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Sponsorship evaluation scorecard

Scores an inbound sponsorship opportunity against 6 weighted criteria — audience fit, reach quality, cost efficiency, strategic alignment, past ROI signals, and execution risk — producing a 0–100 composite score, a…

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Purpose

Turn a messy inbound sponsorship pitch into a defensible, comparable score so a DevRel or developer marketing team can decide fast — fund it, negotiate the terms, or decline — without relitigating the criteria every time. Produces a weighted 0–100 score, a clear verdict, and the exact terms to renegotiate before signing.

When to Use

Invoke this skill when the user asks to:

  • Evaluate an inbound conference, meetup, or event sponsorship request
  • Score a newsletter, podcast, or YouTube sponsorship offer
  • Decide whether a community or Discord sponsorship is worth the spend
  • Compare two or more competing sponsorship opportunities on the same rubric
  • Justify a sponsorship decision to a budget owner or leadership
  • Build a repeatable scoring process for a full quarter of inbound requests

Inputs Required

Before starting, collect:

  • Sponsorship name & type: The property and format (e.g., conference booth, newsletter placement, podcast read, community sponsor tier)
  • Ask amount: Total cost being requested, plus any in-kind or travel costs
  • Audience described: Who the property claims to reach — role, seniority, stack, size
  • Our target developer: The persona we actually want to reach (role, language/framework, buying influence)
  • Deliverables offered: What we get — logo, booth, talk slot, dedicated email, link, attendee list, etc.
  • Reach data: Any numbers provided — attendees, subscribers, downloads, open rate, historical
  • Prior history: Have we sponsored this or a similar property before? Any results (signups, trials, pipeline)?

If reach data or prior history is missing, score those criteria on best-available evidence and flag the gap as a data risk in the output.

Instructions

Step 1: Score the 6 Criteria (each 0–10, then weighted)

Rate each criterion 0–10, apply the weight, and record a one-line justification. Weights sum to 100%.

Criterion 1 — Audience Fit (weight 30%) How closely the property's real audience matches our target developer.

  • 9–10: Core audience is our exact persona (right role, right stack, buying influence)
  • 6–8: Strong overlap; some audience is adjacent but valuable
  • 3–5: Partial overlap; a minority of the audience is our target
  • 0–2: Wrong audience — student-heavy, wrong stack, non-technical, or non-buyers
  • Penalize vague audience claims ("50k developers") with no role/seniority breakdown

Criterion 2 — Reach Quality (weight 20%) Effective reach, not vanity reach. Weight engaged reach over raw numbers.

  • Discount claimed numbers: newsletter open rate <25% or unverified download counts drop the score
  • Reward verifiable, engaged reach (booth foot traffic, talk attendance, active community members)
  • Consider persistence: evergreen content (blog, podcast archive) scores higher than a one-day event
  • Score reach among our target segment, not total audience — 5k relevant beats 50k irrelevant

Criterion 3 — Cost Efficiency (weight 20%) Cost per relevant reach and value of deliverables against the ask.

  • Estimate effective CPM against the relevant audience: (ask ÷ relevant reach) × 1000
  • Benchmark bands: developer newsletter $50–150 relevant CPM; conference booth varies by attendee quality; podcast read $25–75 CPM
  • Reward deliverables with lasting or lead-generating value (attendee list, dedicated email, talk slot) over pure logo placement
  • Flag any ask where >50% of value is passive logo visibility

Criterion 4 — Strategic Alignment (weight 15%) Fit with current goals beyond raw reach.

  • Does it serve a stated objective this quarter (awareness, developer signups, community, hiring/employer brand, product launch timing)?
  • Does the property's brand and community values align with ours? (Avoid associations that could harm trust)
  • Does it open a relationship (speaking, content, co-marketing) beyond the transaction?
  • Score low if it's opportunistic spend with no tie to a current priority

Criterion 5 — Past ROI Signals (weight 10%) Evidence this type of spend has worked for us.

  • If we sponsored this exact property before: use measured results (signups, trials, attributed pipeline, cost per signup)
  • If new: use nearest comparable (similar format/audience) as a proxy and mark it as a proxy
  • Reward properties that can provide case studies or attribution mechanisms (UTM links, promo codes, dedicated landing page)
  • Score the measurability of the opportunity, not just past outcomes — an untrackable sponsorship is a weaker bet

Criterion 6 — Execution Risk (weight 5%) What could make this fail or cost more than the ask.

  • Timeline: enough lead time to prep booth staff, talk, or creative?
  • Internal cost: travel, staffing days, content production not in the ask
  • Reliability: is the organizer/property established, or first-year and unproven?
  • Deduct for tight deadlines, heavy hidden costs, or unproven organizers

Step 2: Calculate the Composite Score

  • Composite = Σ (criterion score ÷ 10 × weight)
  • Report the composite as a number out of 100, plus each weighted contribution
  • Show the two strongest and two weakest criteria explicitly

Step 3: Assign the Verdict

Map the composite to a decision:

  • Sponsor (75–100): Strong fit — proceed, optionally at proposed terms
  • Negotiate (55–74): Worth pursuing only with improved terms — specify what to change
  • Pass (0–54): Decline — state the disqualifying criteria plainly

Override rule: if Audience Fit scores ≤3, cap the verdict at Pass regardless of composite — reach and price never fix the wrong audience.

Step 4: Negotiation Checklist (for Sponsor/Negotiate verdicts)

List 3–6 specific asks to improve the deal before signing:

  • Price reduction target or added deliverables to justify the ask
  • Attribution mechanism to require (promo code, UTM link, dedicated landing page)
  • Higher-value deliverable to request (talk slot, dedicated email, attendee list)
  • Success metric and target to agree on up front (e.g., cost per signup threshold)

Step 5: One-Line Recommendation

State the decision in a single sentence a budget owner could forward without context.

Output Format

  • Structure: Scorecard table (criterion, weight, raw score, weighted score, justification) → composite score → verdict → negotiation checklist → one-line recommendation
  • Length: 500–800 words
  • Format: Scannable — a scoring table plus short labeled sections, not long prose
  • Sections: Scorecard table → Composite Score → Verdict → Negotiation Checklist → Recommendation
  • Tone: Direct, evaluative, budget-conscious — a marketing manager defending spend to leadership, not a salesperson

Quality Checklist

Before delivering output, verify:

  • [ ] All 6 criteria are scored 0–10 with a one-line justification each
  • [ ] Weights applied correctly and composite sums to a number out of 100
  • [ ] Verdict matches the composite band (75+ Sponsor, 55–74 Negotiate, <55 Pass), with the Audience Fit ≤3 override applied where relevant
  • [ ] Cost Efficiency includes an effective CPM against the relevant audience, not total reach
  • [ ] Missing reach or history data is flagged as a data risk, not silently ignored
  • [ ] Negotiation checklist contains at least one attribution/measurement requirement

Notes

  • The most common scoring error is rewarding raw reach — always normalize reach and CPM to the relevant segment
  • A sponsorship with no attribution mechanism should rarely score above Negotiate; require a promo code or dedicated URL before funding
  • When comparing multiple opportunities, run each through the same scorecard and rank by composite — the weighting makes them directly comparable
  • Hidden costs (staff travel, booth build, content production) belong in the ask for CPM purposes even if the invoice doesn't include them

How to use this skill

This file is a Claude Code skill in Anthropic's standard format — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top.

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  1. Drag this file into a new chat, or copy and paste its contents
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