Sponsorship Prospectus

Before approaching sponsors, create a short informational packet with three tiers of sponsorship.

Your first email should NEVER contain links, hyperlinks, attachments, or images. Many companies have IT policies that automatically trash new external emails with these to prevent phishing. Do not send your sponsorship prospectus, meeting invite link, website link, image in signature, etc. in your first email. Include them in a follow-up message 1-2 weeks after the initial email!

Sponsorship prospectuses (also called sponsorship packets) don't need to be fancy. They should explain what a hackathon is and what perks sponsors can expect in exchange for their support. Providing examples of how sponsors have been involved at other hackathons can be a great starting point for companies to think about what tier is right for them.

Your prospectus should:

• Be 2-3 pages long: Sponsors generally don't have time to read through a big sponsorship deck.

• Be legible: Less is more! Choose a uniform color scheme and keep text to a minimum on each slide.

• Highlight the Basics: Be sure to include the following info on all promotional materials — we can’t tell you how many times this gets overlooked!

  • Event name

  • Date

  • Projected attendance

  • Website URL

  • Contact email

• Cover the story behind your event: This includes a brief introduction to your team, what you’re trying to accomplish, and crucially, what makes your event unique.

• Include an overview of available sponsorships: Companies should be able to easily identify the benefits and differences between each tier and how much they cost.

  • We recommend including three sponsorship tiers: reasonable, moderate, and expensive. (Your most expensive tier should not be more than 25% of your budget.)

  • Let companies know that custom packages are available upon further negotiation with your team's email address. We recommend including this message at the bottom of the tier overview page for easy access.

Tier Breakdown

No two events' sponsorship prospectuses will be the same because your sponsor pools will be interested in different benefits. When assigning perks to your tiers, we recommend having each tier build upon the level directly below it. You'll get a better sense of how to optimize perks based on sponsor interest from previous iterations of your hackathon, but we suggest having your lowest tier start with a set of basic perks that fall under general, publicity, and recruitment categories.

Here are some examples of previous sponsor decks that organizers gave us permission to share. Reach out to your Hackathon Community Manager for more advice!