Get this year’s sponsors back next year.
If you run a festival, a club night or a DJ-led event brand, a lot of your sponsorship money is won or lost after the event, when the brand asks what it got for the spend. This is how to answer every sponsor inquiry fast, deliver every activation with proof, and send the recap that wins the renewal.
Read the guideWhat you leave with: four things about your own events, and none of them need us.
- Your sponsor ledgerEvery sponsor from your last event, who owns them, and whether they got a recap and a renewal ask.
- Your intake questionsThe five things you need from a brand before you send the sponsorship deck.
- Your activation sheetOne page per sponsor listing what you promised, who delivers it and the proof you need from the night.
- Your recap templateThe one-page report that goes to every sponsor within two weeks of the event.
The inquiry
A brand writes to info@ or partner@ during your busiest month, and the reply goes out two weeks later, if anyone sees it.
The night
The activation happens, but nobody photographs the banner, counts the samples or saves the stage-screen clip.
The renewal
The recap goes out late or never, and the ask for next year comes after the brand has set its budget.
Each of those is a handoff with no owner. The production team is building the stage, the marketing team is selling tickets, and the sponsor sits between them. Nobody’s job description says “make sure the beverage sponsor hears from us in two weeks.”
Build your sponsor ledger this week
Say this
"Thanks for reaching out about the August weekend. We’re in show week, so I’ll send packages by Thursday. To match the right one, can you tell me a little about what you’re hoping to get out of it?"
Where it goes wrong
Sending the full deck as the first reply. Thirty pages of packages before you know their goal makes them do the matching, and most won’t.
Where it goes wrong
Skipping the last question. It decides what goes in the recap, and if you don’t ask now, you’ll be guessing what they valued in September.
Say this
"Did the Saturday stage package fit what your team had in mind? I can hold the category for you until the 15th."
Where it goes wrong
A hold with no end date. Another brand in the same category asks, and you’re stuck waiting on someone who went quiet.
Know your audience numbers before the call
| What goes on the activation sheet | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Every deliverable in the contract, in the contract's words | So nothing promised gets forgotten on the night |
| Who on your team delivers each one | Production owns the banner, marketing owns the posts |
| Placement, size and timing | Stage screen at 10 pm means 10 pm, so write it down |
| Load-in, power and footprint for the activation | The questions the brand's on-site team asks first |
| Credentials, guest passes and VIP access | So their people get in without a call to you at the gate |
| The proof you'll capture for each deliverable | A photo, a clip, a count or a link, decided before doors open |
Give one person the proof list on the night. They walk the site with a phone, shoot every banner, booth and stage-screen moment, and save it to one folder per sponsor. It’s twenty minutes of work during the event, and it’s what the recap is made of.
What goes on the one-page recap
Attendance and who was there
Total attendance, and the audience numbers from chapter two for this event: cities, age range, how many were repeat fans.
Every deliverable, with its proof
One line per item on their activation sheet, each with the photo, clip or count. If something didn’t happen as promised, say so, and say what you’ll make up for it.
The numbers they asked for
Whatever they told you they needed in the intake: samples handed out, leads scanned, views on the posts that tagged them.
One idea for next year
A better spot, a bigger activation, a second event. It turns the recap into the start of the renewal conversation.
Send it within two weeks, while the brand still remembers the night and before your team moves on to the next show. Then ask your contact one question: when does next year’s budget get set? Put the renewal ask on your calendar a month before that date, with your new dates and first pick of the packages.
Recap your last event, even if it's late
What has to be true before each part is worth building
Tick the ones that are already true of your events.
0 of 5 true
Nothing ticked, so you probably don’t need us yet. Run the manual version for your next event and see where it breaks. Paying to automate a process nobody has tested is money you’d rather keep.
If you ticked some of these
That’s where a Diagnostic starts. We talk to the people who handle partnerships, production and marketing, rank everything we find, and give you a plan with a price on each system and working demos. It’s credited toward the build, and refunded if it finds nothing worth building. We build on the tools you already run and train your team on each system. Then your team runs it, or we take it over if you’d rather. The full sequence is on how it works.
Common questions.
Yes, and it’s easier at your size. A local bar, a beverage brand and a radio station are three recaps and three renewal asks a year. Doing those well is usually how a small promoter gets its first bigger brand, because the bigger brand asks for proof from past partners.
It works for both. A weekly night or a tour has fewer deliverables per show and many more shows, so the activation sheet and the recap get reused every week. A tour sponsor wants one recap for the whole run with a line for each city.
The deck sells the next event: your audience, the packages and what each one costs. The recap proves the last one: what was delivered, with photos and numbers. A good recap becomes the strongest page in next year’s deck.
No. Every step here runs in a shared sheet and your email to start. Software helps once you have more sponsors and events than one person can track, and we build on the tools you already run, whether that’s Airtable, HubSpot or your ticketing platform’s exports.
Systems that answer every sponsor inquiry within a day, keep one record of every sponsor and what they were promised, collect proof during the event, put the recap together and send the renewal ask on time. It starts with a Diagnostic, which is credited toward the build and refunded if it finds nothing worth building.
Send the recap before they ask
Run this guide by hand for your next event first. When your sponsor list outgrows it, a Diagnostic shows you which systems are worth building and what each one costs. If you also book talent for private events, the booking playbook covers that side.
Start with a Diagnostic