Fundraising success
It was Matamoros’ ability to raise money that led to her getting involved in the first place. She was a runner in high school and college, and later worked in sales before deciding to stay home and raise her three kids.
For 10 years, Matamoros kept her skill set sharp by raising money for women’s and children’s causes as a volunteer. She was able to get $50,000 in donations for a local 5K, and another friend who had been trying to get the marathon restarted said, “If you can do this for the 5K, can you do it for the marathon?”
“To me, it was just kind of serendipitous. Because I had to cut my (running) career early, based on a personal injury to my hip, so for me to go back into running was a dream,” she says. “It was really wild because my whole life kind of came full circle at that point. I didn’t care what it took. I just knew that I would do what I needed to do to make it happen.”
And why is she so successful at sales?
“In terms of money, I would say you have to turn every single rock you can turn over,” Matamoros says. “You have to be really incredibly resourceful, and look at the ideal targets of what can get you to where you need to go — and go after those targets. And for us, it was major corporations that were headquartered in the city of Pittsburgh, or in the area surrounding the city of Pittsburgh.”
Creating value for sponsors
Today, about 30 percent of the event’s income comes from corporate sponsorships — although that doesn’t take into account the in-kind premium items those sponsors provide and other tangible ways they help.
Matamoros looks at the sponsorships as a mutually beneficial relationship. And as the event has grown, so has the value of the sponsorships.
“There are a lot of different reasons why sponsors go into sponsoring — for ROI, the community awareness. We really try to identify what are those key things that they want out of the sponsorship. What are they looking for?” she says.
Once they understand the sponsor’s needs and goals, Matamoros says they structure the sponsorship around that, staying in touch frequently and building on the value every year.
“We would never want to get into a relationship promising a sponsor that we could deliver 27,000 customers,” she says. “But we would get into a relationship with a sponsor saying, ‘We can expose 27,000 people to you.’”
They also use sophisticated diagnostic tools, such as BurrellesLuce and J. Wine Associates, to show sponsors the value.
In fact, an awareness survey indicated that 98 percent of runners knew Dick’s Sporting Goods was the title sponsor, and research from Robert Morris University found that in some cases the marathon’s sponsorships were more effective than NASCAR sponsorships.
“Our goal is always to under promise and over deliver,” she says. ●
