and equipment, around £400. A flag with your logo would be flown when the school is in session on a Saturday morning and you would be invited to get involved at the Christmas presentation of certificates and selection boxes and at the club day presentation of medals.

-Every year, we run a mini soccer challenge at the start of March. This involves an eight team competition, two teams from Aquinas and six teams invited from other clubs. We present a trophy each year, medals and catering for hungry players .... and coaches and parents .. after the matches. Similarly, there are a range of packages on offer. The basic one of trophy and medals will cost approximately £200. The trophy would be named after the sponsor’s firm and the sponsor would be given the opportunity to be involved in the presentation of medals and trophy.

A package involving the provision of good quality match balls to each participating teams will also cost approximately £200, with the sponsor’s logo on the balls. Similarly, the sponsor would be involved on the day, if desired.

Catering packages can be agreed with sponsors, from the simple provision of sandwiches, drinks for the players, tea and coffee etc to a finger buffet in the Balmoral Hotel, across the road from the venue. Similarly, the sponsor will be given the opportunity to get involved on the day and his role widely publicised.

This tournament is attended by a photographer from the South Belfast News and a write up in the paper is provided. All sponsors will be mentioned in the paper.

-YMCA venue. We use the YMCA pitch at Knightsbridge Park in Stranmillis for our under 18 teams and our senior team. The maintenance cost of the site is very high, if it is to be maintained to a high standard. In total, the maintenance costs run to £6,700 per annum. It can be broken down to an essential programme, £4,500, and the additional desirable elements of £2,200. Similarly, if preferred, an area of the programme could be sponsored, as follows:

- grass cutting: pitch: £800

- grass cutting: training area: £800

- verti draining: £400

- top dressing: £850

- weed killing: £500

- fertilising: £800

- Goalmouths and pitch spiking and brushing: £400

- overseeding: £920

- scarification and overmarking: £400

- iron sulphate: £200

A flag with your logo and acknowledgement of your sponsorship package would be flown at every game at the YMCA and during training.

-Club day awards. Another novel sponsorship package involves the provision of the awards presented at club day. The awards cost approximately £800 per year. A flag with the sponsor’s logo and sponsorship package would be displayed at the club day and sponsors would be invited to get as involved as they might wish to be in the presentations.

-Buses. When we play NIBFA matches away from home the club would hire buses for the team and parents who wished to go along, depending on where the fixture is. The sponsors logo would be displayed on the bus and reference included in match reports and on the website.

-Man of the match awards. You could sponsor the man of the match for each game played by a team. This could take the form of just about anything your .. or our .. imagination can come up with, e.g. two cinema tickets, family meal (it can be at the local chippie, it doesn’t have to be five stars .. and after all does a kid want to eat at the Culloden!), DVD or game hire, massive bar of chocolate, a trophy, big bottle of whisky for the club secretary of the week (No, that’s a joke .... sort of!), voucher for Barnum’s/Maud’s/Morelli’s etc. Similarly, if a match report is prepared, the “MOTM award sponsored by X” would form part of it. Otherwise, it would appear on the website.

Take our word for it that any sponsorship suggestion received will be listened to with great interest. We have set out above the main areas of expenditure where any help at all would be greatly appreciated. If you have other suggestions, please let us hear them. If you would be willing to help in any way at all, we want to hear from you .. and remember, the more expenditure we can defray, the more we have to invest in the children.

What do you get from it?

As above, your name and logo will be put on the items that you have sponsored, in so far as this is practical, e.g. it would not be possible, for example, to put logo on equipment. Where logo is not present on garments, flags with your logo and your sponsorship package will be flown from the Black’s Road pitches and, as appropriate, the YMCA pitch during all games.

In addition, all match reports will maximise any opportunity to refer to sponsors.

A list of sponsors will be placed on a prominent place on the website, preferably the home page. In addition, a menu tab will be featured prominently on the home page to direct the reader to a sub page giving more detail about the services provided by sponsors.

Sponsors’ logos will appear on the team page of the squad that they have sponsored.

Sponsors will be involved, to the level that they wish, in the big date activities of the club, e.g. club day, special tournaments fund raising night etc.