Sponsorship and pricing

Sponsorship is becoming just one of many options for working with corporates but for certain types of organisations it's still a worthwhile type of relationship.
Sponsorship is about mutual benefits, not philanthropy and it's more commonly seen these days in sporting relationships, brand marketing, endorsement  etc.
Arts organisations rely heavily on sponsorship and sell naming rights to events, performances, tours, venues, etc. In return for some form of branding recognition, sponsors will purchase certain rights and opportunities.

Foresee Communications, which specialises in corporate relationships has produced a lot of material about sponsorships over the last 20 years. A commonly asked question about sponsorship is how to put a price on the sponsorship.
There are two common ways of putting a price on a sponsorship. The most common way is to determine how much money you need to make your event or activity work. That becomes the price of the sponsorship. FYI - this is not terribly realistic. The alternate method is to attempt to consider what it's worth to your potential sponsor.

I once ran an exercise for a client to put a starting price on a sponsorship. The potential sponsor was known to the organisation and they had good reason to want to work together. I valued the sponsorship at about a million dollars by looking at similar activities that the sponsor was already involved in, and similar deals that had been signed recently. Coincidentally, within a week of my valuation, the potential sponsor sent an offer to the client - for exactly the same amount of money. Wow, what a result. However the client thought that was too easy and they countered with four million!  You can imagine the gasps at the sponsor's office. For quite a while the deal was halted until reality prevailed. There was no one else in the mix so time was not a factor. In the end both parties came to an agreement to settle with $.15million. The key thing in this relationship was that both parties could offer something of value to each other. They were equally placed in the negotiation. Not too many deals work out like that!