Sponsorship Committee Updates!

Hey Sponsorship! Post updates here when you have them!

We have been making progress with contacting some potential corporate sponsors and have already filled out applications/mailed out sponsorship packets to about ten businesses. We are working on expanding our list of potnetial corporate sponsors and contacting them and provide them with sponsorship packets - we are mainly targetting Indian businesses/restaurants in the Pittsburgh area but we are also looking into Indian Frozen Food companies and some Hindu temples.

Good efforts guys!

Keep contacting the corporate sponsors as well well as individuals if you come across anyone potentially. Also, make sure you follow up all the sponsorship packet mailing with a phone call! Often times they forget about it unless you call them and get an update from them.

Additionally, make sure you utilize your ambassadors and assistant chairs. They will be a huge help to relieving some of the load. Assign them couple of businesses to contact each. Just an idea. You guys can do it the way you guys feel best fit.

Also, make sure you contact Kaplan and Princeton Review. When you talk to both of them, mention that many of the students are pre-med / pre-law. Also, there are many high schoolers that come with their parents to the show. This is a great place for them to advertise.

Lastly, I need to discuss this with the rest of the board but I have this one idea which we can include in the sponsorship packet. We might get a large banner with Dhirana logos and a sponsor's logos on it and have all the teams take a picture in front of it at the mixer like other competitions. This would then go on Facebook and other place. It would be a huge advertising potential. I'll let you know more about it when I know more. What do you guys think? I was thinking it would be great considering our theme is Oscars. It would be like those Red Carpet pictures that we see in the media.

~Rushi

Hey Rushi! Sorry we've been MIA! Ive been working all summer and I don't get back till late at night butttt here are some updates: Bridgewater Temple said no after a few meetings with them. Im talking to the Flushing, NY Hindu Temple and should get an answer some time this week. Anish is delegating local businesses out to the assistant chairs and he's in Pittsburgh right now so he'll be contacting a few of them. I need to follow up with Kaplan and Princeton Review cause they haven't responded yet. That banner idea is dope! Totally down for it. Have some kickass summahtimeee!! Much love and apologies for the disappearing act! not cool- won't happen again chief!

P.S. I'm really good friends with Dr. Narayanan the plastic surgeon in pittsburgh and with his fam bam. i'm gonna try to talk to them about sponsorship and have them talk to their deep pocket frands.

my mom's also tight with that fam. lemme know if you need help with dat

thanks beb ;* we'll charm their pants off

Haha!!! This is great. Let's keep contacting these people and keep us posted. Also, if they are sponsoring/donating they might be able to get tax deduction also. This might be an incentive, maybe.

So we're continuing with mainly focusing on corporations. We've gotten a bunch of rejections from some of the bigger companies so I've been switching my strategy a bit and trying to contact smaller Indian food companies/clothing manufacturers. There's a small company called Cafe Spice and another Bharatanatyam costume manufacturer that seemed interested so we'll see what happens there. I've also been filling out as many corporate sponsorship applications as possible but it takes some time to hear back from there.

I'm going to send out the local businesses to assistant chairs so if they're in the area they can start contacting them.

This sounds like a good plan!! Big corporations are high risk/high reward targets. If we get them it's a jackpot but they are challenging to come by. It's good that you guys are distributing between large corps as well as small/medium corps especially the Indian ones.

It's also good to hear that you are using you ambassadors/assistant chairs. They can be a major help to you guys!

Hey guys!

I've been in touch with Shobhitha Akka, and her and Vikram are interested in sponsoring. If you guys could send her an updated packet at natyakriya@gmail.com, they'll be in touch with you about the amount/benefits they're interested in.

Thanks!
Shruti

Successful trip with the assistant chairs today- actually only snehal could make it. All India, IGA, and Exchange video game store are interested and we'll be following up with them soon. IGA said if they don't decide to sponsor they will definitely donate water or something for the event.

Shobhitha responded about visiting her class sometime in November. Talked to Tyler about the candy fundraiser with Katie's Kandy and it'll probably be something in February/ valentines day- closer to the event.

Friday I'm sitting with Dilina and Maya to call all of their businesses on their lists.

Meeting with Tamarind tonight at 7 with Anish to discuss the menu, food donation stuff, etc.

Haii baybay <3

When should we contact SPIFFA (probably spelled that wrong)?? Also Anish and I made separate trips this week with our assistant chairs! Here's the link to our spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iyys1nZr-H-0tBRX6-sV7mnruhChA4gjl7i9Wd0Mk50/edit#gid=1791503072

That's just to track the progress of the businesses we've visited! You don't have to read it. Yuva India is very interested! Prital and I are visiting them next week. When Anish went to Prince of India he didnt seem interested but he still made an appointment with me and shrey for tomorrow... so mixed signals? Lyk I dont fuxt wit dat shyt nigga.

We're emailing Primanti's headquarters in the strip because the Oakland branch was really interested they just need the approval from headquarters!

Waiting on Sriya's mom and Princeton Review to come through and they're both Sriya's contacts so we'll just talk to her at the meeting!

Luh yinz mmwah!
Ay Dizzy

Hey Guys!

So we were FINALLY able to meet with the owner of Tamarind this week. The meeting went well and he's definitely interested in giving us food. We gave him the dates for the formal dinner, mixer, and VIP reception so he has all the times down for when we might need food. He mentioned that he would need to talk to his partner but it's pretty clear that he's going to help out again. He was a little disgruntled that HSC was going to buy food from him but then went with some other restaurant and now another Indian group from Pitt is expecting him to donate food but he understands that we're not the same group. But to make him feel better we said he could basically have whatever he wanted in terms of advertising.

