When sponsors sign on to support your event, one of the first things they want is to see their sponsor access is live — logo on the event page, name in the lineup, presence that proves the partnership is real. That’s a reasonable ask. But how you handle when and how that visibility goes up can make or break your workflow.
Here’s a breakdown of your options, the tradeoffs, and what actually works best.
The Sponsor Invite Link
The quickest path to getting a sponsor visible on your event is sharing the Sponsor Invite Link. With it, sponsors can log in and add their own details — logo, description, website, social links — without waiting on you to do it for them.
Why this works well: Sponsors love it. They don’t have to send you assets, wait for you to upload them, then follow up to make sure everything looks right. They own the process, they move at their own pace, and they feel in control of how their brand shows up. For your team, it means one less back-and-forth in the inbox.
Email sponsors receive once invited
Screen for invited sponsors to fill out their information
Dashboard after sponsor invite has been sent
The catch: The invite link gives sponsors access to add their profile before payment is confirmed. That means a sponsor could technically go live on your event page — visible to attendees and the public — without having paid yet. For most established sponsors that’s a non-issue, but for new or smaller partners, it’s worth being intentional about when you share that link.
The Workaround: A Custom Event With Registration Disabled
If you need a sponsor to have a place to build out their profile without it going publicly live on your main event, there’s a clean solution: create a custom event and turn off registration.
This gives sponsors a sandbox — somewhere they can upload assets, review how their profile looks, and get comfortable with the platform — without any of it being attendee-facing. Once payment clears and everything looks good, you move them over to the live event.
It’s a bit more setup on your end, but it gives you a clean gate between “sponsor is configuring” and “sponsor is confirmed.”
The Invoice Feature
For teams that need a clear paper trail before granting access, the Invoice feature ties everything together. You can generate and send an invoice directly through the platform, keeping payment and access in the same workflow rather than juggling external tools.
Once an invoice is issued, you have a documented record of the commitment — which makes it a lot easier to decide when it’s appropriate to hand over that invite link or move a sponsor to a live event.
The Bottom Line: People Want Self-Serve and Easy
Sponsors are busy. They’re not going to fill out a form, email you a logo, wait three days, and then follow up about the status. The more friction in the process, the more likely things fall through the cracks — or the more likely they just go with a different event that made it easier.
The invite link exists because self-serve works. Sponsors get visibility faster, your team saves time, and the whole onboarding feels professional. The key is pairing that ease with the right guardrails — whether that’s using the invoice feature to confirm commitment first, or using a staging event to keep things tidy until everything’s official.
The goal is a process that’s smooth for sponsors and in control for you. With the right combination of these tools, you can have both.
If you have questions about getting started, reach out to your account manager or email info@runsignup.com.