#TeamSNAP - our team behind yours.
Where did it all begin?
SNAP Founder, Mark Covington, started rugby slightly later than most having only been introduced to it via an after school club run by a supply teacher. There was no looking back as he quickly joined his local club, Guildford RFC. Mark fell in love with the sport, becoming a part of the club as he took on “ball boy” duties for the First Team and being introduced to beer!
Having enjoyed his time playing, culminating in captaincy of Loughborough University, Mark returned to a non-playing coaching role at Guildford in 2008.
In 2010 the club embarked on a project to redevelop the clubhouse. Plans were drawn up and a £1.2m price tag was attached to the project! Fundraising began and the club undershot by £500k. While there were whispers of “scaling back the project” these were quickly squashed with generous members offering to underwrite the difference to deliver the project.
The moment that sparked SNAP
With the project underway the club now had to consider one more thing: How would they fund the £500k loan repayment?
Traditional funding approaches, ranging from member donations, governing body grants, membership fees and crowdfunding initiatives, had supported the clubs in years gone by. However, these were all deteriorating. New initiatives around family fun days, cake sales and “buy a brick” were great, but didn’t seem to have any long term repeatable revenue. In 2012 the new look clubhouse, delivered on budget, was opened for everyone to enjoy. The next phase of hard work began, funding the £500k loan.
What about sponsorship funding?
During this time Mark was working on the 2012 Olympic Park in Stratford. Each day he would see how sponsorship was being handled across various elite sports. Mark began to develop a vision for how some of the principles could be applied in his club. Take an MOT service example:
With 1000 members, on average having 2 cars per household, those 2000 cars needed and MOT service. Yet the club had no garage as a sponsor.
This was the start of change. Mark set about transforming the perception of sponsorship from being the business doing the club a favor and helping the club out, to forming genuine win/win partnerships. Where the sponsor gained value from the club as much as the club did from them. This in turn resulted in the sponsor spending more and staying longer.
The club experienced great success in this, tapping into the membership network to understand what services their members were using from the local community. The club then began to leverage its value in a way that showed the potential ROI that these possible sponsorship ventures would mean for local businesses. Sponsorship revenue increased from circa £30k per annum to over £150k.
Mark Covington was then approached by Simon Pennock. Simon was the Chairman of the youth section at Guildford at the time and their discussion led to Mark converting his volunteer work into a full-time role to help other clubs. SNAP Sponsorship had been officially formed.
The early years
SNAP started out working with local sports teams to help form partnerships between clubs and businesses, providing guidance and assistance on strategies and activations to help meet brand objectives. Acting primarily as a consultancy this model formed the bedrock of principals that now support volunteers through wwwsnapsponsorship.com today.
Then COVID-19 hit.
Seeing the massive potential of their work so far SNAP pivoted into a SAAS platform, enabling the organisation to scale upwards and across the UK to provide support to every club, regardless of location, size and skill level.
“SNAP aim to be the worlds leading online sponsorship organisation, delivering sustainable value by creating a commercial cornerstone for all stakeholders through strategy, execution, activation. Helping the community in #TeamSNAP - Learn, Manage, Secure and Retain more sponsorship deals.”
- Mark Covington, SNAP CEO & Founder
Today SNAP continues to dedicate its time to the development and sustainability of grassroots sports clubs, upholding its four main principles to help teams maximise sponsorship revenue:
LEARN – Educate clubs to learn new sponsorship strategies.
SECURE - Provide a system and resources to secure more sponsors.
MANAGE - Automate processes to help volunteers manage partners.
RETAIN - Meet targets with professionalism to retain sponsors for longer.
Think SNAP could help your club? Contact teamsnap@snapsponsorship.com for further information.
