Proposed Global Community Sponsorship program for 2018

The global community sponsorship working group (including Kevin Cristiano, Larry Swanson, Devin Sears, Rebecca Collins, and myself) have a 2018 Global Sponsorship proposal, and we’d like your feedback!

Here’s how the numbers shake out for 2017 events, excluding WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event./WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. (with apologies for the poor formatting of some of these tables):

2016 WordCamps Events People Avg size
The Americas 62 16,000 258
Europe, Africa, and Asia 51 13,000 255
Total 113 29,000
2017 WordCamps Events People Avg size
The Americas 57 16,300 286
Europe, Africa, and Asia 63 16,400 260
Total 120 32,700
MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. chapter program data, 2016-2017 2016 2017
Number of groups 380 519
Number of countries with a meetup group 73 86
Number of groups in the US (the country with the largest number of groups) 129 155
Total number of group members (as of October) 133,566 206,990
Total meetup events (as of October) 2,698 3,064

As you can see, the program saw a big jump in number of WordCamps in the Eastern region, and a dip in the Western region. Average camp size went up in Western, but number of attendees was basically flat. In the Eastern region, we saw more WordCamps, with a slight increase in attendees per camp.

The number of meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. in the chapter program grew by about 37%, and membership (not unique) grew more than that, which would seem to indicate that groups that were already part of the program are growing in membership.

We haven’t seen the growth in number of WordCamps in 2017 that we were expecting, and until we have tools in place to scale up financial support in other programs, we don’t need to worry too much about growing the revenue this program provides.

So this year, we’re proposing a small increase in global sponsorship package fees for the Eastern region only, as that’s where we saw all our growth.  Fees for the Western region have not changed from the 2017 program.

We’d also like to experiment with a few more acknowledgement benefits that won’t burden our organizing teams and will bring more quantifiable value to our global sponsors. Below is a draft of a sponsorship deck; please let us know your thoughts!

In case you don’t know our global sponsorship benefits by heart, the new benefits we’re proposing are bold and in italics. 🙂

Gold Silver Bronze
Western region (North, Central, South America) $180,000 $90,000 $50,000
Eastern region (Europe, Africa, Asia) $115,000 $75,000 $45,000
Name, logo, and company description on all WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. websites in the region X X X
Acknowledgment in one program-wide email to all WordPress chapter account meetups/user groups X X X
Acknowledgment on sponsor page on WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each. X
can include coupon code
X X
Dedicated tweet announcing your sponsorship from the official Twitter account for each WordCamp you sponsor X X X
Inclusion in the Thank You To Our Sponsors blog post on each WordCamp you sponsor X X X
Acknowledgement in the footer of the post-event, wrap-up thank you email to attendees
X X X
Coupon code in your sponsor description, posted to WordCamps in the region (subject to approval) X X
Notification email sent when events in your sponsored region are approved for pre-planning and again when events are added to the official schedule X X
Event-unique “trackable link” (purl) in your company description for each WordCamp in your region X
Table at WordCamps for meeting attendees if space is available* X
Acknowledgement in all “ticket purchase successful!” pages in your region X
A number of swag items added to each WordCamp’s “swag table,” if available (subject to approval) 3 2, sticker and postcard 2, sticker and postcard
A number of free tickets to each WordCamp you sponsor, reserved for your company representatives** 4 2
Unlimited upgrades to higher sponsorship level, up to 6 weeks before the event X X

*Not all WordCamp venues will have space to provide tables to sponsors, but if the venue has enough space to accommodate sponsor tables, then community sponsors will be offered exhibition space. In your notification email, you’ll be informed whether or not the venue has exhibition space so you can request a table right away.

**Free, reserved tickets will return to the general ticket pool if they are not claimed one month before WordCamp. Tickets reserved for sponsors should not be used for ticket giveaways; these are only for your company representatives who wish to attend the event.

If you have feedback on this proposal, please leave your thoughts, concerns, comments, or questions in a comment on this post!

(We do plan to post a report with stats about 2017 activity that will include WordCamp US and WordCamp EU, around the end of the year, so if you’re wishing you had more stats, please stay tuned!)