Some feedback so far -<br><br>First of all, really good stuff that you're on top of this!<br><br>Different levels of sponsorship...<br><ul><li>often have different perks associated with them beyond just being called something different... see if you can provide extra-special benefits to higher levels of sponsors (
e.g t-shirt placement starts at Gold)</li><li>could be above just $3000 - maybe you could make a $7500 "Foundation Sponsor" level? (I had one $10k sponsorship and another $6k sponsorship - they got some extra-special treatment.)
</li></ul>Re: staff a table at the job fair -- for a $100 Bronze sponsorship? I think this is a waaay too low a price for a job fair table. I think it could be good planning to say that Platinum (and above) sponsors get a free table, but I'd think tables themselves could go for $1k. (Anyone here an OSCON organizer? What do you guys charge there?)
<br><br>Re: May 18th deadline - it's good to include something like this on the sheet, but in a practical sense you could find yourself receiving (or even soliciting) sponsorships right up to the day before the event. Which might make it tougher to put some of these sponsors into the program but that's okay as long as they know about it.
<br><br>Re: contact email address -- you've got the <a href="http://yapchouston.org">yapchouston.org</a> domain... maybe you could set yourself up an @<a href="http://yapchouston.org">yapchouston.org</a> email address to go along with this?
<br><br>Sometimes, people want to sponsor an _aspect_ of the conference. E.g. Wednesday lunch, the afternoon food breaks, the 1 evening banquet, snacks at the arrival-night pub outing, the t-shirt. If you prepare a list of specific items with specific costs then that could make it easier to sell those items, not to mention that they can be big ticket items. (For instance, it could be easier to find someone to pay for t-shirts for $3000 than to find a Platinum sponsor.)
<br><br>There is no official mandate for YAPC to "turn a profit." Every YAPC organizer for the past several years (going back to 2003 from what I've seen, maybe earlier) has managed to come out comfortably in the black, though, by basically being really conservative (cautious, paranoid, whatever) in their budget (revenue _and_ expense) projections. This has effectively made YAPC the key fundraising effect of TPF every year. But you guys are totally allowed / empowered to allocate your budget to your conference first. Do what you gotta to to make sure that your attendees having a fantastic time.
<br><br>Hope that helps!<br><br>Cheers,<br>Richard<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/23/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">G. Wade Johnson</b> <<a href="mailto:gwadej@anomaly.org">gwadej@anomaly.org</a>> wrote:
</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I tried to send this to the list and was blocked (too large), so here's<br>a link instead.
<br><br><a href="http://anomaly.org/wade/yapc2007/yapc-2007-sponsorship.pdf">http://anomaly.org/wade/yapc2007/yapc-2007-sponsorship.pdf</a><br><br>As suggested, I'm submitting the YAPC:NA sponsorship document here for
<br>suggestions before posting it for the general public.<br><br>I would appreciate any comments in the next few days.<br><br>Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.<br><br>G. Wade<br>_______________________________________________
<br>YAPC-NA-organizers mailing list<br><a href="mailto:YAPC-NA-organizers@pm.org">YAPC-NA-organizers@pm.org</a><br><a href="http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/yapc-na-organizers">http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/yapc-na-organizers
</a><br></blockquote></div><br>