Introducing Global Partners to the Bohol Coconuts
How Lerma Moore is approaching outreach to Filipino-American business owners, expat retirees, and international brands with Philippine market interests who have the capacity to fund the Bohol Coconuts and the personal history to care about what it stands for.
The pitch starts with a problem. Most people Lerma Moore calls have never opened a map to Barangay Cambanac. They do not know that Bohol is the tenth-largest island in the Philippines. They have not heard of the Bohol Coconuts Baseball and Softball Club.
That is precisely the point. The club is new, the facilities are still on paper, and the 2026 launch date is circled on a calendar, not yet written in box scores. Lerma understands all of that. She also understands something the typical sponsorship pitch ignores.
The people most likely to invest in something like this are not looking for exposure metrics. They are looking for a reason that feels personal.
The Coconuts have identified three distinct sponsor profiles. Each brings a different motivation. Each requires a different conversation.
Filipino-American Business Owners
Entrepreneurs in the US with roots in the Philippines who built something abroad and want to give back to communities that shaped them. Baseball and softball are familiar sports. Bohol is often family.
Expat Retirees in Bohol
Foreign nationals who chose Bohol as their permanent home. Many are American, Australian, or European. They have discretionary income, they care about their community, and they are looking for projects with visible local impact.
International Brands, Philippine Markets
Companies expanding into Southeast Asia for whom brand presence in a fast-growing Philippine province is more than charity. Sports sponsorship is one of the cleanest entry points into community trust.
Merv Moore, the club’s Sports and Media Director, is direct about the division of roles. Lerma is from Bohol. She grew up in this province. When she talks about what the club means to young athletes in Cambanac and the surrounding barangays, she is not reading from a deck. She is speaking from her own life.
That authenticity matters in sponsorship conversations, especially with Filipino-American donors who have heard every variation of the overseas appeal and can spot a manufactured pitch in seconds.
Merv supports the outreach with written materials, the club’s digital presence, and media strategy. But when the call comes from someone in California or Texas or Dubai who wants to know whether this is real, Lerma takes it.
Bohol’s international name recognition is growing, driven largely by tourism. Chocolate Hills, the Tarsier Sanctuary, the white-sand beaches of neighboring islands — these are images that circulate globally. The Coconuts use that familiarity as an opening, then redirect the conversation toward the island’s interior communities.
Tourism puts Bohol on the map. Sports infrastructure, they argue, keeps young people on the island. The pitch positions the Bohol Coconuts not as a novelty but as the beginning of a youth development pipeline in a province where one has not previously existed.
For international brands, that positioning translates directly into CSR language. Philippine operations teams at multinationals know the value of being associated with a credible, first-mover community program in a province that is not Manila.
Naming and Recognition Rights
Field signage, jersey placement, digital presence across club media, and acknowledgment at all club events. In a province this size, early sponsors become permanent parts of the story.
Market Entry Credibility
For companies entering the Philippine market, community sports sponsorship builds trust faster than advertising. The Coconuts offer ground-floor access to a province with an upward trajectory.
A Legacy Stake
For individual donors with Filipino roots, this is something different from a tax receipt. It is a way to put their name, or the name of someone they loved, on a program that will outlast the initial investment.
The Coconuts are formalizing early-stage memberships through a Founders Club structure. The concept is straightforward: those who commit before the facilities are built, before the first roster is set, before the first season is played, receive recognition that later sponsors will not be able to purchase.
It is a model borrowed from the arts and nonprofit world, adapted for sport. The idea is that scarcity of opportunity is itself a value proposition. There will only ever be one group of founding sponsors.
Lerma frames it simply. You cannot be there on day one twice. Either you were or you were not. The Founders Club is for the people who were.