Shravani went ot Shobita's performance this weekend and talked about sponsorship. She said it went pretty well - she handed out some packets and also got some emails so we're going to send all of them the packet via email.

Also we got an individual sponsor from one of the Nrityamala dancer's fathers! We're sending him the sponsorship packet so he can pick his tier.

Still just working through Oakland businesses.

Anish

Hey e-board,

Not really any formal updates for this week. Prital has a meeting scheduled with the owner of Yuva India on Friday so I'll be accompanying her there. Going to check back with Tamarind this week (he said to give him a couple weeks) and also All India.

Also going to head over to India On Wheels and see if they'd be intersted in anything.

Anish

Big update for this week is that Yuva India is interested in sponsoring! Prital set up a meeting with the owner and I went to talk to him on Friday. He said he's definitely interested in being a part of it but also said that we still have some time since it's a little whiles away. He is thinking about being a 'gold' sponsor and was considering giving us $250 worth of food and $251 in money.

He was tentaively saying that he wanted to give us food for the mixer so we'll talk to Vidisha to see what dishes we want and what not. I think I told him I estimated 150 people so I'll have to tell him that I talked to you guys and it's actually around 175.

Anish

Followed up with Tamarind this week. He is probably interested in sponsoring the dinner so I gave him the tentative menu that fundraising drafted. He knows that we're expecting about 300 people but said he wouldn't be able to make every dish on the menu for that many people. He's thinking about maybe 4-5 dishes. He wasn't completely clear but I think he's willing to provide enough food for 300 people for all the dishes that he does decide to donate. So we would have to look elsewhere for the other dishes. Also tried following up with Yuva about food for the mixer but he hasn't gotten back to us yet. I left him a message with the revised estimate for the number of people at the mixer.

huddo fwends. hope your turdsgving was some dope shit.
Shrey got a new sponsor for $150. The check should be coming in soon (this puts us at about $1500 total so far). I'm going to get us started on gofundme.com. My cousin was telling me about it being a really successful way to use social netwroking as a way to fund big projects and events like Dhirana. I need to put a goal amount (1,000? 2000? 20K?) and it's going to be linked to my Facebook account but it'll be an easy link to share and we can connect it to the donation website! (free registration hollaatchoboiica$hswagg)
Also, we need an announcement from the liasons to their teams about purchasing ad space in the program (like their parents making a cute little s/o or whatever) as well as Nrityamala and the other exhibition acts.
Furthermore, in addition, moreover, went back to all india and duh of course owner was MIA as per ussujjebfghirowiefn. Akshaya darling bae, da fuq we supposed to do bout deez nigglets?
For the brueggers/subway/pizza stuff for the competition day and mixer is it more effective to just talk to them closer to the event? or is it actually better to try and get it together before winter break (not gon lie finals week bruh...but issok #dhiranaisbae)
Anand/Akshaya just let me know if you want me to contact Shobhitha for you or if you guys wanna talk to her directly regarding scheduling a day to visit her dance class.

Most sincere warm regards,
Ay Dizzy

Yo E-board (aka Rushmeister) whats the werd on SPIFA? SPIFFA? Also update: Friday was a fuckin shit show but Anish and India on Wheels saved the day! Go team! Akshaya and I are going back to All-the-fuckbois-in-India sometime this week- she'll let me know what time works for her. Tamarind is currently a gold sponsor (WOO CA$H MUNNYY jk just food. but oil is gold right?). Anish is waiting for him to send the online coupon or whatever and we'll send it to PR.
We're at a crossroads with contacting squirrel hill businesses/coriander. If we wait till we come back from break, it's cutting it really close to the event and idk if that's enough notice for the restaurants. But we can't just call them over break because nothing ever gets done unless it's face to face (for example- All-the-fuckbois-in-India). I mean we're willing to still try and send emails too- but we're doubtful of how effective it's really gonna be.
Also just confirming- this Saturday Akshaya/Shrav you guys are going to Shobhitha's class to talk about Dhirana. Let me know if you want me to make little sheets with the sponsorship/donation info on them so when/if they give you checks all the info is filled out right away. I can print those out and bring them to you at the meeting.
Also for VIP Reception dinner, our assistant chairs are gonna be in charge of decorations/setting that shit up with Dipika. We haven't been able to give them a lot of shit to do recently so this should keep them busy.
also- sriya's mom never responded to our email about sponsorship. is she still interested?
snehal (one of our assistant chairs) is running the gofundme site.

Peace, lerv, and appyness,
Ay Dizzy

#dhiranaisbae #errytime

Major Events: Dhirana Dinner, VIP Reception, Mixer, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
- Fill out catering exemption form for every venue that you are serving food for
Dinner has been taken care of, so have these forms for VIP reception and Mixer (talk to Vidisha first to make sure that she hasn’t already done the Mixer)
These forms need to be turned in 2 weeks before the event
- Finalize breakfast, lunch and dinner for the teams on the day of competition
start contacting subway, pizza places, bruggers, etc.
- Do you want centerpieces or any kind of decorations for the VIP reception? If so, talk to Dipika.
- Updates about gofundme site?
- Update spreadsheet and let us know where the total ~$2000 is coming from.
Individual and corporate sponsors
- DINNERS: Dhirana dinner, VIP reception, Mixer
Confirm menu and amounts with all restaurants. Confirm pick up time. Keep confirming with restaurants!
Let each committee know their menu and number of people catering for
Make a plan on how we will transport it to the event

No real updates for the week. Aditi is meetin with All India on Sunday evening.

Still waiting on Tamarind for the insurance forms, I'm going to call him and remind him. Also emailed out requests from last years sponsors again.