Sponsorship decks are full of reach figures. The best argument we have heard for sponsoring a cleanup has none, and came from a guest talking about his father.
Hauck’s Father’s Rule
“My dad said to me many times, if there’s anything you do in life, make sure you leave the water a brighter place than you came in. And that’s what I live by. If I can’t do that, I don’t do it.”
— Jim Hauck, JP Hauck Adventures
Hauck’s own record backs the claim — he says he has “worked in a lot of nonprofits as a side thing to help build stuff” and explains it with a line that would work on a sponsorship page better than any statistic: “if you get a lot, you should give a lot.”
What It Filters Out Of A Sponsorship Decision
Our application, not his. Run the sponsorships you are considering through the rule and most of them fail on a technicality: they leave your brand brighter and the place exactly as it was.
The ones that pass share a shape. Something physical changes. Someone local can point at it afterwards. And the change would have happened whether or not a photographer was there.
Hauck is emphatic that this is about the community rather than the giver — “you make your community whole, you help your community, you help your neighbors.”
Waterway Cleanups Versus Park Cleanups
They are not interchangeable events. A park cleanup has parking, flat ground, clear sightlines, easy access for a skip and a low safety burden. It is the right first event for a group that has never run one.
A waterway cleanup has awkward access, uneven and often slippery banks, a genuine drowning risk if anyone enters moving water, more sharps, and frequently a landowner or agency whose permission is required. It also has a stronger story and a clearer downstream benefit.
If you run a waterway event: brief the safety rules out loud, nobody works alone, nobody enters the water, and unknown containers get left for the authority rather than bagged.
Measuring The Brighter Part Honestly
The temptation is to publish a big number. The discipline is to publish a real one.
Weigh what you can weigh. Count bags where you cannot. Photograph the same view before and after. Say which figures were measured and which were estimated. And do not convert bags into tonnes with a multiplier you found on the internet.
A modest verified number is worth more to a sponsor’s own reporting than a large invented one, because theirs has to survive scrutiny too.
See the Fiesta Island cleanup and the Siesta Beach cleanup for examples.
Our statement of purpose sets out what we will and will not claim.