Support from our corporate partners can sometime take the form of specialist services or goods, and recently we’ve had some amazing free advertising opportunities.
As a small local children’s hospital charity, our budgets are tight. We have to make the absolute most of every penny to ensure that the support gets right to the children and families that need it the most.
This means that we don’t have the funds to be able to spend a lot of money on advertising what we do on posters, signage or digital advertising boards around Brighton and beyond.
Advertising like this can often costs thousands of pounds, especially if it’s in high profile places like shopping centres, sports grounds or the seafront.
However, what we may lack in marketing budget, we more than make up for in supporters who want to help us get the word out about our work and who might just be in the position to help.
Over the past few months, we have been incredibly fortunate to have been offered three fantastic opportunities to advertise our work in great locations, and all at absolutely no cost to us.
First, we were approached by Mike Stace, Director of Stace Outdoor Ltd, a specialist outdoor advertising company based in Seaford. Mike, and his co-director Steve Stace, offered us the opportunity to have posters displayed throughout Brighton, in prominent locations such as along the seafront and throughout the city.
These look fantastic and really help to explain our work throughout the city to audiences who might not know much about us.
Then, we have worked with Brighton and Hove Buses who were able to offer us advertising space on their digital display boards across their fleet of new electric buses.
These screens are seen by every passenger as they get on or off the buses that operate throughout the city and beyond. Another great way to showcase our work to the residents of Brighton and the surrounding towns.
And finally, and probably the most exciting, was an offer that came from Billy Byam-Cook, the Group Chief Financial Officer of Ocean Outdoors, the UK’s leading premium digital advertising company. Ocean Outdoors have digital display boards throughout London, including Picadilly Circus and many of the capitals most well know shopping centres.
Billy, who lives in Sussex, was visiting the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital with his son and was made aware of our work.
On returning to his office, he chose to nominate Rockinghorse as part of a company-wide initiative to offer free advertising space to charities chosen by their employees.
This incredibly generous offer meant that we were able to create a digital advert that is on display across 36 different screens in the new Battersea Power
Station shopping complex, Canary Wharf mall, Westfield London and Westfield Stratford in London.
Whilst our work is within Sussex, the opportunity to have our name displayed in such prominent places in the capital, where there will likely be many people who travel up from Sussex for work or leisure, was simply too good to miss!
Support like this, often worth the equivalent of thousands of pounds, is incredibly important to our work. Being able to promote what we do to as many people as possible is a vital part of raising awareness, and donations – if people don’t know about us, they likely won’t support our work.
So, if you work for a company that might be able to offer support like this, or as we call it, gifts in kind, then please get in touch.
You might not be in a position to donate funds, but you could offer prizes for our events, specialist services that would otherwise be too expensive for us, or marketing materials like printing or advertising space.
Anything you can do supports our work and helps make sure we can continue to fund and deliver vital projects to those who need them most.
If you would like to know more about how your company can support us, contact our Head of Partnerships Amanda Hetherington at amanda@rockinghorse.org.uk
