{"id":3752,"date":"2025-11-21T00:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T00:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/21\/student-startup-promotone-curates-authentic-sponsorships\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T00:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T00:49:09","slug":"student-startup-promotone-curates-authentic-sponsorships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/21\/student-startup-promotone-curates-authentic-sponsorships\/","title":{"rendered":"Student startup Promotone curates authentic sponsorships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A startup that began as an idea between high school students six years ago has grown into a platform striving to set new standards for how brands and student organizations form partnerships. Founded by three University of Michigan students and two other entrepreneurs,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.promotone.app\/about.html\"> Promotone<\/a> is a platform that aims to serve as a bridge between brands and student organizations, helping students curate authentic sponsorships with brands without having to manage the process on their own. Promotone is not directly affiliated with the University of Michigan.<em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Nathan Kalosa-Kenyon, Promotone\u2019s co-founder and CBO, said the team intentionally chose to work with student organizations because they have an incentive to uphold their reputation on campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe student organization is enticed to actually provide authentic engagement because they\u2019re getting funded, and it affects their reputation on campus, as students or a student organization\u2019s identity is tied to each of these promotions,\u201d Kalosa-Kenyon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The team also focused on student organizations to help alleviate the<a href=\"https:\/\/campusinvolvement.umich.edu\/article\/funding-sources-your-organizationprograms\"> funding<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/student-government\/csg-passes-revised-fall-budget-after-student-org-complaints\/\">gaps<\/a> many student organizations on college campuses face. Business junior Kevin Toledo, Promotone\u2019s head of growth, told The Daily student organizations constantly face significant challenges when it comes to securing sponsorships.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cAs a student \u2014 going out of your way to seek sponsorships, getting communication \u2014 it\u2019s hundreds, if not thousands, of emails back and forth,\u201d Toledo said. \u201cBy using a platform like Promotone, you basically have to do zero of the work other than just, \u2018Here\u2019s what we have proposed for you: agree or decline.\u2019 From there, it\u2019s like the exact same process you would have done before, but you just eliminated potentially tens of hours just sending out emails trying to get those sponsorships for events.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In September 2025,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/sepumich\/\"> Sigma Eta Pi<\/a>, the University\u2019s co-ed entrepreneurship fraternity, partnered with Promotone for a fundraiser with<a href=\"https:\/\/washtenawdairy.com\/\"> Washtenaw Dairy<\/a>. The collaboration raised hundreds of dollars for the club, while SEPi\u2019s social media posts earned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DPAXbxYCNo5\/\">thousands of views<\/a> for the brand. In an interview with The Daily, Public Health senior Madia Adnan, SEPI president, said while the club had struggled to meet its financial goals in the past, Promotone helped the club reach them this year and be sponsored by a brand outside of ones the organization has partnered with in previous years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPromotone gave us the ability for our first fundraiser to be sponsored by another brand,\u201d Adnan said. \u201cPromotone is a very fundamental platform that can allow for the professional growth of your organization to help reach your fundraising efforts and provide you the support that you need from these local Ann Arbor brands and companies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kalosa-Kenyon said brands also benefit from using Promotone, since the platform is designed to help both the business and the student organization benefit from collaboration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou kill two birds with one stone, to the effect of giving brands authentic marketing with Gen Z, as well as compensating those student organizations through either product-based or financial sponsorship materials,\u201d Kalosa-Kenyon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Western Michigan University senior Benjamin Morin, Promotone Co-founder and CTO, said the company measures the success of collaborations between businesses and student organizations through a variety of data including social media views and event attendance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a couple different terms that the organizations and the brands could come to and that\u2019s how we\u2019re measuring success \u2026 the type of reach and outreach that the organization got for the brand through the sponsorship,\u201d said Morin. Whether it\u2019s a sponsorship of an organization or an event that they\u2019re throwing, we\u2019re able to track the number of people that show up at the event, the number of social media views that their posts about an event or about sponsorship get.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rackham student Jad Merie, Promotone\u2019s co-founder and CEO, said the team is planning to expand their reach to other college campuses in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re working on expanding to five other flagship campuses around the Big Ten Conference, going into the spring semester of 2026,\u201d Merie said. \u201cThe main goal is to transition the first five and break out into 30, to expand beyond the Big Ten and into more of the Southeastern Conference schools and get more exposure around the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Merie said he hopes the business will grow into a platform that student organizations can naturally rely on to obtain their fundraising goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThis is the future of trying to get through Gen Z and establishing directly with student organizations that actually are excited about promoting your product,\u201d Merie said. \u201cIt becomes normal for brands to go through the platform, and student organizations get the funding they need to do extracurriculars, to recruit new members and enjoy the experience of the four years at college.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Grace Park can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/business\/student-startup-promotone-curates-authentic-sponsorships-between-brands-and-student-orgs\/mailto:gracepm@umich.edu\"><em>gracepm@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A startup that began as an idea between high school students six years ago has grown into a platform striving to set new standards for how brands and student organizations form partnerships. Founded by three University of Michigan students and two other entrepreneurs, Promotone is a platform that aims to serve as a bridge between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[239,3716,3715,3717,409,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-3752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-authentic","9":"tag-curates","10":"tag-promotone","11":"tag-sponsorships","12":"tag-startup","13":"tag-student"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3754,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions\/3754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}