Winning Sponsorship Proposals: Key Elements, Templates, and Tips

Sponsorship can be a game-changer for brands, offering increased exposure, enhanced reputation, and quality leads. In fact, sponsorships make up to 12% of corporate marketing budgets, proving their effectiveness. So, in theory, once you reach out to a brand with a sponsorship opportunity, they should jump at it.

But with the fierce competition for resources in the partnership management space, it takes an outstanding sponsorship proposal to convince a potential sponsor that your idea is worthy of backing. 

In this article, we'll break down the key elements of a winning sponsorship proposal, offer tips on writing one effectively, and showcase customizable templates and tricks to set your digital proposal up for success—no matter your industry. 

What Is a Sponsorship Proposal?

A sponsorship proposal is a business document that organizations use to pitch their idea, product, or event to a potential sponsor. 

It usually contains the following information: 

• Project or event summary and description, 
• A unique selling proposition, 
• Target audience,
• Sponsorship packages,
• Contact details.

Most importantly, it clearly demonstrates the ROI a sponsor receives when backing the project. 

Sponsorship proposals can be as short as one-page documents or emails, but more often they are delivered in the form of a multi-slide presentation with a cover, product or event overview and purpose, benefits, sponsor packages, testimonials, terms and conditions, and contacts. We’ll discuss all these points below to give you a clear idea of what to include in your sponsorship proposal.

Here’s what a typical sponsorship proposal looks like:

Sponsorship Proposal

Courtesy of Elvaro Studio on Canva

Key Elements of an Effective Sponsorship Proposal

A well-crafted sponsorship proposal can be the key to securing valuable partnerships. But what does an effective proposal actually include?

While design is undoubtedly important, the basics of the document—the structure and content—play the pivotal role. Let’s dive deeper into the kind of information that should go in a sponsorship proposal:

• Cover page. This is your chance to make a great first impression, so make sure to invest in an eye-catching design. Include your logo to raise brand awareness and provide contact information to simplify communication.
• Executive summary. This page provides a brief overview of your project and its key value. Its main purpose is to spark and capture the reader’s interest.
• About the organization. Introduce yourself and your team to build credibility and demonstrate alignment with the sponsor’s values.
• Event or project description. In this section, provide a comprehensive overview of your project, including its purpose, projected impact, logistics, and promotion plan. A thorough description will demonstrate that the project is well-structured and presents minimal risk to the sponsor.
• Target audience. This part is arguably the most important one for your potential partners and will be the most studied one in the entire sponsorship proposal. What are the demographics and psychographics of your target audience? How relevant is it to the sponsor’s goals? Share the insights that will convince your partners that they will be a perfect match.
• Marketing and promotion plan. No matter how exciting your proposal is, if it doesn’t have a solid promotion plan, the sponsor will likely have second thoughts about supporting it. Share the channels, budgets, and marketing resources you intend to use to attract the target audience, along with specific timeframes and expected results.
• Sponsorship packages. Sponsorship packages are pre-defined financial commitment levels that offer varying degrees of brand exposure. They streamline the partnership process, making discussions easier and more straightforward, so make sure to include two or three sponsorship packages in your proposal. That said, if your sponsorship opportunities aren’t limited to financial investments, you may want to reflect that in the section so your potential sponsors have more freedom.
• Benefits to the sponsor. Brand exposure, lead generation, product sampling, naming rights, media coverage—there are so many perks your collaboration can bring to the sponsor. Present your opportunities as too good to pass up, and the sponsorships are sure to follow.
• Budget and funding needs. Be transparent about the costs of your projects and how the funds will be allocated to justify the budget needs.
• Call to Action. You will probably outline the next steps in the cover letter that goes with the sponsorship proposal, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate what they are to prompt the sponsor to take action—schedule a meeting or sign an agreement.
• Contact Information. Share your contact information and preferred communication channels in a clear, direct way to ensure that nothing hinders your future communication.

And now, when you know how to write a sponsorship proposal, here are some actionable templates.

Effective Sponsorship Proposal Templates

Crafting a sponsorship proposal from scratch is taxing and, above all else, time-consuming when you consider how long it takes to structure, write, design, and edit the entire document. As so many of us, marketers and event management professionals, have limited resources and a dozen other deadlines to meet, creating even such an important document all by ourselves is often a luxury we cannot afford.

Luckily, there are plenty of professional-looking sponsorship proposal templates for different cases and even industries. Let’s take a look at a few great sponsorship proposal examples.

Full multi-page sponsorship proposal

• Personalize your offer so it resonates with the audience, and keep the content engaging and to the point, as it’s the cornerstone of any effective communication.
• Think navigation through—make it easy for the reader to flip through the deck with a well-structured table of contents.
• Optimize for small screens—more than 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices, so it’s a definite possibility your readers will use their smartphone to check your content. Make it easier for them with bite-sized texts in large font, and a document format that doesn’t require downloading or third-party viewing software—like flipbook.

One-page sponsorship proposal

Sponsorship template courtesy of Visme

Some people don’t have time even to skim through a seven- or ten-page sponsorship proposal. To get a chance with them, prepare a short summary that contains key points: 

• project description, 
• audience, 
• sponsor benefits, 
• and your contact information. 

If the proposal makes the cut and gets the sponsor interested, you can follow up with the full, detailed presentation to answer any extra questions.

The example above checks all the boxes of a great one-page sponsorship proposal:

✅ a striking yet clear design, 

✅ nicely balanced layout, 

✅ ample space for executive summary, 

✅ key objectives, 

✅ sponsorship packages, 

✅ and contact information. 

Add a touch of personalization by placing a sponsor logo along with yours, and the proposal like this one is bound to get noticed.

Interactive digital sponsorship proposal 

Let’s say your one-page proposal piqued the sponsor’s interest, and they reached out. Great. Now it’s time to take out heavy guns. This means an interactive sponsorship proposal with the power to wow your audience and show them that you are serious about the project. 

Interactive Sponsorship Proposal

Flipbook is created with FlippingBook, design courtesy of @cnurcahyani on Canva

The easiest way to add interactivity to your proposal deck is to turn it into a digital flipbook with a tool like FlippingBook. It transforms any PDF into a lifelike interactive document that comes with many perks, like:

• Branding, 
• Video, GIFs, and pop-up images embedding,
• Enhanced navigation via a clickable table of contents,
• Effortless sharing as your proposal is available via a direct link,
• Quick content updates without breaking the link.

On top of that, flipbooks are trackable—so you can learn when your sponsor opened the document and how interested they are based on how long they read the proposal. Or, if things don’t go according to plan, the stats can give you valuable insights into why your proposal gets overlooked. This way, you can tweak the content proactively and avoid losing time on figuring out what’s wrong.

And if your content is sensitive, you can make it private by adding a password or requiring an email authorization, making sure the document stays in the right hands.

To create an interactive sponsorship proposal with FlippingBook, all you need is a ready PDF. However, if you don’t have one, you can easily create a document from scratch in Canva and send it directly to our tool via seamless integration.

What’s Next?

Now that you're equipped with the knowledge to create a compelling sponsorship proposal, take the next step—start building your proposal with FlippingBook today!

It’s free for 14 days, no card required.​