High school athletic programs nationwide face real funding pressure — and traditional fundraising can only go so far. Zubie Five builds a professional sponsorship program around your existing assets and community audience, connecting your school with local businesses and regional brands who want to be part of your community.
Oversee multiple schools as a district — elementary, middle, or high school? Bundling sponsorship across every school means one agreement instead of many — see how district bundling works →
Get StartedMost school fundraising works by asking the people who already paid. Families who covered registration, spirit wear, and travel fees get asked again — to sell, to donate, to show up to one more car wash or product drive, or to work a restaurant night where a missed mention, a forgotten code, or a distracted cashier means the sale happened and the program never saw a dime of it.
Sponsorship asks businesses with marketing budgets instead. A local business buys visibility in front of a community it wants to reach. It's a purchase, not a favor. Your coaches coach, your booster club governs, your families watch their kids play — and nobody's child stands outside a grocery store with an order form.
At a school running a dozen programs, football, volleyball, and band can all walk into the same coffee shop or the same auto shop in the same month, each asking for a couple hundred dollars. Twelve separate small asks are twelve separate chances to hear no. One coordinated conversation — offering visibility across all twelve programs at once — is a larger, more valuable, and easier proposition to say yes to.
A business owner asked eleven times this year by eleven different kids, for eleven small amounts, with no idea what any of it actually bought them, has been trained by experience. Turning down the twelfth ask isn't a rejection of your program — it's a rejection of a process that never worked for that owner either.
That doesn't mean your banquet, alumni game, or signature tournament stops working — those build school pride beyond the money, and they're worth keeping. Sponsorship replaces the grind of product sales and repeat donation asks, not the events your program is already proud of.
Netting $5,000 through a typical product fundraiser takes selling something like 5,000 chocolate bars at standard margins. The same $5,000 comes from about four sponsors at $2,000 each, after commission — calls your athletic department never has to make.
Commission-only. We earn 15–30% of the sponsorship revenue we close for you, scaled to deal size — larger deals, lower rates. Renewal rates decline every season and never reach zero. We're paid only on money you actually collect, never on signatures.
We work with organizations where the total sponsorship opportunity is $1,000 or more per season. There's no minimum on any individual sponsorship — five outfield banners at $200 each is a program we'll build. One $200 banner with nothing else to sell isn't.
If you're not sure what you've got, our valuation tool is free and we'll walk through it with you.
See the full commission structure →Bringing this to a board? See the questions they'll ask →
Can a public high school accept sponsorships? +
Two things worth knowing depending on where you are. Arizona districts can hold athletic sponsorship revenue in the Auxiliary Operations Fund under A.R.S. §15-1125, which keeps it with athletics rather than routing it to the county treasurer. California districts should look at Education Code 35182.5, which restricts contracts granting advertising rights unless the board has adopted a policy at a public hearing and the contract is entered on a competitive basis — districts read its scope differently, and we work to your counsel's reading, not ours.
Your state athletic association (AIA, CIF, NIAA) governs student eligibility and endorsement, not your department's sale of signage. District policy is the gate.
Where does the sponsorship money actually go — athletics, or the district? +
Arizona has a fund built for it. State statute creates an Auxiliary Operations Fund for money raised in connection with athletic activities and exempts it from the general requirement to deposit district receipts with the county treasurer. With governing board authorization, the revenue can stay with athletics.
California has no athletics-specific equivalent. District policy commonly directs sponsorship revenue to the General Fund. If that's your district, routing sponsorships through your booster club or education foundation is usually the better structure — and we'll help you figure out which applies before you invest time in this.
Nevada is entirely a matter of your district's own policy, so we ask before we build your program rather than assume.
Who has to approve this, and how long does it take? +
We build the timeline around your board calendar from the first conversation, and every sponsor agreement we prepare for a district includes an approval contingency clause, so a sponsor is never told a deal is done before your board says it is.
How do you handle photos of our students? +
Our end-of-season report proves a sponsor's placement was up and visible — banner shots, wide venue shots, crowd shots at distance. We don't compose images so an identifiable athlete appears alongside sponsor branding, because in Arizona, California, and Nevada, student-athletes may not appear in commercial endorsements in uniform or displaying school insignia. We work from your district's media policy and opt-out list, and we don't provide student or parent contact information to sponsors under any circumstances.
How do we handle the booster club vs. athletic department split? +
What sports or programs can be included? +
Will this interfere with existing partnerships or naming rights? +
Our registration platform already offers sponsorship money — why do we need this? +
How do I know Zubie Five won't take our sponsor's money and disappear? +
What happens if we sign and it doesn't work out? +
Is this considered fundraising? Do we need to register as using a professional solicitor? +
What happens to our sponsors if you can't continue operating? +
How does Zubie Five get paid? +
Because your district pays our commission by invoice, we'll need to be set up in your vendor system — W-9, certificate of insurance with the district named as additional insured, and whatever registration form your business office uses. We handle that paperwork on our end so it doesn't land on your desk.
We're a sales representative, not a contractor. We don't install signage, run activations, or work your events — your organization handles fulfillment, and sponsors bring their own people. If your district requires background clearance for any vendor regardless of campus access, we'll complete it.
Send us your district's vendor requirements and we'll have them back before our first meeting.
Are you at the district level rather than one campus? See how a multi-location program works →
Federal school-meal marketing rules limit food and beverage marketing on campus during the school day to products meeting the Smart Snacks standards, and those rules reach scoreboards, posters, menu boards, and cups.
But brand-mark marketing is not restricted. A restaurant's name and logo can go on your outfield banner; a photograph of their food can't. We screen every food and beverage prospect against this before we approach them, control the artwork so it stays compliant, and confirm your district's policy with your child nutrition lead rather than guessing.
Which means you never get a call from a business we shouldn't have contacted.
These are a few of the markets we're building in — not the full list. If you're outside these markets, reach out anyway — we take on new territory when the opportunity is right.
Tap your city or county to see local market details.
Tap a guide below to open it.
Listing isn't selling. Sponsorship marketplaces put your inventory in a directory and wait for someone to find it. We build the packages, identify the businesses, make the calls, and close the deals. If nobody's reaching out to your program today, a listing won't change that.
No upfront cost. No contract term. Just results. Get started with a free sponsorship valuation today.