For most hackathons, sponsorship is the single biggest funding source — typically covering 50–80% of the total budget. But here's the thing: sponsors aren't charities. They're making a business decision. Your job is to make that decision easy by showing them what they get.

This chapter walks you through creating sponsor packages, finding the right companies, reaching out effectively, and managing the relationship so they come back next time.

Before you build your pitch, understand what motivates sponsors. It's usually one or more of these:

Talent recruitment. They want to see skilled people in action. A hackathon is essentially a hands-on interview environment where they can watch how people think, collaborate, and build. This is the #1 reason tech companies sponsor hackathons.

Brand visibility. They want their name in front of your audience — especially if your participants are their target customers, users, or future employees. Logo on the website, shoutout from the stage, presence in the room.

Product/API adoption. They want developers building on their platform. If they have an API, a tool, or a developer product, a hackathon is a perfect environment to get people using it, discovering edge cases, and becoming advocates.

Community goodwill. They want to be seen as supporting the community. This is especially true for local companies, accelerators, and organisations with a community-building mandate.

Innovation. Some sponsors genuinely want to see novel solutions to problems they care about. This is more common with corporate innovation teams and themed hackathons.

The standard approach is tiered packages — different levels with different benefits at different price points. Here's a template to adapt:

The big-ticket package. Usually one or two companies at this level.

Strong visibility without the headline position.

Supporting-level visibility.

Entry-level support, often in-kind.

Always offer this option. Some sponsors have specific goals that don't fit neatly into tiers. A cloud provider might want to offer $5,000 in compute credits. A food delivery company might want to sponsor all meals. Be flexible.

This depends heavily on your event's size, audience, and market. Some rough guidelines:

These are wide ranges because pricing depends on your audience quality, not just quantity. 100 senior AI engineers is worth more to sponsors than 500 random attendees.

Start with your network. Who do you know? Who do your co-organisers know? Warm introductions are 10x more effective than cold emails.

Think about who benefits. Match sponsors to your audience:

Build a target list. Aim for 20–30 potential sponsors. Research each one:

Prioritise ruthlessly. Rank by fit (how well your audience matches their goals) × likelihood (warm intro vs cold) × budget potential.

Step 1: Prepare your materials. Create a sponsorship prospectus — a clean, visual 3–5 page PDF that covers:

Step 2: Send the intro email. Keep it short. Explain the event in 2–3 sentences, why it's relevant to them specifically, and attach the prospectus. Ask for a 15-minute call.

Step 3: Follow up. Most sponsorship deals take 2–4 email exchanges and at least one call. Be persistent but not annoying. Follow up after 5–7 days if you don't hear back.

Step 4: Close and onboard. Once they agree, get contracts signed, collect logos and assets, and start delivering on your promises (website listing, social mentions, etc.) immediately.

Sponsors who feel well-treated come back. Sponsors who feel ignored don't.

BuilderBase's sponsor marketplace makes this easier. Sponsors can be onboarded onto the platform with their own presence — branded challenges, visibility on the event page, and built-in ROI tracking. When a sponsor joins through BuilderBase, the platform handles visibility and data capture, so you can focus on the relationship rather than the logistics.

Key takeaways: