Corporate or private sponsorships?

[emorymom]

Has anyone sought corporate or private sponsorships for your athletes? Can you tell me about the experience if you have?

 

[gym law mom]

If you are asking about sponsorhsips for just your child be very very careful. She may never get to the stage of doing college gymnastics, but this is one thing that can wipe out her NCAA eligibility. If you're looking at it from a booster club standpoint, yes many gyms get businesses to sponsor the team(not 1 girl).

 

[Gymdad2]

Gum Law Mom is absolutely correct. If you accept any kind of individual corportate sponsorship or support you will jeopardize her amateur status which would include hs, college and other amateur competitions. I don't know about team sponsorships, but you can have corporate support for your booster club and any meet that your boosters may put on. There's a lot of money out there for this type of support.

 

[emorymom]

Are you sure it's a problem even if the amount given by the sponsors is far short of the easily documented tuition and fees?

I know someone who got some community business sports sponsors for her daughter individually for cheerleading. But even if there are cheerleaders on scholarship (and I have no idea) this child was going to quit for religious reasons at a certain age so it would have been a non-issue for them.

Now I'm getting slightly off topic, but at a swim club we were in, when the kids got pledges for swim a thon, everything over $40 went into their individual accounts so they could use it for meet fees. I am wondering how this would be different if a business pledged?

 

[gym law mom]

Its late, so may not be able to give the most detailed answer. As to the swim team, one key word was "kids"---they got money for the team and then some was carried over into individual accounts which can also be iffy with the IRS.

Doesn't matter if business A or company B gives your dd $100/month total and her tuition is $350. At that point she is being paid to do gymnastics---a major no no.