A sponsorship application is a sponsor organization’s request for one or more opportunities. The sponsor can apply through the Portal, or staff can enter the request on their behalf. In both cases, Rhythm creates one application for the organization, with one requested opportunity for each opportunity they want.
Rhythm prices each requested opportunity from the sponsor organization’s membership, including any special pricing rule. Even when a special pricing rule uses contact-level membership criteria, the price still follows the organization at checkout and during console processing.
What an Application Records
Each requested opportunity on an application includes its own:
- Quantity. The number of that opportunity the sponsor wants.
- Optional benefits chosen. If the opportunity offers optional benefit groups, such as “choose two of these five signage options,” the application records which benefits the sponsor selected from each group they used.
- Review status and reason. The request’s current status, such as draft, waiting for staff review, approved, or rejected, plus an optional reason explaining that status. See How Application Review Status Works for the full picture.
Rhythm accepts quantities exactly as entered. It does not compare the quantity with the opportunity’s stated availability, and it does not reject zero or fractional quantities. After you save an application, quantities become read-only on the Edit Application page, so the edit screens do not give you a way to change them later.
Optional benefit choices behave the same way. The standard screens do not check whether a selected benefit belongs to the group it is recorded under, or whether the sponsor stayed within that group’s minimum or maximum number of choices. If an opportunity has no optional benefit groups, any benefit selection recorded against it has no effect later.
Numbering and Dating
Rhythm gives every new application a number automatically, so no one has to enter one. Application numbers are not guaranteed to be unique because Rhythm does not check for duplicates, and staff can edit a saved application’s number by hand. If your process uses application numbers to tell records apart, remember that two applications could have the same number.
If you do not enter a date when you create an application, Rhythm uses today’s date automatically. You can enter your own date when the timing matters, such as when you want the application to show when the sponsor submitted the request instead of when staff entered it.
Your Account's Custom Fields
If your account has defined custom fields for sponsorship applications, those fields appear on the application with Rhythm’s default fields, and Rhythm stores their values on the application record. If your account has not defined any application custom fields, the application has none to show, and there is nothing you need to configure.
Tip
Custom field values entered on an application are also copied to the sponsorship created from it, as long as a sponsorship custom field with a matching name exists to receive them. If you want a sponsor’s application answers to appear on their sponsorship record too, make sure the sponsorship side has a custom field with the same name.
Application custom fields are not available as conditions in an opportunity’s Special Pricing Advanced Rules & Logic; only contact custom fields are. If you need pricing to vary based on a value the sponsor provides, add a contact custom field instead and use it as the pricing rule’s condition. You can use one contact field to drive more than one pricing rule on the same opportunity.
One way to offer selectable or tiered contribution amounts within a sponsorship is to edit the application process so it shows a contact form. Then add a custom field with predefined options, such as radio buttons or a dropdown for the amount or tier, and tie those options to special pricing rules on the opportunity. Some accounts keep this simpler by using a dedicated application process just for sponsorships.
If your account uses conditional visibility on a sponsorship application form to show a field group based on the selected opportunity, compare against the form-data fields Opportunity and ID.
What Applications Don't Do
Sponsorship application processes cannot currently be restricted to a specific event. If you run sponsorships across multiple events and need different processes active for each one at the same time, you cannot set that up through eligibility criteria today.
Sponsorship application data does not directly power an event microsite listing page, such as a page similar to the built-in exhibitor list. If you need a public sponsor listing on a microsite, model sponsor status on the organization record instead and publish it with a filtered directory.
Related Reading
To find applications waiting for review or already submitted, see Find and Open Sponsorship Applications. To correct an application’s details, chosen benefits, or a requested opportunity’s status, see Edit, Delete, or Cancel the Order on an Application.