College students are counting down the days until spring break, and on many campuses they'll be heading off to do volunteer community service rather than to the traditional party destinations, hammering nails for hurricane victims or working in homeless shelters.
Corporate sponsors will be helping to make it all happen.
To find out how to get your client’s message in front of a powerful demographic in the process of forming brand preferences, read on.
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Fast Facts
What
Sponsorship of service-oriented spring break programs for college students.
Who
Break Away, headquartered in Atlanta.
How it works
Corporations and businesses sponsor alternative spring break programs and trips for college students who travel to sites in the U.S. and beyond to work in anti-poverty, environmental and other social programs.
Sponsorship ranges from funding entire trips or elements of trips, such as transportation costs, to underwriting training for the student leaders.
“Sponsorship is targeted,” says president Jill Piacitelli. “We connect sponsors with student groups by geographic area or by social issue.”
Corporations also support Break Away, a non-profit, with donations.
Sponsorship of week-long leadership training sessions includes donations of anywhere from $500 to $10,000 or providing workshop space, transportation, housing, food and guest speakers.
Restoration in the Katrina-damaged Gulf draws the largest number of student groups. Other recent and upcoming projects include working with the homeless in Washington, D.C., and trail building in Tennessee.
Sponsors are local as well as national. “We work out sponsorship like hotel deals across all the locations,” Piacitelli says. “We also train our school partners about how to approach local businesses.”
School groups often include mention of their corporate sponsors on their web sites and on trip t-shirts, as well as including them in trip meetings and banquets.
Sponsors can negotiate the use of the school’s logo on their web sites, in ad copy or in promotional literature.
Markets
Schools in the Break Away program span 40 states from Connecticut to California. They also span the spectrum from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which sponsors 60 spring break alternative trips, to smaller schools like St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., which is sponsoring 10 trips this year.
Numbers
Break Away assists 130 schools and arranges approximately 1,300 trips involving 12,000 to 15,000 students. The group also works with 400 nonprofit community groups to organize the volunteer work.
Nationally 50,000 to 65,000 students volunteer over spring break. Trips are organized through campus groups, such as churches and fraternities, as well as by Break Away.
Research
When asked about factors that drive their purchasing decisions, 33 percent of college students said they prefer brands that provide a return to the community, are environmentally safe or connected to a cause, according to a 2006 College Explorer Study conducted by Harris Interactive for Alloy Media + Marketing.
Further, it reports that 24 percent of students purchased a product within the past year specifically because of its relation to a social cause and that 45 percent of students report they are active volunteers, whether on their own or through a college-sponsored group.
What product categories do well
Local businesses that cater to college students like clothing retailers, fast food outlets and bookstores are typical local sponsors.
Topping the list nationally are electronics, entertainment and communications, as well as brands that tout involvement in socially responsible causes.
Demographics
In the U.S. there are some 17 million college students, and each year they spend $46 million on discretionary purchases, according to the same Harris study.
Students opting for alternative spring break trips span the socio-economic spectrum, and the skew is heavily female. “Out of 12 students on a trip, usually eight or nine are women,” Piacitelli says. “With leadership of trips, 75 to 80 percent are women.”
Making the buy
Lead time varies with sponsorship level. Training sessions for student leaders takes place in the summer preceding the spring break trips.
Student training costs $600 per participant for the full week. Participants are out doing direct service half days and are in workshops half days.
Who’s already sponsoring alternative spring break trips
Orbitz is a current sponsor.
What they’re saying
“These students are an attentive audience when it comes to products they want to invest in in the future. I think they’re seeing corporations come in and help students get out and do some powerful work over spring break, and that makes an impression.” – Jill Piacitelli, director of Break Away
Web site info
Break Away at www.alternativebreaks.org
