Instead of writing a letter from scratch, you can make a copy of our letter template to contact local businesses to request donations.
It’s a good idea to find sponsors to help with expenses whether you have a budget or not. Our budget to start was….none.
Imagine trying to plan a weekend-long women’s retreat with no budget at all! That’s where we were when we first began our Loving Christ retreats.
Because we set up our retreats independently of our home churches, we didn’t have even have a minimal starting budget. We needed to approach our plans frugally!
Both Brooke and I (Julie) knew God was calling us to hold these retreats. We pitched in a little bit of our own money to get started and then began putting together our team and planning our agenda.
Once we had enough planned that we knew we would see it through, we started posting information and links to a registration form for early bird registrations.
As registrations began coming in, we were able to put all of the money into a retreat fund. This allowed us to start budgeting for food, craft and activity supplies, insurance, and other items we needed.
Door prizes are always tons of fun at any meeting or retreat, so we definitely wanted to giveaway lots of small prizes throughout the retreat and possibly one or two big prizes.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the funds to purchase much. After praying about our options and speaking with our team, we decided to reach out to local businesses and request donations.
This made me a little nervous as I didn’t want to have to ask, but my desire to offer as many prizes as possible to the ladies motivated me to move forward on the idea.
I put together a simple letter explaining who we were, what our goals for the retreat were, and what supplies we needed.
If you’d like to do something similar, you are welcome to use this letter template based on what I sent out. Simply replace the red text with your own information. Feel free to modify anything else to fit your needs.
There are two ways you can use this letter template:
1. Click on this link to open it in Google Docs, Make a Copy, customize, and print (you will need to sign in to your free Google account if you haven’t already) –>> Sponsor Request Letter Template
2. Copy/Paste the letter below into your own Word Processing program to customize and print.
Hello!
On behalf of Loving Christ Ministries, we are writing to ask for your support for our upcoming women’s retreat, The Joy in Jesus. Geared toward women looking to grow together in their faith and with their relationship with Jesus Christ, the goal of this year’s retreat is to provide opportunities for women to come together for worship, bible study, creativity, and stewardship.
We are looking for sponsors to help us in this endeavor. Our wish is to keep our expenses low in order to offer our retreat at a low or no cost to the women. We don’t want anyone to be left out due to finances.
Your support and contribution will enhance the quality of our retreat. We’re asking our sponsors to provide one or more of the following: monetary donations that will go directly for speaker’s fees, location fees, and insurance costs, food donations for our cooks to prepare meals, and small gift items such as books, CDs, or gift cards for us to give away as door prizes.
We are willing to meet with you to discuss the common interests between you/your organization and our Loving Christ Ministries retreats. All sponsors will be recognized in the retreat program.
Please contact us by text (xxx-xxx-xxxx) or email (xxxxxxxx) if you’re able to help support our mission. We look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you,
Julie Pfeifer, Loving Christ Ministries
Even if you plan your retreat through your church and have a small budget to begin with, you might want to gather sponsors to help provide more. Local sponsors help bring the community together, too.
Be sure to check out my other posts on frugal retreat planning:
30 Most Popular Door Prizes for a Women’s Retreat
Planning Food for a Women’s Retreat
5 Frugal Meals from One Shredded Chicken Recipe
Ultimate Collection of Women’s Retreat Resources
Want to remember this? Post this article, How to Request Sponsors for your Women’s Retreat, to your favorite Pinterest board!
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