The sign that didn’t get done

It took me months to get the no.

A call, then a text, then a follow-up email, then another one. It never felt like I was being dodged — just a busy business and a question that never got to the top of anyone’s list. When the answer finally came it was short. They wouldn’t be renewing.

What bothered me wasn’t the answer. It was that I hadn’t seen it coming. They participated, and they came to events, which made me think that the relationship was okay. Right up until that email I’d have told you we were fine.

We weren’t fine. We’d promised them a sign on the field and we hadn’t got it done.

There’s no such thing as “in progress”

We’d started replacing the ground signage late in 2024. Theirs was in the queue. In my head that counted for something — the work was underway, we were getting to it, it was happening. From where I sat it looked like delivery in progress.

There’s no such thing from the sponsor’s side. There’s a sign, or there isn’t one. Everything else we’d done, and we’d done a fair bit, didn’t count for much against the one thing they could drive past and not see.

The second thing I got wrong was reading their behaviour as a report card. Turning up to events isn’t the same as being happy. Sometimes it just means they’re decent people.

So there are two jobs here, and August is when you do them, because the production deadlines are in front of you, not behind you.

1. Go and look

Walk your ground with a notebook and write down every sign and every logo that’s deployed. Then work out who each one belongs to and whether that arrangement still exists.

We had a process for signage, in the sense that we knew who to ring. That was the whole system — we just call this guy, he looks after our signage. It worked fine right up until you needed to know what had actually been agreed, and there was nothing written down anywhere. When I went and looked at what was up, and asked around, there were signs up from people who’d had nothing to do with the club for years.

Some of that gets awkward. Handshake deals done five or ten years ago that nobody recorded, and now you’re nervous about taking a sign down in case you’ve got it wrong. It can be a bit of a minefield. You’ve just got to work through it.

And the audit isn’t only what’s bolted to the fence. The one that catches clubs out is playing kit — in league, shorts and socks especially, because the players buy those themselves. Someone turns up in last season’s pair, nobody wants to make a fuss twenty minutes before kick-off, and they run on. The business that paid to be on this season’s is standing on the sideline looking at last season’s. Nobody decided to let that sponsor down. It just felt petty to stop it, week after week. The sponsor doesn’t see the reason, only the shorts.

2. Confirm what each sponsor thinks they’re getting

Don’t describe an asset if you can show it — a mock-up of the jersey or the sign settles most of the argument before it starts. Say plainly whether a position covers one grade or the whole club, because that’s the assumption nobody ever says out loud. And make the invoice describe the package rather than just saying “sponsorship”, so what you agreed and what you billed can’t drift apart.

The four questions

Who is it for?
Are they still with us?
Have they paid?
Did we promise them anything we haven’t delivered?

Then do the same before your next home game with what the players run out in. If someone’s in last season’s shorts, they get this season’s before they play. A logo nobody can see isn’t delivery either.

Anything on that list that isn’t finished, tell the sponsor before they notice. A call saying “your sign isn’t up yet, here’s when it will be” is a completely different conversation to them working it out on their own.

And if you’re chasing a renewal answer that keeps not arriving, ask for the no. Make it easy for them to give you one. It’s the same argument I made last week, just from the other end — you can only act on an answer you actually have.

That sponsor didn’t renew and we absorbed it, because someone else had already asked for a spot we couldn’t give them at the time. That was luck. I’d rather you didn’t need any.

Same deal as last week: Club Funding builds fundraising tools for clubs, and that’s how I pay for this. This email still isn’t the pitch.

If you missed it, the Club Funding Sponsorship Playbook covers the whole thing — finding, winning and keeping sponsors. It’s the version I wish someone had handed me on day one. It’s free, and it’s yours here:

Get the free Sponsorship Playbook

Jason Shannon — Founder, Club Funding. Former President, Oakey Senior Rugby League Football Club.