How should foundations responded to event sponsorship requests?

Exponent Philanthropy’s Primer How to Avoid Self-Dealing has guidance on how to approach tickets to fundraisers and other grantee events.

Halley Kruse of the Acklie Charitable Foundation also shared:

My family foundation has a blanket policy that we do not fund fundraising events or sponsorships. The reasons for this are two-fold.

1. Adopting a policy against funding for all event sponsorships helps our foundation have a consistent approach to these types of asks.
2. While we realize there are ways to provide sponsorships without running afoul of IRS regulations, not supporting sponsorships is the easiest way to make sure we are not getting ourselves into a questionable situation.

Here’s an article from the Council on Foundations for reference.

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