A sponsorship package is not a price list with a logo on it. It is an offer a business owner can take to whoever signs the checks and defend in one sentence.
Most committees build tiers the same way. Four levels named after metals, each one listing a bigger logo in more places, topped with a number somebody picked because it sounded right. Then the asking starts, and the answers are usually no.
The problem is that logo placement is worth almost nothing to a small business, and everyone asking them already knows to offer it. What a local sponsor actually buys is a specific audience paying attention for a specific evening, and a story their customers will hear. Build the package around that and the same businesses start saying yes to bigger numbers.
Start with what you actually have to sell
Before you name a single tier, list your assets. Most organizations own more than they think:
- The name of the event itself. The single most valuable thing you own, and most committees never sell it.
- The moment before it starts. Somebody walks out and welcomes a full room. Who they thank, and how, is worth real money.
- The program. Ad space, and the page that faces the cast list. Every guest reads that page twice.
- Tickets. A block of seats a sponsor gives to their staff or their best customers. This turns a donation into a night out they can host.
- Your own audience, before the night. Every email, every post, every poster in a window for two months.
- Something physical. The lobby table, the banner over the concession stand, the intermission, the program insert.
Now price them. A tier is a bundle of those assets at a number, and every line in it should be something a sponsor can picture happening.
A structure that works
Four tiers is the most anyone needs, and three is usually better. These numbers suit an event with 300 to 600 guests across a run. Scale them to your room and your town.
| Presenting $5,000 One only | Your event carries their name. Named from the stage at every performance, on every poster, on the front of the program, on every email. 20 tickets. Category exclusivity, so no competitor of theirs can buy in at any level. |
| Principal $2,500 Two or three | Named from the stage, full page facing the cast list, logo on posters and email, 10 tickets, a banner where people gather. |
| Supporting $1,000 Six to eight | Half page in the program, named in the program’s sponsor page and in one email, 6 tickets. |
| Friend $250 Unlimited | Name in the program, 2 tickets. This is where individuals and families belong, and there are more of them than you expect. |
Two things in that table are doing most of the work, and both are easy to leave out.
Category exclusivity at the top
One bank. One car dealership. One funeral home. Exclusivity is the reason a top tier is worth several times the one below it. It also gives your asker a real deadline to say out loud, because the first bank to say yes is the only bank that can.
Counts, printed
Say how many of each tier exist. A number that is limited is a number that is worth something, and it stops your committee from selling nine Principal sponsors and diluting the three who paid first.
What to charge
Work backward from your goal. Decide what sponsorship needs to bring in, then build tiers that reach it with the sponsors you can realistically name. If your target is $15,000 and you cannot write down the names of eight businesses who might give $1,000, your tiers are wrong for your town.
Set the top tier at roughly a quarter to a third of your sponsorship goal. It should feel like a stretch for the business that takes it, because the point of the top tier is partly that almost nobody ever buys it. What it does, though, is move your real top tier to the second tier, one that many businesses will buy. Many organizations never sell their top tier in year one and still raise more than they would have with a lower ceiling.
Do not discount. If a business wants Principal benefits at the Supporting price, give them one extra thing that costs you nothing instead: a mention from the stage, a photograph with the cast, first refusal on next year. And this is important: If you negotiate an additional benefit with one sponsor, you should offer the same to all sponsors, including those who have already signed up. Sponsors talk, and you don’t want bad feelings. Plus, everyone loves getting something extra that they didn’t expect. It not only avoids possible dissatisfaction, it builds goodwill. But to restate: Never discount. Discounting once means every returning sponsor negotiates forever.
When to ask, and who
Ask earlier than feels necessary. Most small businesses set a marketing budget once a year, and a request that arrives six weeks before your event is competing for whatever is left. Nine months out, you are in the conversation before the number exists. This is the single biggest difference between organizations that raise $3,000 in sponsorship and organizations that raise $15,000 with the same contacts.
Send the person who already knows them. A board member walking into a business where they bank, eat or buy their tires will outperform a committee chair with a better folder, every time. Give each asker three names and a deadline, and have them report back at the next meeting. Once the lead has shown interest, they can be turned over to your Sponsorship Lead. Lists of forty businesses assigned to nobody produce nothing.
Bring one page. The tiers, the counts, the date, the audience size, and who to make the check out to. A packet is for after they say yes.
Program advertising is a separate ladder
Keep ad sales apart from sponsorship. They reach different businesses at different prices, and the small shop that will never write $1,000 will happily buy a quarter page for $75.
A workable ladder for a printed program: back cover $400, inside covers $300, full page $200, half page $125, quarter page $75, and a business card line for $40. Sell the covers first and to the businesses most likely to take them, because a sold back cover makes the rest of the book easier to sell.
One rule that saves an evening of arguing: set your print deadline three weeks before the event and do not move it for anybody.
After the event is where next year is won
Most organizations cash the check and go quiet until they need another one. A sponsor who hears nothing for eleven months is a sponsor deciding whether you were worth it.
Within two weeks, visit each sponsor personally with a heartfelt thank you, and a short letter with three things in it: what the event raised, what that money does, and a photograph with their name visible in it. For higher tiers, a plaque or signed cast photo will always be well received. Then ask them in writing whether they would like the same tier next year, and say when you will follow up. Renewals are the cheapest money your organization will ever raise, and almost nobody collects them on purpose.
The mistakes that repeat
- Benefits nobody can picture. “Recognition in event materials” means nothing. “Your name read from the stage to the entire audience, three nights running” means something.
- Six tiers. Every tier you add makes the decision harder and the middle ones invisible.
- No top-tier exclusivity. Without it, your $5,000 sponsor is a $1,000 sponsor with a bigger logo, and they know it.
- Asking for money instead of offering a deal. Charity is a weak ask that works once. A sponsorship is a transaction a business can justify, and it renews.
- Promising what you cannot deliver. If you sell a logo on the tickets, the tickets have to carry the logo. Sponsors notice, and they talk to each other.
Why a show sells sponsorship better than most events
A production gives you things a golf scramble or a dinner cannot. It runs for several nights, so a sponsor is named to several audiences. It has a printed program people keep. It has a stage and a microphone and a moment when a room is quiet and paying attention. And it puts local people on that stage, so the audience arrives already invested.
It also has the lead time sponsorship needs. A show is booked months ahead by necessity, which puts your asks in front of businesses at exactly the moment their budgets are still open.
If you are considering a show
Curtain & Cause books original stage plays and interactive dinner theater written for fundraisers. We bring the script, our actors and a Production Playbook written for that show, with the sponsorship tiers, the ask letters and the tracking sheets already drawn up. Our fee comes out of ticket sales and never out of your sponsorships. Every sponsor you sign is yours.
Two guides go deeper: how a holiday show actually makes money, and choosing the event that fits your organization. What it costs sets out our own pricing.
About this guide
Written by Curtain & Cause. We write original plays for community theaters and work with the nonprofit organizations staging them as fundraisers. Christmas on the Dial is an original full-length play staged as a live 1950s radio broadcast, with the audience as the studio audience.