Sponsorship

Sponsorship for events has become essential to help make them affordable. We also attract sponsors to events to, for example, pay for a student to attend or support the attendance of speakers or people outside of the usual remit (e.g. legal staff). This, in turn, attracts different audiences to the event and raises the profile of the sponsoring organisations. Sponsors offering free t-shirts, software licences or even hardware can also enrich the experience of attendees.

One has to be careful with sponsorship – there is a delicate balance between in-kind and actual cash. Sometimes in-kind sponsorship can help enrich the programme, but it does not help your budget.

The Event Lead should use the goals and themes of the workshop to identify which companies might be interested in sponsoring your event.

A set of packages (e.g. the traditional Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) should be created before approaching any sponsors. It’s a good idea to leave room for ad hoc sponsorship and be clear about what advantages (e.g. presence on all organiser intro slides) or influence sponsors will have (e.g. a talking slot, a workshop slot, a stand) before and during the event.

As mentioned in the Infrastructure section, members of the event team should get assigned the task of attracting sponsorship. After successful first contact by the event team, the Event Lead can then take forward the conversation with any potential sponsors.