Charity Sponsors for Vending Machines

If you're a little apprehensive about talking to location owners or site managers, being able to offer a vending machine with a charity sponsorship can help boost your confidence a lot. A charity sponsorship is exactly what it sounds like -- a charity sponsors your vending machine. You get to put their sticker on the vending machine, showing people that their purchase helps support the charity, and in exchange for that you pay the charity a monthly licensing fee, usually $2-3 per vending machine.



This can be a great way to make yourself feel better by supporting charities you care about, but it also gives you a very valuable negotiating tool for securing vending locations. It is critical, however, that you choose your words carefully when you have a charity sponsor. You can not say that you are a fund raiser for the charity, because that would engage all kinds of laws and rules that you don't want to get anywhere near. What you should say is that you are "working with" the charity.

When you first approach location owners with this kind of pitch, introduce yourself and tell them your company name and that you are working with whatever charty it is you're working with. Tell them specifically what the charity does, and then immediately tell them that you're not looking to get any money out of them, you just wanted to see if they had a corner somewhere that you could put in a vending machine for the charity. Tell them you'll be the one maintaining the vending machine, and that you'd be happy to put in whatever candy (or product) that they would prefer, provided you're either already selling it, or you can get it fairly easily.

Don't get too generous with letting them pick what they want, and consider not even offering this "pick what I'll sell offer". They may be so easy that they'll say yes as soon as you mention charity. Of course, if you can sell what they like, you'll make a lot more money.

Working With Schools

Another terrific way to do good and boost your business is to partner with a school. Most schools, as you probably know, as desperate for extra funding. You can capitalize on this by offering them a portion of your sales (a commission) if they let you put your vending machines in their school.

If you happen to be selling "healthy" snacks like bottled water, nuts, granola bars and other even marginally nutritious foods, this can be a major win-win situation. Even if you can't get in front of the kids, getting a machine into a teacher's lounge is a jackpot location.

Another way to make this work even better is to support a particular program at the school. Sports teams are hugely classic examples -- how many times has a kid appeared on your doorstep selling candy bars to support their soccer team? -- but you can also put in a vending machine to help finance a local scholarship (and you can partner with local business groups to do this), or to support a drama program, or to help the school library upgrade their computers or keep their selection of books up to date.

Start a Vending Machine Business | privacy | contact | about | © 2011 City Different Marketing LLC