2023Q1 Reports: Sponsorship Director

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This is the their year that ACL has had a Sponsorship Director position. The position was created in July of 2020, and it officially started in Jan 2021. The position is currently filled by Prof. Chris Callison-Burch from the University of Pennsylvania, who previous served in several positions for the ACL: he was the General Chair for ACL 2017, Program Co-Chair for EMNLP 2015, Chair of the NAACL Executive Board 2012-2013 and a Board Member for NAACL Executive Board 2010-2011.


Duties of the Sponsorship Director

Since it is a new position, the responsibilities of the Sponsorship Director are still being defined. Last year I defined this as the set of responsibilities:

  • Coordinate the ACL Sponsorship Committee, which consists of the Sponsorship Director, the ACL Business Manager, 2 regional representatives from each chapter, 2 representatives from SIGDAT. Here are more details about the Sponsorship Committee Procedures.
  • Coordinate with the ACL Business Manager to set the sponsorship rates for the conferences, and benefits for each sponsorship level
  • Produce a sponsorship booklet which is distributed to potential sponsors, and which outlines the costs and benefits for each sponsorship level
  • Contact recurring sponsors to solicit sponsorship of upcoming conferences.
  • Maintain an organized list of current sponsors and of potential sponsorship leads
  • Help recruit new sponsors to the conference
  • Invoice sponsors once they have picked a sponsorship level, and decided which conferences to sponsor.
  • Coordinate with the general chairs of the conferences to let them know about sponsor benefits like exhibition space (which needs to be replicated in online conferences)
  • Coordinate with web admins fo each conference to post logos/URLs of sponsors when they agree to sponsor the conference
  • Help establish policies relating to sponsorship and streamline the process of sponsorship
  • Currently the Sponsorship Director helps oversee sponsorship for *ACL conferences only. In the future, it may be useful to help provide guidance for workshops or SIGs as well.
  • Liaising between sponsors and relevant conference organizers in order to ensure that we give the sponsors the promised benefits
    • logos and links on conference websites
    • logos and promotional materials in printed conference materials
    • space for exhibition displays at the in-person conference
    • online options for virtual exhibitions
    • scheduling exhibition time in the conference program so that companies know when to staff their booths
    • complementary registration for the correct number of company's employees
  • etc.

Since Priscilla Rasmussen retired, I picked up many of the sponsorship-related duties that she previously handled, and I have been closely coordinating with Jennifer Rachford and David Yarowsky to formalize many processes related to sponsorship, including things like processing reimbursement for workshops that bring in sponsorships.

In order to help manage the invoices, I asked permission from both the ACL Treasurer and my own university department to hire my admin at the University of Pennsylvania to help with issuing the invoices. Her name and email is Lily Hoot <lhoot@seas.upenn.edu>. She has been serving in the role for longer than a year, and has been quite valuable in handling the invoicing duties. We will bill the ACL $40/hour for her time to reimburse the University for time taken away from her normal responsibilities. I recommend that the ACL Exec budget for administrative help for future Sponsorship Directors as well.

Pain Points from Last Year

  • Confirmation of payment (Lily and Chris don’t have ability to view bank account, so cannot confirm which sponsors have paid their invoices)
  • For workshops that raised sponsorship funds, it took the ACL a very long time to reimburse the organizers for any expenses that they incurred.
  • For SIGs that raised sponsorship funds, we weren't able to communicate whether they had a balance in their shadow account.
  • Only Priscilla was able to process credit card payments – can we set up Lily with being able to process credit card payments via phone call, or via an online payment system?
  • Can we create a Standard Sponsorship agreement for companies who ask for it?

