ACM FAccT 2022 Sponsorship Policy

Statement Regarding Sponsorship and Financial Support

Financial support from corporate sponsors and philanthropic organizations ensures that the conference remains accessible to a broad set of participants. Outside contributions offset the considerable expense involved in staging the conference, reducing the financial barriers to participation and enhancing inclusivity. With the hybrid format, conference organizing costs increase, as both the in-person and online components have separate overhead and there is likely less in-person participation; further, there is significant expense for the online component, particularly to make sure that local economic and technical conditions are not a barrier to remote participation.

We aim to foster a diverse community with participants from varied disciplines, organizations, and geographic locations. We value and encourage participation from people in the academy, industry, government, and civil society.

At the same time, outside contributions raise serious concerns about the independence of the conference and the legitimacy that the conference may confer on sponsors and supporters. We take these concerns seriously and have taken a number of steps to ensure that we’re able to maintain a transparent and appropriate relationship with our funders:

1. To ensure the independence and integrity of the conference, sponsors have no say over the paper selection process, tutorial selection process, choice of invited speakers, the composition of the program committees, the best paper awards, or any other part of the conference organization or content. The substance and structure of the conference are determined independently by the relevant chairs and program committees.
2. All papers are chosen through a rigorous, mutually anonymous (double-blind) peer review process. Authors of submitted papers must also disclose conflicts of interest by identifying institutions and potential reviewers with whom they have existing relationships.
3. We will always acknowledge our sources of financial support.
4. We will always disclose the benefits that funders receive as a condition of their contributions.
5. Sponsors can only contribute to a general fund; they cannot specify how their contributions are spent.
6. To ensure conference sponsorships advance the FAccT principles and Strategic Plan, sponsors are subject to approval by the Steering Committee. The details of this procedure are documented below.

We are grateful to receive financial support from organizations that respect our twin goals of inclusivity and independence. If you would like to sponsor FAccT 2022, e-mail the sponsor chairs.

Sponsorship Benefits

Sponsorship of the annual ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT) contributes to furthering research and interdisciplinary dialogue around the creation of fair, accountable, and transparent socio-technical systems. We deeply appreciate any amount of support your company or foundation can provide. Below you’ll find our suggested sponsorship levels.

To streamline the process of managing sponsorships, we provide a single, standardized report back to sponsors on the conference outcomes.

Sponsor benefits have been updated to reflect the online nature of the conference; for future in-person offerings, they will likely change again. Sponsor support will also give the organizing committee financial flexibility to innovate the online conference experience in ways that may not yet be planned.

2022 Levels of Sponsorship:

$75,000 USD

• Verbal acknowledgment of contribution in the opening and closing remarks of the conference (a single track session attended by all participants)
• Signage including your logo during one in-person lunch (if the in-person conference serves lunch)
• Company or foundation name and large†† logo on website with link
• Access to an opt-in database of attendees†
• Free online or in-person registration for up to 8 attendees from your organization

$30,000 USD

• Verbal acknowledgment of contribution in the opening and closing remarks of the conference (a single track session attended by all participants)
• Company or foundation name and medium†† logo on website with link
• Access to an opt-in database of attendees†
• Free registration for up to 3 attendees from your organization

$20,000 USD

• Verbal acknowledgment of contribution in the opening and closing remarks of the conference (a single track session attended by all participants)
• Company or foundation name and medium†† logo on website with link
• Free registration for up to 2 attendees from your organization

$10,000 USD

• Verbal acknowledgment of contribution in the opening and closing remarks of the conference (a single track session attended by all participants)
• Company or foundation name and small†† logo on website with link
• Free registration for up to 1 attendee from your organization

$5,000 USD

• Verbal acknowledgment of contribution in the opening and closing remarks of the conference (a single track session attended by all participants)
• Company or foundation name and small†† logo on website with link

Additional information

• †At the time of registration, participants will have the opportunity to opt in to a database of names and contact info that will be shared with you. In keeping with the spirit of inclusivity, we ask that this list not be used to invite subsets of attendees to exclusive parties or events.
• ††The sizing of logos will depend on the dimensions of the logos provided. We will aim to make the {large, medium, small} logos be scaled to approximately {1.5, 1, .5} along their largest dimension.
• There are no sponsorship options that include a reserved spot in the program. All program spots will be selected via the same process: rigorous review by our program committee.
• All funds will be pooled into a general fund. We are not able to earmark funds for specific purposes.
• All attendees will be expected to follow the ACM Code of Conduct.

Sponsorship Approvals

For FAccT 2022, sponsors must be approved by the Executive Committee with input from the Steering Committee. The following process will be used to vet sponsors prior to finalizing payment (and contract, if applicable) with ACM:

• Sponsor chairs will notify the FAccT Steering Committee of the proposed sponsor by e-mailing the steering committee mailing list.
• For returning sponsors:
• Steering committee members will have at least 1 week from notification to submit an objection to the proposed sponsor by e-mail to the Executive Committee. Objections should be specific to the sponsor in question, cite relevant evidence, and argue why sponsorship from this organization would impede FAccT’s mission as expressed in the Strategic Plan.
• If at least two objections are received, the sponsor will be submitted to the SC for a vote.
• For new sponsors:
• Steering committee members will have at least 1 week from notification to discuss the sponsor and document objections.
• All new sponsors will be submitted to the SC for a vote.
• For all sponsors for which a vote is required, the SC will be provided with a ballot. The ballot will contain a link to the documented discussion of the objections for the sponsor with their supporting evidence, and a vote to Accept or Decline the sponsorship. A sponsor will be accepted unless (1) a quorum (50% + 1) of the steering committee votes AND a majority of non-blank votes decline the sponsor, or (2) a quorum of the SC is not reached and a majority of the executive committee votes (in a separate ballot) to decline the sponsor.
• Sponsor Chairs will provide the sponsor a summary of the SC deliberations.

This is the short-term process to be able to begin signing up sponsors for FaccT 2022 while soliciting broader community input on the long-term sponsor policies. In parallel with the FAccT 2022 sponsorship process, we will convene a working group from the community to review sponsorship policies more thoroughly for FAccT 2023 and later.

Sponsorship Co-Chairs

Please contact sponsorship@facctconference.org for any questions.

• Michael Ekstrand, Boise State University
• Chelle Adamson, Australian National University