Some sponsors apply by phone or email instead of using the Portal. When they do, you can enter the application for them, choose the sponsorship opportunities, complete checkout, and understand what happens next.
When to Use This
Use this process when a sponsor asks you to apply for one or more sponsorship opportunities on their behalf. You follow the same application process the sponsor would use in the Portal, but you complete each step for them, including checkout.
Prerequisites
- You need permission to process sponsorship applications for a sponsor. If the Process Sponsorship Application button does nothing, or you cannot start the application, ask your administrator for access.
- The sponsor must already exist as an organization in your CRM. If the organization is not there yet, create it first; see Find, View, and Pick an Organization.
- Confirm which opportunity or opportunities the sponsor wants and how they plan to pay, because you will complete checkout for them.
Start the Application
- Go to Sponsorship & Benefits › Applications, and select Process Sponsorship Application. You can also start from the Sponsorships overview page.
- On the sponsor selection page, choose the sponsor organization and, if you know it, the contact at that organization who is applying.
- Select Start Application.
Warning
Choose the sponsor organization before you select Start Application. The button becomes active even when no organization is selected, so if you select it too soon, you move to the next step without a sponsor attached and need to start over.
Run the Application and Check Out
After you start the application, Rhythm opens the same application wizard the sponsor would use in the Portal, and you complete it for them:
- Choose the application process for this request.
- If the process asks for it, confirm the sponsor's contact and organization details.
- Choose the opportunity or opportunities the sponsor wants, along with any optional benefits included in the application process.
- Complete checkout by choosing a payment method and entering the order details, the same way a sponsor would when buying through the Portal.
Result
When checkout finishes, Rhythm looks up the order you just placed and tries to open the record it created. If the opportunity does not require approval, Rhythm takes you directly to the new sponsorship's page. The same is true when the sponsor pays with Pay Later: the sponsorship and its application are created right away, and the application should not remain in Draft status. If the application included more than one opportunity, Rhythm opens only one of the resulting records; use the sponsor's application or the Sponsorships list to see the others.
Warning
Sponsorship special pricing uses the sponsor organization's membership, not an individual contact's membership. If a sponsor should receive member pricing because they personally are a member, but their organization is not, finish the application at the calculated non-member price, then manually adjust the resulting order or invoice in the console.
If the Sponsorship Does Not Open Right Away
Rhythm writes the sponsorship in the background after checkout finishes, so the sponsorship can take a short time to be ready. If you see a message that the information is still being written to the sponsor's record, wait a few seconds, then check the Applications or Sponsorships list instead of waiting for the page to update on its own.
Warning
If the opportunity you processed requires staff approval before it becomes a sponsorship, checkout does not create a sponsorship immediately. Rhythm holds the request for review instead. When that happens, the page may try to open a sponsorship that does not exist yet and fail to load. If this happens, open the sponsor's application from the Applications list instead; the opportunity now shows as waiting for review. See Approve a Held Sponsorship Purchase for how to complete it once it is ready.
If a duplicate application is waiting for review in Applications, you can delete it directly from that queue instead of only activating it. Cancelling the related order does not remove the duplicate application by itself, so delete it from the queue too.
Related
To learn what the order built from an application looks like, see Turn an Application Into an Order at Checkout.