Sponsorship

Sponsorship may be a useful means of saving public expenditure. Like all government publicity projects, websites should observe the guidance given in the Cabinet Office Guidance for Departments on Sponsorship of Government Activities. This document can be found online at: http://www.gics.gov.uk or published in the Directory of Civil Service Guidance. These guidelines should be consulted in full. Like all government guidelines they are subject to amendment and update.

In general, sponsorship:

• must avoid any suggestion that the sponsors will be sympathetically regarded for other purposes;

• must be seen to add significant benefit;

• should add to, not replace, core funding for the project;

• cannot be given by firms which are involved in significant commercial negotiations with the department or are licensed/regulated by it;

• should be sought in an open and even handed manner between organisations in a particular field, using the appropriate public sector procurement methods to secure the contractual arrangements;

• must not be an endorsement by Government of the sponsor or its products or services;

• must not dilute the effectiveness of your website or the message that lies behind it. Sponsors cannot influence, the messages of Government communication in their business area;

• must not bring adverse publicity to the project;

• must be of websites and not of individual Ministers or civil servants;

• does not place a Minister or a Department under an obligation to a sponsor.
  

Sponsorship of individual amounts, including value-in-kind, of more than £5,000 must be disclosed in Departmental Annual Reports.

To measure the value of in-kind sponsorship, where the sponsor provides goods or services that benefit of the project, Departments should consider the opportunity cost, ie, how much it would have cost the department if it had paid for the support provided. Ongoing costs should also be taken into account for the lifetime of the sponsorship agreement.

Returns to the sponsor must be specified in writing as part of the sponsorship agreement. The agreement should cover, for example, the display of the name of the sponsor or whether there is to be a link to the sponsor’s website.

Credit to a sponsor must never create confusion about branding or your website’s identity.

Credit to a sponsor should only occur on those parts of your web space where the sponsor is directly contributing to its provision. This should be specified in the sponsorship agreement.

Acknowledgement should be concise. A company logo, if used, must not distract from clear branding of your website’s own identity or any government branding. A sponsor’s logo must comply with the universal accessibility and graphics requirements of these guidelines.

A company logo must be seen as appropriate and must not be of a size that is visually or perceived to be visually larger or more important than any official or campaign logo. A link to the sponsor’s own web page is perfectly okay. To retain your audience, you may wish to have it open in a new browser window.

If these guidelines have been followed, then no specific disclaimer for this instance of sponsorship should be necessary. It should be evident that the source of sponsorship is appropriate. It is, however, your responsibility to ensure that this relationship cannot be misinterpreted.

In the case that a disclaimer is necessary to avoid the semblance of an inappropriate relationship with the company, then it should be placed next to the credit line in the same heading level and typeface and on the same page. This is because disclaimers that are a link away from a credit have not in practice proved to be effective at avoiding the appearance of a problem.

It would be useful if the government’s policy on sponsorship is included were the disclaimer information just off the home page together with an assertion that all sponsorship of the site meets these criteria.