by Osman Sheikh on
Congratulations. Your event just went from being an idea to a real thing. You have a planning committee set up, maybe a few speakers and activities in mind, and a general overview of what you want your event to be.
You start looking into venues, equipment rentals, tools you need to plan your event, event marketing costs, and the dozens of other costs involved with planning an event.
You come to a realization: you need sponsors.
Sure, you can cut costs and go lean, maybe skip a few unnecessary items, but the reality is, most people are bombarded with a variety of different events they can attend. To put on a quality event that is worth attending, you need a sizable budget, and one of the most common sources of funding for events is sponsorship revenue.
The first step to courting sponsors for your event is to create a sponsorship prospectus, also known as a conference concept document.
The purpose of a sponsorship prospectus is to effectively communicate the value of sponsoring you event.
For sponsors, the value of sponsoring your event can come in the form of more customers, increased brand awareness, and/or an increase in community engagement. A potential sponsor’s goal when reading your sponsorship prospectus is to gauge whether your audience is relevant, large, and active enough to invest in it.
Having a good sponsorship prospectus is essential for any event trying to find sponsors.
The first page of your sponsorship prospectus should be a high level overview of your event with metrics on the event and the demographics of its attendees.
The statistics you should include depends on whether or not this is the first year the event has been held. If your event recurs annually, then you can use statistics from past events. The number of attendees, and demographics of those attendees, such as careers, age, education level, and geographic location, should be considered.
Metrics about the event, or the organization or team behind the event, are also important. Metrics that potential sponsors may be interested in include social media activity surrounding the event and the social media reach or popularity of the event organizers.
Use graphs and charts to communicate these metrics visually.
The next page consists of the qualitative aspects of the event – how long the event has been running, the format of the event, topics covered, the target market of the event, and more information or short biographies of the event organizers.
It is important to frame the event description to appeal to sponsors. Show sponsors the opportunities they have to reach a certain demographic or target market, to influence a community, or be a part of something big.
It is also recommended that you include pictures of past events.
The final few pages of your sponsorship prospectus should communicate specific sponsorship information such as sponsorship levels and slots, along with pricing.
You can use sponsorship tiers, such as bronze, silver, and gold, where each tier includes a certain amount of sponsorship perks, such as free tickets, sponsor logos on banners, or sponsoring an after party.
Alternatively, you can present this information as à la carte sponsorship slots, where each sponsorship opportunity is sold separately. For example, sponsoring a talk would cost a certain amount, while sponsoring a drink-up would cost more. Having sponsorship slots allows sponsors to choose which aspects of the event they want to sponsor and allows the event organizers to have more sponsors.
Remember that the sponsorship prospectus is effectively a sales pitch, so it is important to include the reach of each sponsorship level or slot. For a sponsorship slot on the event website, this might be the number of visits the website receives.
After editing, reviewing, and maybe a few changes, your sponsorship prospectus is done. Except for one thing.
Sponsors need a way to pay you. You can have sponsors send a check by mail, or use event management software like BusyConf to sell sponsorships online.
P.S: If you’re looking for a way to make your event better and increase sponsorship revenue at the same time, BusyConf’s mobile event schedules have a banner that you can sell as a sponsorship slot. Contact us for more information at .
