Talk:Sponsorship
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This is copied from the LCA How To
Contents |
Dealing with sponsors and contracts
Sponsorship
Firstly, sponsors are NOT essential to the conference. <pia>However, sponsorship ensures keeping the prices down for attendees, and ensures futureproofing of the conference. A budget can be planned that does not include sponsorship money, however it is nice to have them on board, and particularly where both large and small sponsors can be engaged to ensure local industry also benefits from the conference.
Eligibility
Initially you may wish to consider who is eligible to become a sponsor of LCA. For example, would you allow Microsoft to sponsor the conference? You may wish to draft a policy for acceptance as a sponsor. Consideration may be given to the following:
- Is the company supportive of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)?
- Does the company use or distribute FOSS software?
- Does the company employ FOSS programmers?
LCA 05 formulated such a policy and it is available for review. - would be good to get a copy of this --Catscratch 14:43, 5 Apr 2006 (EST)
Contracts
Sponsorship contracts should be entered into with all sponsors. A written contract ensures everyone involved is aware of their responsibilities, and provides a support should disputes occur. Templates of previous sponsorship contracts are available. Sponsorship deals are made year to year, and therefore are subject to change. The following is a list of considerations regarding sponsorship packages:
- levels of sponsorship
- cost of packages (at diff levels of sponsorship)
- inclusive of x amount of tickets or not (usually NOT, but make this VERY clear)
- advertising and signage
- bag inserts
- sponsor responsibilities (due dates for payments, inserts to arrive etc)
- conference responsibilities (advertising space, time for announcements at PDNS, conference dinner etc)
Small sponsors are sometimes the hardest to manage, so clear levels of sponsorship, with responsibilities and expectations clearly set out are important to ensure stress levels are kept as low as possible.
Also it is very important that the sponsors feel the money spent is worthwhile, so ensuring the sponsors get feedback, can show their ROI, and are engaged with during and after the conference is very important.
Ultimately this process is very flexible, but keeping sponsors happy if we engage with them is very important to ensuring they will participate in future conferences.
