The Society would like to thank our amazing community for their engagement and feedback during the recent consultation on the ethical sponsorship policy. We’ve updated high-level outcomes in our Slack channel: #ethical-sponsorship-policy and announced the outcome at a SocRSE feedback session on the 10th of March. 

We had a quorate vote, where 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. We’ve updated our page for the ethical sponsorship policy and have included this in our post summarising the feedback session.

Trustee actions based on the consultation:

• We will only include smoking and political parties as avoidance in the ethical sponsorship policy, as these are required by law.
• We will update our terms of reference for conference organisation 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 Society 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.