We have reviewed our approach to sponsorship donations. This is our new guidance on sponsorship which will apply to sponsorship accepted from 1 January 2027 onwards.

For our current sponsorship guidance, please see Sponsorship.

Sponsorship is any money or other property (items, goods or services) provided to you to help, or which must reasonably be assumed to help, meet costs in connection with:

• any conference, meeting or other event (including digital conferences or events)
• the preparation, production, or distribution of a publication (print or digital), or
• any study or research

where these are organised by you or on your behalf.1

Sponsorship may include payments to you on commercial terms. Even if you and the sponsor may view this as a commercial arrangement, sponsorship payments are a type of donation. The same permissibility and reporting requirements apply to donations received as sponsorship as with other donations.

Sponsorship is regulated because it has a similar effect as other types of donations. For both sponsorship and other types of donations, the law provides transparency on financial benefits provided to you.

When does a payment help meet costs?

In most cases, a payment made in connection with an event, publication or research may reasonably be assumed to be to help meet its costs. The intention of the sponsor is irrelevant to whether a payment is sponsorship. If one of the purposes of the payment was to help you meet these costs, or may reasonably be assumed to be to help you meet these costs, this is sponsorship. 

It is important to consider how a reasonable person would see the payment and whether they would think one of the purposes of the payment is to help you meet these costs.

A payment does not have to be used to meet costs directly to count as sponsorship.

Valuing sponsorship

The value of the sponsorship is the full amount of the payment received from the sponsor. You must not make any deductions for any potential benefit to the sponsor or where the actual costs of the event, publication, study or research are less than the amount received from the sponsor.2

The following payments do not count as sponsorship:1

• admission charges for conferences, meetings or other events 
• the purchase price of, or any other charge to access, publications
• commercial rate payments for adverts in publications

While these payments do not count as sponsorship, they may instead be a different type of donation. If a payment is not sponsorship, you should consider whether the payment is another type of donation, such as a gift of money or money spent paying costs you have incurred.

Admission charges

Admission charges for your events will not count as sponsorship. For example, conference entry passes or an admission fee to attend an event organised by you or on your behalf.

However, if you charge or are paid more than the value of the service provided at the event, this extra amount will be a donation if this is more than £500.2  Please see common examples of sponsorship for more guidance and examples of this.

Adverts in publications

Payments made to place adverts in your publications at the commercial rate will not count as sponsorship. For example, you may produce publications promoting policies for these to be adopted by a party. This exemption only applies to advertising in publications and does not include other forms of advertising, such as event banners. 

To work out whether payments made to place adverts in a publication are a donation, you must work out the commercial rate to charge for these adverts. The commercial rate will be the average rates for similar adverts offered by commercial providers.

If someone pays more than the commercial rate for an advert in a publication, the full amount of the payment will be sponsorship. This is because the exemption would no longer apply.

Fundraising events and dinners

Payments provided towards meeting the costs of a dinner or reception organised by or on your behalf will be sponsorship.