Team Spotlight: Sponsorship
Interview with: Raquel Levy, Sponsorship Team Lead
Raquel Levy is a rising 4th year computer science and design major at Northeastern University. This is her third year organizing HackBeanpot. Last year she was HackBeanpot’s president, and this year she decided she wanted to learn more about how sponsorship works and explore the possibilities for growth in this area. HackBeanpot was her first hackathon and a big influence on why she stuck with computer science her freshman year! She loves how everyone on the HackBeanpot team is so passionate about the work they put in for planning the event. 🎉
Meet the Sponsorship team!
What does the Sponsorship team do?
In order to put on a successful hackathon and give attendees a great experience, we need funding. The purpose of the sponsorship team is to build a relationship with companies. In return for sponsoring our hackathon, they get lots of perks: a booth at our event, a tech talk with attendees, getting to build relationships with students, and see what other companies in the Boston tech community are working on as well. Year round, the Sponsorship team is responsible for strategizing and creating sponsorship plans, researching companies, leveraging the team’s network to build connections with companies, and ultimately executing on those plans to bring in funding for HackBeanpot. In addition to having a mission-critical goal of fundraising and bringing in money to sustain the organization, Sponsorship is also about building partnerships with organizations who believe in our mission and are excited to be involved.
Tell us about Sponsorship’s work for HackBeanpot 2019.
In 2019 we created a new sponsorship packet that came with three kits: growth, inspire, and recruit. One of the favorite kits for lots of sponsors, which aligned with HackBeanpot’s own goals, was the inspire kit. This kit gave sponsors the opportunity to engage with attendees, send mentors to the event, and host an activity or meal — allowing them to work face-to-face with hackers and get right into the hackathon spirit! Our growth kit let sponsors share their APIs and technology that they wanted students to engage with. Some sponsors may not have had a specific API or technology, but instead sponsored prizes for the space they work in: for example, sponsors in health care may give a prize for best hack for public-health related projects. The recruitment kit is for sponsors who want to connect with students in a networking capacity. These sponsors get access to the attendee list and can engage with our diverse talent pool of attendees.
What is Sponsorship’s vision for HackBeanpot 2020?
Our main goal this year is to focus on the sponsorship experience, starting from the first call they have with us all the way to actually being at the event. We want our companies that attend to have as great an experience as the attendees. Our team has initiatives this year to help us with how we engage with sponsors. We are working to make our sponsorship packet more personalized and allow sponsors to focus in on areas closer to them. Options include having students learn about their technology, engaging with students, and possibly recruitment. In addition, we are creating a more robust FAQ to make sure sponsors can get the most of the perks they choose. We want to make a partnership with our sponsors and work side by side with them every step of the way.
What is your favorite part of the Sponsorship team?
It is really rewarding to get to talk to our sponsors and hear their excitement about the event. A lot of the sponsors have given us great feedback and have been enthusiastic about engaging with attendees and getting to see the really cool projects they work on. Seeing people build these kinds of connections from our event is really exciting. One of our team members has a mentor she still stays in contact who was a sponsor at HackBeanpot 2019!
Anything else you want to share?
This year we have a lot of new HackBeanpot members and it has been really cool to see everyone’s new ideas and hear their excitement for being on the team — I cannot wait to see where our new initiatives go! 🎊
