Equity and Development Sponsorship
At the heart of everything we do stands our company values. We are a team made up of individuals who believe in doing what’s best for our customers as well as our community. We are focused on inclusivity, supportiveness, empowerment, and operating according to the most responsible business practices possible.
We believe in making progress towards increasing the participation of underrepresented athletes in our sport every single year. We plan to achieve this by supporting equitable action through every aspect of what we do, including through the creation of our Equity and Development Sponsorship (previously the VC Women’s Development Sponsorship).
THE EQUITY AND DEVELOPMENT SPONSORSHIP, A 15% NO-OBLIGATIONS SPONSORSHIP DISCOUNT ON UNIFORM ORDERS, IS BEING OFFERED TO ALL YOUTH, COLLEGE, LEAGUE AND CLUB TEAMS!
This sponsorship is available for teams who fall under one or more of these categories:
- A team made up of majority players of color
- A team whose players have marginalized identities in socioeconomic status and wealth
- A team in the Women’s division (College, Youth, and Club level)
- A team that welcomes and includes non-binary, gender non-conforming, and/or gender queer players
- A team whose players and leadership promote and take action towards racial, class, and gender equity
In other words, we are opening up this sponsorship to any team, regardless of gender and skill, who are active allies in equity efforts in our sport.
WHY?
First, we recognize our own privilege. VC was started by three white, upper middle class kids attending an elite university. A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into building VC over the last 20 years, but we recognize that we started with many advantages that have contributed to our success.
Second, as we looked back at our strong stance on gender equity, we realized that we were only addressing part of our community’s equality problem. We have realized that we need to learn about intersectionality and focus more on issues such as race and socioeconmic status, as well. Intersectionality is a concept used to describe ways in which oppressive institutions are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. In other words, intersectionality considers that various forms of social labeling, such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender, do not exist separately from each other but are interwoven together. You can read more about intersectionality here.
We are hoping this sponsorship contributes to minimizing the barriers of entry to the sport for underrepresented athletes, to provide recognition for the strength of these athletes, and to encourage visibility in the challenges they face.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
It’s simple. We’ll ask you to tell us a bit about your team in this form and we’ll be in touch within 1-2 business days. We encourage you to take the necessary time during these applications to ensure thoughtful responses.
As long as your “application is genuine”, a 15% discount will be added to any estimates we send you for your team uniforms and we’ll walk you through the order process from start to finish. Other benefits:
- Free professional design help (up to 3 hours per team).
- Free coach jersey (1 per team)
- Free VC Card Membership for your coach and captains (maximum 3 per team)
- Individual team and player direct online ordering–check out our current system here.
That’s it! There are literally no strings attached as we wanted an incredibly simple way to help save resources as a team, and aid the future of our sport. Thank you for helping us achieve our goals.
WHAT ELSE CAN VC DO FOR YOUR TEAM?
We are committed to working every day to be the best we can be, and that includes supporting the initiatives and values of our community. Here are some more examples of what else we can do:
- Promote your team and its initiatives via our wide-reaching social media channels.
- Share the success stories of VC-sponsored teams to help learn from each other and inspire our community.
- Offer your team Discs for Development, which allows us to offer Discraft practice discs for a low price.
Most importantly, we’ll continue to use our reach to stand up and speak out for what’s right and do our best to support and promote equity in ultimate through our actions, investments, and our sponsorships.
HERE’S THAT APPLICATION FORM AGAIN, OR DROP US A LINE TO HEAR MORE AT INFO@VCULTIMATE.COM
Interested in hearing more about VC and our values? Check out these links to read more: