How to Find Sponsors for a Conference in Latin America

To find sponsors for a conference, start with a short list of companies that already want to reach your audience, offer them packages built around specific outcomes (leads, hiring, brand visibility), and contact a named person with a concrete proposal rather than a generic deck. In Latin America, the companies most likely to say yes are local banks and fintechs, telecom operators, software firms that are hiring, universities and regional brands with a presence in your city. Expect a sales cycle of several weeks, and plan for most of your sponsor revenue to arrive from a handful of deals.

Start with your audience, not with the sponsor list

Sponsors do not pay for a conference. They pay for access to the people in the room. Before you write a single email, be able to answer three questions in one sentence each:

• Who attends? Roles, seniority, industries, cities. “Developers and product people from Santa Cruz and La Paz” is better than “tech enthusiasts”.
• Why do they come? Learning, hiring, networking, finding customers.
• What can a sponsor do with them? Recruit, sell, launch a product, collect leads, build reputation.

If this is your first edition, you have no past attendance data. Use what you do have: the size of your community channels (WhatsApp groups, Telegram, meetups), the speakers already confirmed, partner communities that will promote the event, and the waitlist on your pre-launch page. Be honest about which numbers are projections.

Build a target list of 40 to 80 companies

A good list is specific. Group candidates into tiers of likelihood:

1. Warm: companies whose employees are speaking, companies that sponsored similar local events, and companies that already sell to your audience.
2. Logical: banks, fintechs, telecoms, cloud and software vendors, coworking spaces, universities, and government innovation agencies in your country.
3. Aspirational: regional or global brands with a LatAm office. They take longer and often decide budgets a year ahead.

Where to find names:

• The sponsor walls of other conferences in your country and neighbouring ones.
• LinkedIn job posts: a company hiring ten engineers in Lima is a natural sponsor for a Lima developer conference.
• Local chambers of commerce, tech associations and startup ecosystem maps.
• Your own speakers and community leaders. Ask each one: “Who at your company decides on events?”

For every company, write down the person you will contact (marketing, employer branding, developer relations, or the country manager in smaller markets), why they would care, and which package fits.

Design packages around outcomes

Most first-time organizers copy “Gold, Silver, Bronze” from another event. Tiers are fine, but the content of each tier should map to what sponsors actually want:

Sponsor goal	What to include
Hiring	Booth near the coffee area, job board on the website, talent session slot, mention in the closing
Lead generation	Booth, workshop slot, opt-in lead list (with attendee consent), raffle with registration
Brand visibility	Logo on stage screens, website and app, naming rights for a room or the after-party
Thought leadership	Keynote or panel seat, subject to your content quality bar
Community goodwill	Scholarship tickets for students, sponsoring a hackathon prize

Keep two rules. First, never sell a speaking slot without a content review; attendees notice sales pitches and your next edition suffers. Second, include small packages. In many Latin American cities a local company may have budget for a coffee break, lanyards or a student scholarship, but not for a headline tier. Small deals add up and often grow the following year.

Price with your costs and your market in mind

Start from your budget: what do you need sponsors to cover after ticket revenue? Divide that gap across tiers, then sanity-check prices against what local companies spend on other marketing (a billboard, a radio campaign, a trade-fair booth). Quote in the currency your sponsor budgets in. Multinationals often budget in US dollars, while local companies budget in local currency and may need an invoice from a local entity. Decide early how you will receive money and issue invoices, because this delays more deals than price does.

Also accept in-kind sponsorship: venue, catering, printing, internet, travel for speakers. Put a fair value on it in the agreement so both sides know what was exchanged.

Write outreach that gets answered

A sponsor email should fit on a phone screen. Include who you are, the event in one line, why this company, one or two packages that fit, and a clear next step. Attach or link the deck; do not paste it into the email.

Then follow up. Short, polite follow-ups a few days apart are normal and expected; many replies arrive after the second or third touch. If you have a mutual contact, a WhatsApp introduction is often faster than cold email in Latin America, but move the formal proposal to email so the decision maker can forward it internally. For ready-to-use wording, see our sponsor email templates.

Run the meeting like a conversation, not a pitch

When a sponsor agrees to a call, spend the first half asking questions:

• What are your goals for this year in this market?
• Which events did you sponsor before, and what worked?
• Who needs to approve this, and when is your budget closed?
• What would make you renew next year?

Then adapt the package. If they want hiring, swap the logo on the lanyard for a talent session and a job board listing. Leave the call with a written summary and a date for the decision.

Close and document the deal

Before you put a logo on your website, have in writing:

• Package name, list of benefits, and deadlines for each (logo files, booth setup, speaker name).
• Amount, currency, payment method, invoice details and due date.
• What happens if the event is postponed or cancelled.
• Who the contact is on each side during the event.

Track every deal in one place with a status: contacted, in conversation, proposal sent, accepted, paid, delivered. Sponsors talk to each other, and promising the same “exclusive” category to two companies is an easy mistake when deals live in scattered email threads.

Deliver, report and renew

The real sponsor sale for next year happens during and after this event. Take photos of every booth and branded space, collect the numbers you can actually measure (booth visitors scanned, workshop attendees, job board clicks), and send each sponsor a short report within two weeks. Ask what they would change and whether they want to reserve their category for the next edition. Renewals are far cheaper to close than new sponsors.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Sending the same mass email to 200 companies.
• Pricing tiers before knowing your costs.
• Promising audience numbers you cannot back up.
• Waiting until two months before the event to start.
• Forgetting to ask for logo files and brand guidelines until the week of printing.

BuildAConf lets you register your event, filter a pool of companies by country, city and industry, and send each one a written proposal with tier, benefits and amount. When a sponsor accepts and pays through the platform, its logo is published at its tier on your event website and app automatically.

Frequently asked questions

How early should I start looking for sponsors?

Start as soon as you have a date, a venue and a clear audience, ideally five to six months before the event. Large companies may need even longer because their budgets are planned annually, while small local businesses can sometimes decide within weeks.

What if my conference is new and has no attendance history?

Sell what you can prove: confirmed speakers, the size and activity of your community, partner organizations promoting the event, and pre-launch sign-ups. Offer a lower founding-sponsor price in exchange for a renewal option, and be clear about which numbers are estimates.

Should I accept in-kind sponsors?

Yes, especially for venue, catering, internet, printing and travel, which are often the biggest costs. Agree on a fair value in writing and give the in-kind sponsor visibility proportional to that value, just as you would with a cash sponsor.

Who should I contact inside a company?

In larger companies, look for marketing, brand, employer branding or developer relations. In smaller markets, the country manager or a founder often decides directly. Ask your speakers and community members for warm introductions whenever possible.