How to write a sponsorship proposal

A sponsorship proposal is a sales document with a price list inside it. To write one, open with the audience the sponsor will reach, offer three or four priced tiers, list every benefit with a quantity and a date, state the fee and whether GST is included, and end with one next step. Everything else is supporting evidence.

Start with the audience, in numbers

Sponsors are buying access to people. The first page of the proposal should say how many people, who they are and how you know. Attendance counted at the gates, email subscribers, social followers by platform, and one or two facts about who attends are worth more than a paragraph about the event’s history.

Take an invented food festival, Harvest Lane, running over two April days. Its proposal would open with visits counted at the gates last year, the share of visitors living within 30 kilometres, the size of its newsletter list and its three social channels. Each number needs a source the organiser can show: a ticketing export, a gate counter report, a platform analytics screenshot. A sponsor who asks where a figure came from and gets a vague answer discounts every other figure in the document.

What sponsors value has also moved. In the 2017 Sponsorship Decision-Makers Survey published by ESP Properties, on-site signage fell from the second most valuable benefit to sixth, while presence in the property’s own digital, social and mobile media rose from sixth to second. The same survey found 58 per cent of sponsors were looking to leave at least one sponsorship early. Audience numbers for your channels, not just your gates, answer the question sponsors are now asking.

Tiers, with quantities in every row

The tier table is the heart of the proposal, and the worked example under this article shows one for Harvest Lane. Four paid tiers and an in kind option. The gold tier has one place, because naming rights and category exclusivity can only be sold once.

Three rules make a tier table work:

1. Every benefit has a number. Six social posts, not social media promotion. Twenty VIP passes, not hospitality. A 6 by 6 metre display space, not a display area.
2. Each step down removes something visible. Silver loses naming rights and exclusivity, bronze loses physical space, community keeps the name and two passes. A sponsor should see at a glance what the next tier up adds.
3. Scarcity is stated. Writing how many places each tier has turns a price list into an offer. Three silver places is information a sponsor can act on.

The gold row in that table is not invented for this post. It is the benefits table and the exclusivity clause from the sponsorship agreement example on this site, where the festival signs Meridian Motors, an invented car dealer, as its gold partner for $18,000. That is deliberate: a proposal written with quantities becomes the agreement’s benefits schedule without renegotiation.

The benefits page: what, how many, when

A tier table is a summary. The page after it should describe each benefit once, with the date it starts and what the sponsor must supply. Naming rights from 1 February means the sponsor needs to send logo files before then, so say so in the proposal rather than discovering it in January.

The agreement example shows why this matters. Its benefits table has a delivered by column, and two of its seven rows belong to the sponsor: logo files in print and digital formats by 25 January, and two display vehicles with trained staff on both days. When a printed program goes out without the logo, the table shows whose deadline was missed. Writing those obligations into the proposal sets the expectation before anyone signs.

Measurement belongs here too. If you will report attendance, post reach or voucher redemptions after the event, list the report and its date as a benefit. Sponsors who can show their own management a result are the ones who renew.

Price, GST and payment

Put the fee in the tier table, then give a short pricing section with three facts: whether the fee includes GST, how it is paid, and what happens if the event does not go ahead.

On GST, the ATO is clear that a sponsorship payment made in return for benefits such as advertising, signage or naming rights is not a gift. If your organisation is registered for GST, GST applies to the sponsorship you receive. State the treatment in the proposal so a sponsor’s finance team does not raise it at contract stage.

On payment, instalments tied to dates are easier to approve than a single invoice. The agreement example splits $18,000 into two $9,000 instalments, one on signing and one by 1 March, after the promotional period opens and before the April event. On cancellation, a sentence in the proposal saying fees are refunded pro rata against undelivered benefits removes the most common reason a cautious sponsor hesitates. The payment terms clause page covers the wording once you reach the contract.

One next step

End with a single request and a date. Book a 20 minute call before 30 November to choose a tier. Confirm a silver place by email before 15 December. A proposal that ends on a contact block and a thank you leaves the sponsor to decide what happens next, and most will decide nothing. If you are pitching in a meeting rather than by email, the partnership proposal deck example shows the same logic on slides: three models on the table and one specific ask at the end.

Name one person, their direct email and phone number, and the date by which tiers will be offered to the next business on your list. That last detail is honest scarcity, and it gives the sponsor’s marketing manager a reason to raise the proposal at this month’s meeting rather than next quarter’s.

Common mistakes

• Benefits without numbers. If a benefit cannot be counted, it cannot be delivered or checked, and it will be argued about.
• Too many tiers. Seven tiers named after metals and gemstones make the choice harder. Three or four paid tiers is enough.
• No sponsor obligations. If the sponsor must supply logos, staff, stock or approvals, list them with dates.
• Leading with your story. The event’s history belongs on page three, if anywhere. Page one is the audience.
• Silence on GST and cancellation. Both come up at contract stage anyway; answering them early shortens the negotiation.
• Asking for support. A proposal asks for a specific fee for specific benefits. Support is what donation letters ask for, and the ATO distinction between a gift and sponsorship is exactly that difference.

For a sense of how a general business proposal handles the same problem of price and scope, the post on how to write a business proposal is the companion to this one. The question page on sponsorship agreements covers the difference between sponsorship and a donation in more depth.

Build it

A sponsorship proposal leans on two blocks: a tier table and a chart of audience numbers. The document maker with charts covers both; documents offer six chart types (bar, horizontal bar, line, area, pie and donut) and four key values layouts for headline figures like attendance. Describe the event, the audience numbers, each tier with its quantities and the fees, and the generator writes and lays out the document. The guide to creating a document with AI shows the steps.

Two honest limits. Research can ground the content, but documents never print citations, so add the source of each audience figure yourself. And a cover is never added to a document under three pages. When the sponsor signs, the pricing sheet example is a useful model for the rules that decide a fee, and a signature block turns each named party into a signer with a name, email and signing order.