Best Practices To Build An Inclusive Sponsorship Programme

Women and other underrepresented groups do not have the same opportunities for sponsorship as their male colleagues.

It is important that when organisations build successful sponsorship programmes, they are fully inclusive. This means creating opportunities that cater to a diverse range of employees, while ensuring fairness, equity, and accessibility.

3Plus can support you in building a road map to introduce an inclusive sponsorship programme in your organisation and advise you on best practices to follow, including

1. Defining Programme Goals: Looking at succession planning and workforce mapping data.
2. Identifying Diverse sponsors: Identifying suitable sponsors, including people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and individuals with disabilities.
3. Transparent Criteria: Establish transparent criteria for sponsorship selection to ensure fairness and equity. Clearly outline what sponsors can expect and what criteria will be used to evaluate applications or proposals.
4. Accessibility: Make sure your sponsorship programme is accessible to all potential sponsors. This includes considering factors such as language barriers, physical accessibility of event venues, and financial accessibility in terms of sponsorship costs.
5. Training and Resources: Provide training and resources to sponsors to help them understand and navigate DEI issues effectively. This might include workshops, guidelines, or access to resources on diversity and inclusion best practices.
6. Setting up communication channels:  for feedback, evaluation and assessing the effectiveness of the programme.

For those organisations with homogeneous leadership teams, introducing a “Sponsor Tree ” can make a difference. It helps to share the sponsoring load equitably to build an inclusive sponsorship programme.

This guidebook is free with all corporate engagements, workshops either in person or online, keynote speeches or consulting services.

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