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 two people from each region, plus a single sponsorship chair responsible for each conference (= "local sponsorship chair"), plus the ACL business manager; the local sponsorship chairs may or may not overlap with the local 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 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 president
• 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
• 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

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