Lan Party Sponsorship

[Keetha]

Hey all,
I'm going to start out with some details before I get to the meat of my post.
College in question: Penn State, York Campus
Scrounge: A non-profit student run group that collects donated computers from local companies (Harley-Davdison, Community Bank, and other), refurbishes them, and then donates them to local non-profit educational and religous businesses.
LAN Party: Approximately 120 people will attend. We have have 3 massive projectors that will be running DDR. There are also a bunsh of TVs we will use for Xboxs.

So, Scrounge is holding a LAN Party on our campus to raise a little bit of money for our various operational costs. I have been designated the person in charge of running the tournaments (CSS, WC3: TFT, CoD2, AoE3, DDR2 MAX (PS2)). I was looking for advice on how to get "sponsors" so I can have some cool prizes to give away. We're also looking for "door prizes", just like stickers and case badges.
Basically, my plan is to write letters to AMD, Intel, Asus, nVidia, ATI, Abit, BFGTech, and other companies. We're looking for stickers, case badges, fan grills, t-shirts, and hopefully some better prizes like a cool KB/Mouse combo, a motherboard, or some RAM, anything like that, hopefully one for each tournament.
I am looking for adive on how to write these letters, if there are letter templates that are available, advice from people who have done this before, information on whether this is a fairly standard practice for LAN parties and any and all advice pertaining to my situation.
Thanks in advance for all your help, and let me know if you need more information about anything.

[zero002021]

Many of the companies you listed can be contacted right from their websites. Most have a LAN sponsorship form that you can fill out. Check their websites, you'll find the forms. Its important to note that some require several months advance notice, so plan accordingly.

[[RCKY] Thor]

For a one-time, non-regular, less than 200 people party, so don't expect much from them. Occassionally, dropping "charity" works, but most of those companies look for much larger audiences to invest in. My group has had pretty good luck with local businesses and some of the smaller retailers...geeks.com, silverstone, steelpad, func, coolermaster, gamefly were a few of our last sponsors. RAM companies like to give away lots of little stuff like pens and stickers, so hit up corsair, mushkin, kingston, etc for that stuff.

[EyeMWing]

Thor']For a one-time, non-regular, less than 200 people party, so don't expect much from them. Occassionally, dropping "charity" works, but most of those companies look for much larger audiences to invest in. My group has had pretty good luck with local businesses and some of the smaller retailers...geeks.com, silverstone, steelpad, func, coolermaster, gamefly were a few of our last sponsors. RAM companies like to give away lots of little stuff like pens and stickers, so hit up corsair, mushkin, kingston, etc for that stuff.
This year is our inaugural year, and we're going to be aiming a helluva lot higher starting next year (we got a late start on planning, so we fell short of our "ideal" facility, and at this point, we're limited by electrical concerns). This will be a regular event, whether the rest of the planning committee likes it or not :P

[zero002021]

I've done some of the work for you. Here you go:

Corsair:
http://corsair.com/corsair/community/LAN_parties.html

Crucial:
http://www.crucial.com/ballistix/content.asp?key=lanparty

Kingston:
http://kingston.com/HyperX/sponsorships/default.asp

ATi:
http://www.ati.com/gitg/promotions/lanparty/index.html

nVIDIA:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/sponsorship/frmsponsorship.asp

BFG:
http://www.bfgtech.com/sampleform.htm

Creative:
http://www.soundblaster.com/lanevents/

Bawls:
http://www.bgcg.net/search_lan.php

There are still many other companies you can contact, such as Intel, AMD, and D-Link. Look around online and I'm sure you'll find the LAN sponsorship forms.

[[RCKY] Thor]

Most of the big sponsors will want to see previous LANs, a solid forum membership, and lots of pre-registers before they will consider anything more than a few stickers or pens. Bawls has a really strict tiered program for sponsorship. It never hurts to ask, just speaking from experience here. You will probably have a lot more luck with local sponsors and the smaller retailers/vendors/manuf. for your first event.

[somecallmeTim]

I've been runing LANs for a number of years, and things really have changed. My events are normally around 50 to 70 people, and have been for 4 years. We used to have piles of stuff to give away every month, and now I have a few things. Most companies have either changed so you need a 100 or 200 seat event before you are considered (or larger), or they've started holding thier own events.
Demographics play a large part too - for a 120 seat LAN in eastern WA, I get t-shirts and stickers, while a 30 seat LAN in western WA gets video cards and motherboards from the same company... go figure.

Our annual FRAG-a-THON that we raise money for charity ($4,500 over the last two years) gets us a lot of sponsorship, but it's also alot of work. We contact about 500 potential sponsors and get a response from about 10%, with about 1/3 of the responses actual sponsorship.

Things I've learned:
1. Start early - 3 to 4 months ahead (or more if possible)
2. Be appreciative when they offer to sponsor you, even it if is just t-shirts and stickers
3. Take pictures of your event, swag table, and prize winners and make sure the sponsors see them
4. Don't be afraid to contact a company - you never know what will happen. The worst that can happen is you won't hear anything at all.
5. DO NOT announce a sponsor until you have CONFIRMATION or the actual good in hand - I've had sponsors back out on me to take care of larger events and came out looking really bad. This is a tough one but until you are 100% sure, don't say a damn thing on your site, in your forums, or anything.
6. If you are holding a special event where you getting t-shirts made - try and get extras done up so you can send ths sponsors a shirt. We have sponsor names on our FRAG-a-THON shirts.. and they love them.
7. Be prepared for a lot of work, time, effort, and dissappointment. Which will all be paid back when your event is a success.

The hard part is to not over sell or under sel your events - I've done both.

Peace,
Tim
http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/565.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=565)

[eits]

Thor']For a one-time, non-regular, less than 200 people party, so don't expect much from them. Occassionally, dropping "charity" works, but most of those companies look for much larger audiences to invest in. My group has had pretty good luck with local businesses and some of the smaller retailers...geeks.com, silverstone, steelpad, func, coolermaster, gamefly were a few of our last sponsors. RAM companies like to give away lots of little stuff like pens and stickers, so hit up corsair, mushkin, kingston, etc for that stuff.

dropping "charity" when it isn't and telling companies that you will be running a 200-person event to get door prizes and only throwing a 100-person event instead will get you burned REAL fast.

[[RCKY] Thor]

Thats not what I meant. A charity event can occasionally get you more sponsors than you normally have, but they will more than likely only be on board of that one event.