For event organizers, before the first sponsor call
Sponsor LadderFix the total first. Then price the rungs.
Enter the budget and the tiers you have in mind. Free in your browser: the revenue target the card must raise, the ladder checked for tier count and top-to-floor ratio, every pass priced at the ticket price, the booth price floor and a staff-free visibility tier, add-ons that undercut a tier, in-kind deals at the cost they displace, and the early-bird and signing dates. A run writes the rate card section by section, or the negotiation and discount policy.
1 Your event and its budget free
2 The card, checked free
What the page flags
The ladder, top first
Add-ons and in-kind offers
3 Rate card or policy metered
Pricing as soon as the session is ready...
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The total
Architecture
The ladder
Add-ons
In-kind
Calendar
Record
Caveats
The page's check of this reply
4 Saved cards
How it works
The total comes first: the budget's expenses times the share sponsorship carries - 75-80% or more at community-conference scale, effectively all of it for a free event. That is what the whole card must raise, never a number to split evenly across tiers. Comparable cards band each tier as ratios, never as dollars carried across scale or market; the published community ladders run 2-4 tiers at a top-to-floor ratio of 2:1 to 7.5:1, most near 4-5:1.
Every pass is a cost at the ticket price. Floor presence starts at a hard tier, with no cheap add-on route beneath it, and at least one tier sells visibility without a booth - the line a tightening sponsor budget keeps. In-kind offers are worth the budget line they replace, not the donor's retail figure, and the top tier stays cash-majority. The discount policy is written before the first call: published prices hold, a returning sponsor gets the post-event report rather than a rate cut, and every deviation is approved and logged.