What occurs when a company appears to be an official sponsor without paying the sponsorship fees?

An outside agency could be a public or private sector sponsor including: military agency, educational institution, and international embassy.

Agency payments made directly to a student, or reimbursements to a student, are not considered third-party agreements. Student Accounting prepares and sends bills for tuition and fees, maintains agency and graduate student third-party accounts, and handles all correspondence regarding third-party agreements. 

Responsibilities as a student with a third-party contract application: 

  • Providing Student Accounting with the sponsor authorization or government training voucher before the fee payment deadline.
  • If your third party contract application and sponsor authorization has not been received by September 1, 2021 you will risk the sponsor fee credit not being posted to your account. Which could result in you being dropped from your classes.
  • Ensure that any remaining balance not covered by your sponsor is paid (by either you and/or your home department) by the Fee Payment Deadline. If you personally owe a portion of the balance due on your MyBill account, please visit MyBill. 
  • Invoices are billed after the University add/drop date. If your sponsor does not make payment by the appropriate billing deadline, the sponsor fee credit will be removed from your student account. 
  • It is the student’s responsibility to follow-up with their sponsor to ensure payment is made accordingly.

The sponsor authorization are either emailed to , faxed to 530-752-5718, submitted in person or mailed to:

University of California, UC Davis
Student Accounting
PO Box 989062
West Sacramento, CA 95798-9062


There is no standard sponsor authorization form

For example, some agencies provide a letter on business letterhead stating what they are willing to pay. Others may provide a formal contract. Regardless of the format, all sponsor authorizations are considered contractual agreements, and the following information must be included in order for the request to be processed:

  • Student's name
  • Student's ID number (university ID)
  • Specific charges and academic quarters the sponsor will pay (Note: Student Accounting will not bill your sponsor for books, parking, application fees, or late fees).
  • Sponsor billing address
  • Name, signature and contact information of person authorizing the contract
  • Sponsor email billing address
  • Purchase order number (for government contracts)

A sponsor fee credit should appear on your student account shortly following receipt of the contract. The credit indicates that Student Accounting has posted a temporary credit on your behalf in anticipation of the receipt of funds from your sponsoring agency. The credit on your account does not mean that the university has received the actual payment.

A sponsor with a past due balance may have its billing privileges terminated. Students should be aware that they are ultimately responsible for any defaults in payments by the sponsoring agency.

International Students: Financial Guarantee Letters supplied for Admission purposes are not acceptable for third-party billing purposes.


For Sponsors

UC Davis utilizes our secure online tool, SponsorPoint, that enhances the billing and account management experience for third party sponsors.

SponsorPoint Information

The Department of Home Affairs acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their cultures and to their elders past, present and emerging.

A brand that gives financial support to a person, organization, event or activity, such as a trade show or a charity football match, is engaging in sponsorship. A subtle form of marketing, it's a non-salesy way to align your brand or products with the causes your customers care about.

Types of Sponsorship for the Modern World

In the physical world, sponsorship is where a business pays to have its name and logo placed on the materials associated with an event or organization. For example, you may purchase new kit for a Little League team and, in return, have your business name on the shirts or printed in the match programs.

Promotional opportunities like these come in all shapes and sizes, for example:

  • Cash donations
  • Prize donations, such as gift certificates or a selection of your products
  • Product sponsorship, through the provision of banners, badges, audiovisual equipment, tote bags and other branded giveaways at trade events
  • Doing jobs free of charge, generating awareness of your business for just the price of your time 
  • Providing speakers free of charge at business events
  • Hosting an awards reception
  • Educational programs
  • Financial sponsorship for events, athletics teams and community groups

In the online world, sponsorship is where a business pays to have it's branded content on a site that's relevant to its audience. This content could include a blog post, social media post, videos, a logo or a review of your products. The content may be written by you or by a third party, such as a social media influencer who tests your beauty products and then writes a review. It's sponsored because you pay to have your brand or products mentioned in a positive way.

What's the Value of Sponsorship?

