Frequently Asked Questions
About The Sponsorship Report
Do something interesting, make certain we know about it, and make yourself available for an interview. Don’t expect us to run your press release. That’s not going to happen.
No. But don’t feel bad about that. The Prime Minister of Canada doesn’t get to review articles written about his government, so consider that we’re putting you an an equal footing with the PM. We’re an editorially-driven publication. Our credibility rests on our readers’ confidence that what they’re reading is honest reporting, not spin. We assume you wouldn’t want it any other way.
We don’t run paid advertising. We derive our revenue exclusively from subscriptions. That helps us keep a narrow editorial focus on our subscribers’ needs. If space is available, we will include notices about our professional development events and those of our partner organizations (such as the SMCC), but these are not paid spots. You can’t buy your way into The Sponsorship Report.
Because we don’t accept paid advertising, we can keep that number confidential. But among all the questions in this FAQ file, that’s the one we’re most frequently asked, so we have developed a canned answer. It goes like this: Back-of-the-envelope demographics are roughly 40% sponsors, 40% properties, and 20% agencies and other service providers to the industry. As to numbers, like all specialized business-to-business publications, we have a modest but very highly-targeted readership. It varies from month to month, but it’s mostly under 1,000, but they are the thousand who really count in the industry.
It is now. We began as a monthly hard-copy publication delivered by Canada Post. We later added a pdf file delivered via email to subscribers. In 2017, we increased our frequency to twice-monthly, on the first and fifteenth day of the month (except January 1) and converted to 100% email delivery.
Questions about my subscription
You will get a welcome letter almost immediately, with a link to your receipt or invoice. You may also receive your receipt in a separate email. This is something we have to do manually for you in the office, and we strive to do it for every new subscription. The first issue on your subscription will be the next issue, arriving in your inbox on the first or fifteenth day of the current month. You’ll get that one, and 22 more. We don’t publish a January 1 issue.
First of all, give it more thought! But, if for whatever inexplicable reason you don’t want to renew, just ignore the notice. Your subscription will simply lapse on its anniversary date without cost or penalty to you. Except, of course, that you will find yourself much more poorly informed than you have been in the past, and we will be very sorry to see you go!
Questions about our conferences
We work tirelessly to make certain that our conferences are the most affordable in the industry without ever compromising the quality of the programming we offer. That’s a point of fierce pride at The Sponsorship Report. On top of that, we offer very generous discounts for early registration. And on top of that, we layer another very generous discount to our subscribers. The resulting offer is, we feel, without peer in the professional development marketplace.
What is Pay It Forward?
Pay it Forward is our way of ensuring that deserving charities get to attend all the Sponsorship Week programming they need, no matter what their budgetary constraints. It’s a bursary program, not a contest, and we open applications in the Spring of each year. Charities are invited to tell us how they hope attendance at Sponsorship Week will help transform their organization. Working with our partners at Hilborn: Charity eNews, we carefully evaluate responses based on your expressed needs and our knowledge of the programming on offer at Sponsorship Week. We select five recipients who, we feel, will benefit the most. Bursary recipients receive complimentary admission to all Sponsorship Week programming. Recipients requiring air travel to and from Toronto get that as well courtesy of WestJet. .