Does accepting a sponsor’s money mean you condone or support them?

To the organizers, it may not seem like an endorsement, and that's fine. But the perception to others is probably a mild endorsement, and that's the perception that matters. I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have been able to find another sponsor and they could have avoided the whole debate!

Hmmmm… I can understand both view points. It would be like getting sponsorship for a nutrition program from McDonalds. It is a decision that the organizers might want to think as having the logo of the sponsor on materials may deter others from joining. Not just from within the organization but other potential sponsors.

At the same time, there is the whole Belle Wattling theory. I think back to Miss Melanie from Gone with the Wind who accepted monies earned via prostitution from Belle Wattling to support a "cause" dear to her heart.

I wouldn't call it an endorsement, but it IS an indication that you find them acceptable to do business with. And look at it from a social media perspective: do you look at someone's Facebook friends and LinkedIn associates and judge them on that? Of course you do.

I think as soon as money changes hands you are sitting in the same camp, whether it's your money you're spending or money you're accepting. If I buy from a company that supports pro-life then I am supporting that political agenda too whether I consciously choose to or not. If you accept money from a company OR a political party, you are affiliated with them, at least in other people's eyes, whether you think so or not. If I see a blog with sponsor logos I always associate the blogger with those organizations. And anytime a blogger posts positively about a product or business I always wonder if they are somehow paid to do so (products, services, or money) – and frankly, if I wanted to read/look at advertising, I'd do it somewhere else instead of a blog. I think people need to look more critically at the information they are exposed to all the time. Who wants dinner paid for by the Liberals? I'd rather they deal with some bigger issues we have (say, like homelessness or the environment).

As I posted on Duane's blog, even without influence on the content of the event, there is an influence on its reputation and credibility. If not, then conferences could accept sponsorship from anyone at all — white supremacists, the government of Sudan, organized crime — and say, “There’s no influence! What’s the problem?” No one would say that a legit political party is anything like those organizations, so the reputational influence isn't as obvious, but it's still there.

Derek, Of course you're going to the extreme, but yes it is a point well taken. And I think given how tight things are, the temptation to take money where you can get it will be strong. It's good that we're hashing this all out. Excellent discussion and lots of valid points from all.

Tris,

Thanks for blogging about this. Here's the organizing committee's take on the situation:

<a href="http://2009.northernvoice.ca/blog/reactions-sponsorships” target=”_blank”>http://2009.northernvoice.ca/blog/reactions-spons…

TTFN
Travis

And, yes, suddenly there are everyone's comments, posted. But it shouldn't have taken a thunderstorm and the better part of a week to get this done, should it?

I also see the link to the Eventbrite listing to purchase tickets for the party right in the post; that is something I looked for, and did not find, earlier. Now that it appears to be sold out, there's hardly any point, is there? The link to purchase tickets was sent out on Twitter, I understand, several days ago and not posted in the blog announcement for several days, thus filtering who would get the information in time to act on it and who would not.

These are social media choices that may perhaps be more telling than the committee would like. While a lot of people are on Twitter, not everyone is, and it's specifically a blogging conference, not a social media one. Perhaps the priorities in this case were backwards.

And, as I said on the NV site, perhaps the solution to this issue is to avoid having parties so extravagant they cannot be staged without the financial support of controversial organizations. They've managed it every year up till now, and last year even managed to host a party big enough for everyone instead of one with the capacity of less than half of attendees.

What Mack D. Male and Derek Miller said re: reputational influence .. the word sponsorship carries the issue here. There is always some form of exchange with sponsorship, even it is not explicitly visible, that's why there are sponsorship committees, to decide what the best quid pro quo is and why. We live in such an advertising-and-branding saturated word that we have become benumbed or inattentive to the basic issues, and then of course relativism creeps on into the party. But hey, we are supposedly living in a pomo world, right ?

Here's an interesting test .. would the organizing committee have accepted equal sponsorships from both the BC Liberals and the BC NDP, and if so, would each party respectively have been comfortable as co-sponsor ? It would be interesting to find out the answers to those two questions.

In most cases, whether you're dealing with a political party or not, a sponsor would prefer (or demand) to be the sole sponsor of their type — which is why you don't see both Coke and Pepsi, or both McDonald's and Burger King, sponsoring the Olympics.

Based on comments around the web on this issue, it seems that following the offer from the BC Liberals, the Northern Voice committee asked some of the other parties if they were interested too, and they were not. I'm not sure if that's the reason, but there you go.

I think it depends on the depth of the sponsorship. If it was just a banner or sign, raising awareness to the existence of a group is harmless, in my opinion. If the group (political or not), is hosting a main event at a conference, and I was against the cause, I probably wouldn't show up. I don't think I'd skip a show over a banner, though.