2009Q3: Sponsorship Committee

current nature of sponsorship committee

• covers sponsorship for all *ACL conferences in a given year (to avoid competition between conferences for sponsors)
• consists of the following people:
  • two people from each region (= "regional sponsorship chairs")
  • for each conference happening during a given year, a single sponsorship chair responsible only for that conference (= "local sponsorship chair")
  • the ACL business manager
• the local sponsorship chairs may or may not overlap with the regional sponsorship chair, but the original intention was that they do not; the local sponsorship chairs concentrate on raising money only for their conference from local sources (local to town or region)
• some of the current members have agreed to serve for a second year, with the result that the committee has a rolling membership and we have more continuity
• the business manager and the ACL and EACL treasurers are also subscribed on the mailing list

current problems

• no leadership - no individual member is responsible for overseeing the work of the committee
• no accountability - the sponsorship committee doesn't report to anyone
• annual churn - no experience is built up, members don't get to learn from last year's problems
• demarcation issues - in the absence of communication, local chairs and exhibits chairs have got involved in sponsorship
• recruitment is difficult - no-one wants to be a sponsorship chair

recommendations

• we recommend that the sponsorship committee be chaired by a member of the ACL exec; the exec member would have this portfolio for their term of office
• the sponsorship chair should report to the ACL executive
• as previously suggested, a contacts database should record the history of past contacts, who was contacted and when, who did the contacting, the result (e.g. call again in two months); there's a question about who would have access to this database
• we need to find suitable ways to recognize the work of sponsorship chairs (e.g. at exec++ dinner)

items for immediate action

• given that we need a sponsorship committee chair right away, for 2010, the president can have the role until a regular exec member is identified
• identify the regional members of the sponsorship committee for 2010

implementation notes

• several people will be involved in contacting sponsors, and will asynchronously update the database (thus we don't want to be emailing around a spreadsheet)
• an issue tracker might be the best way to keep a record of progress (with one "issue" per sponsor), and to update it with information about any attempts to make contact, or an agreements to call back next month, and to tag issues with labels like "Platinum-Sponsor" or "2011-Prospect".

other ideas for reducing the amount of churn

• assign each regular member to a portfolio that they have for their term of office, with a one-year overlap with their predecessor to learn the ropes (and avoid a 3-year cycle that coincides with our geographical rotation)
• e.g. portfolio 1: sponsorship; portfolio 2: publication issues/report collection/SIG convener