Author: James Anderson

SPONSOR definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

But if you’re in it for the right reasons, it’s a powerful tool for getting in front of new audiences, increasing brand awareness and providing a boost to brand reputation. A sponsor can refer to a range of individuals or entities that support the goals and objectives of some other individual or organization. Sponsors may also lend their name and reputation to influence the adoption of a movement, platform, or brand for benefits. However, contrary to popular belief, sponsorship marketing doesn’t always involve money changing hands. In return, the sponsee helps to boost the sponsor’s brand awareness and reputation. Thanks to their deep pockets, financial resources, and knowledge of different industries, sponsors play a vital role in business and finance.

Investors often look for wide sponsorship of a stock before investing, believing that the endorsement of institutional investors adds a measure of safety to their investment decisions. He’ll work closely with project managers to make sure things go as planned and reports back to the project sponsor. For example, in a sole proprietorship, the project sponsor is the business owner who hires a project team to execute a project. In the case of an IT project for a large organization, the project sponsor might be the chief information officer who will work with an IT project manager and a group of team members.

Establishing Project Governance Guidelines

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In other cases, C-level executives and senior managers can be the executive sponsors of a project. By putting key partnership KPIs in place at the point where the partnership is negotiated, you’ll be best placed to measure how close you’ve come to reaching your goals. If you’re keen to join the world of sponsorship marketing to give your brand’s name a boost, you’re probably wondering where to start. We’d always recommend creating a sponsorship marketing strategy, so that you can clarify the approach you intend to take and start off your sponsorship journey as successfully as possible!

Words for Lesser-Known Games and Sports

A project sponsor is an individual who offers financial resources to fund a project. Besides securing the project financing, a project sponsor might also propose the project’s business case, establish a project vision and set the project governance guidelines. The project sponsor is also usually responsible for the project’s return on investment and the impact it has on the organization. Once the project is approved, the project sponsor supervises the project management team from a high-level standpoint, while project managers oversee the daily project activities.

1. Book a demo to see how we can help you uncover thousands of partnership opportunities for sponsorship and more.
2. Sponsorship opportunities can be in very high demand, particularly for high-profile events and sports.
3. Sponsors can offer events value in lots of ways besides just financial support, from free audiovisual services to printing marketing materials or providing food and drinks.

After all, 75% of Gen Z want companies to take a stand on issues they’re passionate about (according to Accenture). Whether you’re watching the junior football tournament down the road or bingeing on The X Factor, you’ve probably become accustomed to seeing sponsors’ logos staring back at you in every walk of life. To see a selection of brands that have nailed sponsorship, check out our top sponsorship marketing examples. For the planning phase, the project sponsor is checking to make sure the project plan is realistic and feasible.

Setting Goals and Estimating the Project Benefits

Consider how many prospects to contact, what outreach channels you’d like to use (eg. email, LinkedIn, phone) and how you plan to uncover the correct contact details. Most brands that conduct successful outreach spend hours digging out relevant contact names and email addresses manually in-house, but you can save a ton of time by requesting a lead’s contact details on Breezy. Sponsors are also required for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund offerings in order to make them available to the public for investment. An underwriter must sponsor a mutual fund issue and complete the proper regulatory registrations for investors to have access to it. The sponsor of an ETF is essentially the managerial body of the ETF that brings together the needed parties and regulatory framework to establish the ETF.

Project sponsors and project managers need a project management tool to collaborate and make sure their projects are successful. ProjectManager is robust project management software with all the tools needed to plan, schedule and track projects from ideation to completion such as Gantt charts, kanban boards and timesheets. In addition, ProjectManager has real-time dashboards, collaboration features and project reports that help project sponsors keep track of multiple projects and communicate their progress to their organizations. At the end of the day, there’s no denying that sponsorship marketing is a lot harder to measure than other partnership types, and isn’t the best-suited to getting across targeted sales messages.

But any kind of business can become a sponsor, whether they’re a small, one-person band or a household name. Similar to media sponsors, promotional partners are generally individuals who can help to promote the sponsee’s activity – such as bloggers or influencers. Media sponsors promote the sponsee’s activity, perhaps by posting about it on social media, by publishing blog posts or even by broadcasting it on television in the case of large events and sports fixtures.

Also known as cash sponsorship, the sponsor gives the sponsee financial support. Big brands such as McDonald’s, Pepsi and Coca-Cola invest billions of pounds in sponsorship every year. As the plan sponsor, employers take responsibility for the benefit plans offered. The plan sponsor does the research, selects the appropriate service providers, deals with legal and administrative elements, and is sometimes a legal fiduciary. Those benefit programs are then offered to employees, who can join as participants. For example, startup companies are commonly sponsored through investors known as angel investors.

Now that we have a better understanding of the project sponsor role, let’s compare it against other similar project management roles. For the implementation and control phases, the project sponsor should work with the project manager, but not overstep boundaries. The project sponsor evaluates the project’s actual progress against what was planned and provides feedback to the project manager as necessary. The project sponsor can help resolve issues, too, if they’re beyond the scope of the project manager. If there are other projects in play, the project sponsor is making sure they’re working together and not against each other. Project sponsors are instrumental in selecting the project manager during the initiation phase, and they give that project manager a clear mandate and context for the project and set the level of their authority.