SocRSE carried out a consultation and members vote on avoidance criteria areas for SocRSE’s draft ethical sponsorship policy. Our aim was to represent the wishes of our membership into account for sponsorship, partnerships and receiving gifts. Other discussions in our slack channel #ethical-sponsorship-policy.
Consultation
We had a quorate vote from 21% (166/764) of our members at the final stage of the consultation.
62.7% voted “Yes” to only include legally required areas of exclusion. Empowering the trustees to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, not having a pre-defined list. The subsequent votes for each suggested area did not reach the 50% threshold.
Proposed trustee actions:
- Only have smoking and political parties as avoidance in the ethical sponsorship policy, as these are required by law
- Update our terms of reference for conference organsation to take into account the ethical sponsorship policy and the membership consultation
- Internally document our decision making processes where trustee consultation has been required for sponsorship
Call to action for members:
- Support or join other charities and organisations if you are passionate about an area
- Apply to be a trustee in this year’s election
- Apply to be the sponsorship chair in 2027, or for other roles in the RSECon organising committee
- Send suggestions for sponsors you’d like to see at the conference to the RSECon sponsorship chair
Consultation timeline
| Dates (2025-2026) | Stage | Status |
| 31st October – 25th November | Community survey for how to define a passing vote, and suggested areas for avoidance criteria | The survey is now closed, thank you for your input |
| 25th November – 8th December | Trustees summarise exclusion criteria and publish on this page | Moved to proposed areas for exclusion from community as originally posted to this page |
| 8th December – 29th December | Community survey for arguments against avoidance criteria | The survey is now closed, thank you for your input. |
| 29th December – | Trustees summarise arguments against and publish on this page | High level summaries moved here, more detailed summaries of responses are available here. |
| Membership votes on exclusion criteria | The vote is now closed, thank you for your input |
Frequently asked questions
Where can I find out more information about the process
We have created an interview with our trustees, Twin Karmakharm and Stef Piatek, that outlines the process, you can watch this on youtube. This covers many areas in this FAQ, we will update this page as more questions come in.
Please email [email protected] and see the next question on where you can discuss this.
Where can we discuss this?
Please join the discussion at #ethical-sponsorship-policy on our slack instance if you have any questions or feedback.
We are also encouraging regional RSE groups to host discussions after we have summarised the proposed avoidance criteria. The trustees will create talking points to help with this.
We expect everyone to follow our Code of Conduct as usual, and respect each other, even if you disagree.
Why can’t I fill out a survey without giving an email address?
We want to be able to contact respondents to make sure that when we summarise all of the responses, that we are not misrepresenting their wishes. For this to work we’ll need to follow up in the week after the survey closes before publishing them on this page.
Why are the trustees summarising responses rather than reporting them as-is?
We expect people will respond with similar areas, and we will group and summarise them where we can. We need to know if this matches the intention of the proposer, or if they want their area to be voted on specifically.
Who can take part in each of the stages for this process?
For the two surveys, anyone in the RSE community can contribute. Only SocRSE members will be able to take part in the final vote.
Why is sponsorship so important?
Sponsorship at RSECon accounts for roughly half of the cost of the conference. We simply wouldn’t be able to run the conference without our sponsors.
What happens if I miss the deadline for one of the surveys or membership vote?
So that the RSECon26 organising committee can be sure of sponsors, we’ll have to stick to the timelines above. You can send an email to [email protected] to see what options you have.
After the policy has been voted in by the trustees of the Society, the ethical sponsorship avoidance criteria can be altered. More information is in the draft ethical sponsorship policy, members can bring requests for changes to an annual general meeting or extraordinary general meeting vote.