For all of her young life, Suzy’s parents have provided riding lessons; however, now in her 18th year, she finds herself struggling to fund her equestrian career on her own. A young adult in her first year of university, she has very little money to spare on riding. Suzy has four options: she stops showing until she is finished school; she sells her horse and quits riding altogether; she drops out of university to pursue her equestrian career (her parents would not be impressed); or she finds a new way to fund her riding career so that she can continue showing while she stays at university. The young lady chooses option four and delves into researching sponsorship opportunities. All sports athletes can benefit from sponsorship, but need to consider why they need it, who would be best-suited to help make their dreams come true, where to find good sponsors, and how to approach a potential company to get sponsorship. Before you enter into any sponsorship agreement, however, make sure that it does not conflict with Equine Canada rules and negatively affect your amateur status.
Here are some basic guidelines for finding and keeping precious sponsors – including advice from companies both inside and outside the horse industry.
Clean up your act
The first thing you should do is complete a Google search on yourself to see if anything negative is found. Clean up your social media accounts by removing any incriminating information that may include alcohol, drugs, or other indecent or suggestive pictures or posts. Set your privacy settings on your social media pages to “private” so that sponsors (or future employers, for that matter) cannot snoop around and find something they may not like which could destroy your chances of receiving sponsorship.