Sponsorship is the reason a lot of small museums and community organisations can run a deployment at all. It is also the part nobody documents, so people either ask for too little or ask for something they cannot deliver. What follows is what the product can actually give a sponsor, priced.
Two ways to find one
| Route | How it works | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor+ | You apply, NearField finds a local business who wants the association, and the sponsor covers your Markers and platform access. You approve everything before it goes live, and if a sponsor ends we look for another. | Nonprofits, cultural institutions, museums, libraries and community organisations. |
| Your own sponsor | You sell it yourself using the Sponsor Banner block. Nothing to apply for and nothing to share. | Anyone. Also the right route when you already have a supporter in mind. |
The mechanics below are the same either way. Apply for Sponsor+ at the Sponsor+ page; an application asks for your name, your organisation, an email and a paragraph on how you would use NearField, and you hear back within a business day.
What a sponsor actually gets
- A Sponsor Banner block
- A single co-branded row: their logo, their name, an optional tagline, and a link to their site. Taps on it are recorded and show up in your stats as Sponsor tapped. It is a free-plan block, with no tier to buy for this.
- Placement, which is the thing being priced
- In your shared footer it appears on every Experience that uses the default layout. On one Experience it appears at that stop only. The difference between those two is most of the difference in price.
- A page of their own, if you want to offer it
- An Experience you build and control, linked from the banner. Worth more than a banner, and worth saying out loud that you write it.
- A named credit in a reward
- A line in a passport reward message, such as Your badge is supplied by Harbourview Bakery, is read by exactly the people who finished the trail.
Live example · Ridgewood Museum of Natural History
Open full sizeWhere to put the banner
- 1
Open Account and expand Default Layout
Two regions, Header and Footer, built from the same block picker as an Experience.
- 2
Add a Sponsor Banner to the Footer
Header for a genuine co-brand: a joint programme, a named gallery. Footer for a supporter credit, which is what most sponsorships actually are.
- 3
Fill in the four fields
Sponsor name, Sponsor logo, Sponsor URL, Tagline. The logo renders 32 pixels tall with the width following its aspect ratio, so ask for an SVG, or a PNG about three times that height with a transparent background.
Two lines and a logo. The tagline is the whole of the sponsor's message, so it is worth writing for them rather than pasting their strapline. - 4
Check Use default header & footer is on for each Experience
It lives in the builder's Settings tab. Any Experience with it switched off will not show the banner, which is how you keep a sponsor off a page where they do not belong.
What to charge
Start by knowing your number. A ten-stop deployment on the Growth plan, bought outright:
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| Intro 3-Pack, the first three Markers | $49 |
| Seven more Markers at $29 each | $203 |
| Shipping, on three or more Markers | Free |
| Growth plan, $39/mo for twelve months | $468 |
| Year one | $720 |
Now price on attention, not on cost. A sponsor is not buying your invoice, they are buying a year of being beside something people chose to read. A rate card that holds up:
- $1,500 for a season, whole site. The footer banner on every Experience, for the run of an exhibition or a summer.
- $600 for a season, one stop. The banner on a single Experience: the gallery they care about, the habitat they funded.
- Add 50% for category exclusivity. No other bakery, no other bank. This is usually the easiest half of the money to raise.
- $2,500 for a year, whole site, plus a page of their own. The upper end, and only worth offering when you can already show a season of numbers.
Sanity-check it against reach before you send it. If your Markers recorded 4,100 visits over the season, $1,500 is about 37 cents per visit, and unlike a printed panel, you can tell them how many of those visits happened, when, and how many tapped through.
What to put in the proposal
- The term, with dates. A season, not ongoing. A fixed end is what makes a renewal conversation possible.
- Exactly where the logo appears, in words: the footer of all ten Experiences, or the Coral Lab page only.
- The artwork spec. 32 pixels tall as rendered, aspect ratio preserved, SVG or a transparent PNG at roughly 3x. Ask for the link destination at the same time.
- A reach figure from your own Stats, with the period it covers and the share that came from a physical Marker rather than a shared link. Both numbers are on your Stats page.
- What you will report and when. Commit to one email at the midpoint and one at the end.
- Approval rights, both ways. They approve their artwork; you approve everything that appears on your pages. Write both down.
- What happens if you re-theme. Colours and layout can change during a season. Say so, so a redesign is not a breach.
Reporting back
The report is what sells the second season, and NearField does most of it for you.
- A shareable stats report. On Growth, Share report on the Stats page mints a link anyone can open with no account. It stays live for 30 days, moves with the period, and carries counts and Experience names only, nothing that identifies a visitor.
- Sponsor taps. Your own Stats page shows a Sponsor tapped badge in the Actions panel. That is the click-through number, and it is the one a sponsor will ask about.
- Top Experiences. Which stops actually earned the attention, which is the argument for where the banner should sit next season.
Example
Ridgewood Museum of Natural History
Ridgewood runs nine gallery Experiences plus an orientation page at the desk, on Growth. Year one cost $720 all in.
They sold a season to a regional building society for $1,500, plus $750 for category exclusivity: no other financial institution on any page. The banner sits in the shared footer: logo, the society's name, the tagline Proud supporters of Ridgewood since 1974, linking to the society's community page.
The mid-season email ran to four lines: 2,240 visits, 71% of them from a Marker rather than a link, 96 taps on the sponsor bar, and a link to the live report. The renewal conversation started from that email rather than from a cold ask.
Can I have more than one sponsor?
Yes. Add a Sponsor Banner per sponsor, or put different sponsors on different Experiences. Two banners in a shared footer is the practical ceiling before the page starts to read as advertising.
Do I need a paid plan for any of this?
No. The Sponsor Banner block and the shared header and footer are both available on the free plan. The shareable stats report you will want for reporting is a Growth feature. Without a plan you can place three Markers, so a deployment of ten needs one.
Can a sponsor see who visited?
No. Everything a visitor tells your Experiences stays inside your account, and the shareable report is built to carry counts only. There is no route that hands a sponsor a visitor list.
What if the sponsor wants their own booking or donation button?
Use a Button block pointed at their page rather than an Action. A Donate or Pay Action charges through your connected Stripe account, so it must never be used to take money on someone else's behalf.
Sponsor+ matches nonprofits and cultural organisations with a local business who covers the cost.
Apply for Sponsor+