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Handbook => Education => Sponsorship & Revenue
Importance of Program Affordability
Know your potential audience for a particular program and assess the degree to which a particular fee is fair and tolerable. Affordability is often an important consideration in the decision to attend a particular program, and you can often determine this information as part of the needs assessment process. You will probably want to charge a lower fee if participants will be paying for the program themselves.
The chapter will have to balance two alternatives in planning a conference at a “break even” conference; i.e. one that does not draw funds from the chapter’s treasury:
1. Charging the participants an amount sufficient to cover the cost of the conference or
2. Seeking sponsorship.
This is a decision that should be made by the Board of Directors and should be reevaluated periodically.
Soliciting Sponsorship
If you decide to solicit sponsorship, you will first want to determine what types of organization you will solicit for sponsorship. What do your chapter members purchase? These companies are your likely sponsors.
Types of sponsors
• Law Firms
• Insurance Companies
• Insurance Brokers
• Risk Management Software Developers
• Manufacturers and/or distributors of patient safety equipment
Develop a spreadsheet with the names, addresses, phone, fax and email for each potential sponsor.
Click here for a sample sponsor tracking spreadsheet
Sponsorship opportunities
Contributions can include sponsorship of:
• An event, e.g., lunch, breakfast, break or opening reception
• Handouts to the participants
• Miscellaneous items given to the participants, e.g., bags, briefcases, portfolios, pens, badge lanyards
• General sponsorship of the conference. Consider levels of sponsorship, such as gold, silver, bronze
It is not a good idea to pass out the sponsors' advertising material with the conference proceedings, but you may want to consider having exhibitors.
Solicitation materials
Develop a solicitation letter describing the conference and asking for contributions.
Tips for this process:
• Merge Print the spreadsheet into the letter and mail the letters to the sponsors.
Click here for a sample sponsor solicitation letter
• Follow up with telephone calls as necessary. Hint: It will be necessary to call some of the sponsors two or three times. Allow for sufficient time to do this.
• Develop a sponsor recognition page to be included in the conference proceedings book providing contact information for each of the sponsors.
Click here for a sample sponsor page
• Develop a thank-you letter to be sent to each sponsor and exhibitor. The letter should request the information you need for the sponsor recognition page and for recognizing the sponsors during the conference.
Click here for a sample thank-you letter
Make sure each sponsor and exhibitor receives an individual thank-you letter. Consider recognizing sponsors at the beginning of conference sessions using their logos projected onto the screen.
If complementary registrations are included for sponsors, be sure to ask the sponsor who will use the registration and have conferences badges prepared for them.
Supplemental Revenue
There are a number of different ways you can supplement the costs of a particular program in order to keep the fee low. If you include a meal function, you can often charge enough to cover basic program costs. An excellent way to attract potential members, as well as add to the balance sheet, is to invite nonmembers and charge them a higher fee.