As a branding exercise, sponsorship is looked on favorably. For example, sponsoring a charity event means that you have reduced the cost burden for the charity, making life better for both the charity and the people attending the event. The benefit to the business is a tangible boost to your reputation – your company is now a good corporate citizen, associated with the type of causes your ideal customers care about. That's the reason why sponsorship spending exceeds $24 billion in the U.S. annually, according to IEG.

Here are some other benefits:

Cost-effective: Sponsorships are often cheaper than traditional advertising, especially if you provide value in the form of goods and services, known as in-kind sponsorship. For example, a hotel might provide free accommodation for event attendees in return for mentions and signage.

As Billboard reports, Hilton Hotels and Live Nation successfully concluded a five-year sponsorship deal, where Hilton offered reduced rates for artists and staff under Live Nation's umbrella, and Live Nation drove concert-goers to Hilton hotels by advertising on its website. This is an excellent example of a mutual sponsorship in kind.

Drive sales: Sponsorship is an easy way to introduce consumers to a product in a way that encourages them to make a purchase. A food company might offer free samples at a trade show, for example, at the same place where they can buy the full-price product. Sponsored content on a blog site might provide a discount voucher and a link to the sponsor's online jewelry store.

Reach more customers through word of mouth: Sponsorship encourages word-of-mouth marketing, which Social Media Today describes as "the most valuable source of marketing" because customers trust their friends. Word of mouth marketing has a snowball effect; one person who has a positive interaction with your brand tells another, and that person tells another, making it a great vehicle for mass exposure.

We see this most clearly on social media, where consumers follow influencers to get their opinions and reviews on products and brands. Advertisers can sponsor influencers to promote new product launches and special offers, getting their product before a ready-built and engaged online audience.

Generate media buzz: For a small business, getting media mentions is tough and out of financial reach. However, if you sponsor an event or a trade show, you can tap into the media coverage for the event. If your logo is tied to the event branding, it will appear in all the photographs.

How to Go About It

Sponsorship is complex; it is not merely providing financial support because someone has a good cause. When properly done, sponsorship creates a meaningful three-way relationship between you, the organization or cause you're sponsoring, and your audience. The key goal is to quickly create a quality audience. To do that, you must align with the right opportunities.

The first thing to consider here is reach. Who is the audience for this event or cause? How many people will your branding reach? To take social media influencers as an example, the size of the audience is important, but so is the engagement level of the audience. You need to make sure your sponsored content is seen and does not disappear into the void.

You also need to think about relevance. Sponsorship expert Sophie Morris, writing at LinkedIn, warns against the "logo slap," where you just put your logo onto something and hope it pulls in sales. To get the best possible returns for your sponsorship, you need to be relevant to the audience and the event that you're sponsoring.

To find relevant opportunities, try your local Chamber of Commerce or use a sponsorship matching service like Sponsor My Event. To find relevant influencers, sign up at platforms such as Upfluence, Izea and AspireIQ. These platforms let you search for influencers according to their niche, posting frequency, engagement rank and number of followers or fans.

Burned by Excessive Paid Posts?

How much sponsorship is too much sponsorship? That's a question that every online sponsor should be asking since the saturation rate – the number of sponsored posts an online blog site or influencer has done relative to their total content – can reduce the effectiveness of your campaign. According to Forbes, audience engagement on Instagram decreases as the saturation rate increases.

Simply put, too many ads are a turnoff for consumers.

The definition of ads here is something of a moving target. Some brands and influencers do a much better job than others at disguising the sponsored nature of their content, such that a sponsored post may perform just as well as an organic one. Quality, rather than quantity, is the key to success. The trick is to find the sweet spot between the saturation rate and audience engagement to understand exactly how many posts you need to buy to keep the interest of your audience.

What is it called when a sponsor utilizes the appeal of an event to market the sponsor's products?

Ambush marketing or ambush advertising is a marketing strategy in which an advertiser "ambushes" an event to compete for exposure against other advertisers.

Which part of the event triangle usually pays a fee in exchange for an opportunity to market a brand or product?

Spectators often pay a fee (i.e. purchase a ticket). Spectators are perhaps the most important component of the Event Triangle, as they are the primary financial support necessary to fund the event, in addition to money made from advertisements.