ACL Sponsorship Committee

TODO update:

The ACL Sponsorship Committee currently consists of:

  • Chris Callison-Burch <ccb@cis.upenn.edu> - ACL Sponsorship Director
  • Jennifer Rachford <acl.rachford@gmail.com> - ACL Business Manager
  • Chin-Yew Lin <cyl@microsoft.com> - Sponsorship Chair for SIGDAT
  • XXX- Sponshorship Chair for EACL chapter
  • Akiko Aizawa <aizawa@nii.ac.jp> - Sponsorship Chair for AACL chapter
  • Mohit Bansal <mbansal@cs.unc.edu> - Sponsorship Chair for NAACL chapter
  • Ves Stoyanov <ves@fb.com> - Sponsorship Chair for NAACL chapter

Sponsorship rates for 2023 Conferences

In late 2023, Jennifer Rachford and I met the sponsorship rates. We kept the ACL sponsorship rate fixed from last year, and set the sponsorship rates for the other conferences for this year (EMNLP, and EACL) to be roughly proportional ACL based on what fraction of attendees we expected. This means that EMNLP's sponsorship rates are equal to ACL, and EACL's sponsorship rates are 40% of ACL's.

Exhibition booths are included as part of the Diamond and Platinum sponsorship levels, and may be purchased as add-ons by other sponsorship. We increased the cost to purchase add-on exhibition booths this year.

In previous years we would offer a 20% discount for "multi-pack" sponsorships where a company would sponsor multiple conferences. This year we changed the discount to be 15% for sponsoring 2 conferences, and 20% for sponsoring 3 conferences.

This year we introduced two new options for a single company to sponsor the welcome event, and another to sponsor the social event, at each conferences. We hope that these will help defray the cost of catering that is typically included as a mandatory spending item in the ACL's contracts with conference venues. If companies join at these new higher sponsorship levels, it may help us lower the the cost to attend the in-person conferences.

So far, Grammarly has signed on as the Welcome Sponsor for the EACL conference. We are excited to feature this company at the welcome event! Jennifer Rachford will work with the company for branding of the event.

Sponsorship Booklet for 2023 Conferences

I hired designer Kira Grennan <kira.grennan@gmail.com> to update | the sponsorship booklet again this year.

Current Sponsors for 2023 Conferences

I have reached out to the following companies soliciting their sponsorship: Adobe, aiXplain, Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Babelscape, Baidu, Bloomberg, Bosch, Bytedance, Deep Mind, DuoLingo, Etsy, G-Research, Google, Grammarly, HLTCOE, IBM, ISI, KPMG, LegalForce, LivePerson, Megagon Labs, Meta, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Naver Labs (and Naver Labs Europe), NVIDIA, OpenAI, Relatively, Samsung, ServiceNow, Tencent, Text IQ, TIAA/Nuveen, Zoom.

As of February 20, 2023 we have secured the following confirmed sponsors.

  • ACL: Amazon (Diamond), Apple (Diamond), LivePerson (Diamond), Meta (Diamond), Grammarly (Platinum), IBM (Platinum), Megagon (Platinum), Bosch (Gold), ServiceNow (Gold), Relativity (Gold), Adobe (Bronze), Babelscape (Bronze)
  • NAACL: Amazon (Diamond), LivePerson (Diamond), Meta (Diamond), Apple (Platinum), Grammarly (Platinum), Megagon (Platinum), Nuveen (Gold), ServiceNow (Gold), Relativity (Gold), Adobe (Bronze), Babelscape (Bronze)
  • EMNLP: Amazon (Diamond), Apple (Diamond), LivePerson (Diamond), Meta (Diamond), Megagon (Platinum), Adobe (Bronze), Babelscape (Bronze)
  • AACL: Adobe (Bronze)
  • D&I Sponsorship: Microsoft (D&I Champion) for all 4 conferences.

The total sponsorship commitments for the main conferences as of March 4, 2022 amount of $440,610. Additionally, we have $48,575 for workshop sponsorships and colocated conferences ($20k for IWSLT, plus $30k for miscellaneous other workshops).

I have been using | this spreadsheet to track sponsorship leads and commitments.

Action item for regional chapters, SIGDAT

At the start of each year, please pick a representative for your chapter to serve a 2 year term. Ideally we'll have 2 reps from each group serving staggered 2 year terms.

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