Sponsorship

Put your business in front of this county.

Every program described on this website costs money to run, and very little of it is paid for by dues alone. The Contractor Business Bootcamp, the Lunch and Learn series, Leadership Overton, Fall-O-Ween, the Annual Celebration, and the ribbon cuttings we provide to members at no charge are underwritten in large part by businesses that decided the work was worth supporting beyond their own four walls.

Sponsorship is how that happens, and it is a genuine exchange rather than a donation. A sponsor gets sustained visibility in front of the people who make purchasing and hiring decisions in Overton County, association with programming the community actually values, and a seat at the tables where this county's business leadership gathers. The Chamber gets the ability to keep programs affordable, and in several cases free, for the businesses and families who benefit from them.

If you would rather skip the reading and just talk it through, call us at (931) 823-6421 or email admin@overtonco.com and we will walk you through what fits your business and your budget.

Annual Partnership

Most businesses find that an annual partnership is simpler and better value than sponsoring events one at a time. You commit once at the beginning of the year, you are recognized across everything the Chamber does for the following twelve months, and neither of us spends the year going back and forth over individual invoices.

Annual partners receive recognition at every Chamber event in their tier, placement on the sponsor wall at the Chamber office and in the sponsor section of this website, inclusion in Chamber newsletters and social media, and priority when new sponsorable opportunities come open during the year.

Signature Events

Businesses that prefer to attach their name to a specific event rather than to the year as a whole can sponsor any of the following individually.

Annual Celebration and Membership Luncheon: The Chamber's flagship gathering of the year, bringing together the membership, elected officials, and community leadership for the annual report, recognition of the year's work, and the presentation of Chamber awards.

Sponsorship opportunities include presenting sponsorship, table sponsorship, and program advertising.

Fall-O-Ween: The largest event the Chamber puts on and the one with the broadest public reach, drawing families from across the Upper Cumberland to Livingston. What began as a single afternoon has grown into a full season of programming that runs from mid-September through the October finale, including the Boo-tiques, Bites and Brews Trail, the Leaf-Peeper Parkway Driving Tour, and the Overton County Forgotten Files interactive experience, before closing out with a day on the square and around Central Park that includes trick-or-treating, mule-drawn wagon rides, people and pet costume contests, the Fall-O-Ween Hall of Fame Awards, Night at the Museum at the Overton County Heritage Museum, and haunted historic walking tours.

Fall-O-Ween is free to attend, and it stays free because sponsors pay for it. For a business trying to reach families across a multi-county area, there is nothing else in the Chamber's calendar that comes close on turnout.

Sponsorship opportunities include season presenting sponsorship, sponsorship of an individual attraction or activity within the season, costume contest and awards sponsorship, and signage throughout the festival footprint.

Membership Luncheons and Networking Events: Quarterly membership luncheons, business after hours and before hours gatherings, and industry roundtables are the Chamber's regular convening events, and each one is available for sponsorship. A sponsor typically provides or underwrites the food and beverage, receives recognition in the event promotion and from the podium, has the opportunity to address the group briefly, and where appropriate can host the gathering at their own place of business, which is often the most valuable part of the arrangement for a sponsor with a facility worth showing off.

Program Sponsorships

Leadership Overton: This program has been developing this county's civic and business leadership for roughly three decades, and its alumni now serve on the boards, commissions, and councils that run Overton County. The program takes a cohort of approximately twelve participants through eleven full-day sessions from January through November at a tuition of $200, which covers only a fraction of what the program actually costs to deliver.

Sponsors make the difference between a program that is accessible to anyone in this county with the willingness to serve and one that is priced out of reach for the people who would benefit most.

Sponsorship opportunities include program presenting sponsorship, individual session sponsorship, participant scholarships for applicants whose employers cannot cover tuition, and graduation sponsorship.

Session hosting is its own form of support and costs nothing but time. If your business, plant, farm, or facility is somewhere a cohort ought to see in order to understand how this county works, we would like to talk with you about hosting a day.

Contractor Business Bootcamp: A full-day program for contractors, tradespeople, and students entering the trades, covering the business side of the work rather than the craft, delivered in partnership with the Biz Foundry. The first bootcamp drew more than fifty registrations, and the program now runs on a recurring schedule alongside an advanced session for established contractors ready to grow.

This is a natural fit for suppliers, lenders, insurers, and anyone else whose customers are the people in the room.

Lunch and Learn Series: Short, practical sessions built around the questions small business owners actually ask, covering finance and bookkeeping, marketing and sales, and workforce recruitment and retention. Sponsors can support the series as a whole or an individual session, and a sponsor whose own expertise fits the topic can often be the one delivering it.

My Big Idea: A competition and coaching program that gives young people in Overton County a structured way to test a business idea, get real feedback from people who have built businesses, and pitch for support. Sponsorship underwrites the prize pool, the coaching, and the program materials.

If you want your business associated with the next generation of employers in this county, this is the one.

Year-Round Visibility

Not every sponsorship is tied to an event. The following are available on an annual basis.

Chamber Newsletter: Advertising and sponsored placement in the newsletter that reaches the Chamber membership and community subscribers.

Chamber Website: Sponsor placement on this site, including on the pages that prospective residents, businesses, and site selectors actually land on.

Member Directory: Enhanced and featured placement in the directory the Chamber office consults every time someone calls looking for a business that does what you do.

New Resident and Relocation Materials: Placement in the packets the Chamber provides to people and businesses moving into Overton County.

In-Kind Sponsorship

Not every useful contribution is a check. The Chamber regularly needs printing, food and beverage, venue space, audio and visual equipment, photography, transportation, signage and banners, promotional items, and door prizes, and in-kind sponsors receive the same recognition as cash sponsors at a comparable value.

If you are not sure whether what you have to offer is useful, ask. It usually is.

Custom Sponsorship

If none of the above fits what you are trying to accomplish, tell us what you are trying to accomplish. We would rather build something around your goals than talk you into a package that does not serve them, and some of the best sponsorships this Chamber has had started with a business owner calling to ask whether we could do something a little differently.

A Note on Tax Treatment

The Livingston/Overton County Chamber of Commerce is organized under Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code as a business league, which means sponsorship payments to the Chamber are not deductible as charitable contributions. They are, however, generally treated as an ordinary and necessary business expense, typically as advertising or promotion, which for most businesses produces a comparable result.

Tourism Sponsorship

Sponsorship of the county's tourism events and destination marketing is handled through the county's tourism development partnership rather than through Chamber membership funds, and it is directed by the Overton County Tourism Advisory Board. The structure exists so that tourism dollars are accounted for separately and spent on tourism, and it means a tourism sponsorship reaches a visitor audience rather than a membership audience.

If your business depends on visitor traffic, that is very likely where your sponsorship dollars will work hardest, and we are glad to route the conversation accordingly.

How to Become a Sponsor

1. Call or email. Reach the Chamber at (931) 823-6421 or admin@overtonco.com and tell us what you are interested in. If you already know exactly what you want, we can usually have an agreement to you the same week.
2. We will send you the details. You will receive a sponsorship agreement setting out exactly what is included, what we need from you, and when we need it.
3. Send us your artwork. We will need a high-resolution logo and any specific language you want used, ideally as early as possible so that your recognition appears in the earliest round of promotion rather than the last.
4. We deliver, and we report back. You will hear from us after the event or the program year with what your sponsorship actually produced, because a sponsor is entitled to know whether the investment did anything.