How this works, in plain English.

A free, curated directory of every verified 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit in Polk County, Florida, paired with a directory of local sponsors (businesses, individuals, foundations, and DAFs) who support them. Nonprofits post sponsorship opportunities; sponsors express interest; the two parties take it from there. We never touch the money.

Yes. Both sides — free, forever, no tiers, no premium features, no lead fees. It’s civic infrastructure, maintained by Summit Labs as a service to the Polk County community.

Nonprofits: Polk County-based 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations in good standing with the IRS. We do not list churches or individual ministries (by design — we focus on secular and ecumenical social-impact work).

Sponsors: Any business, individual, foundation, or donor-advised fund that supports Polk County causes. You don’t need to be a Polk County resident to sponsor — just to support Polk County work.

No. Directory, events, and sponsor profiles are all public. You only need an account to claim a nonprofit, create a sponsor profile, post events, or express interest in a sponsorship tier.

Find your org in the directory, click through to its profile, and use the “Claim this organization” button. You’ll be asked to verify your affiliation (usually via a matching email domain or a board-listed name). Claims are reviewed manually and typically approved within 48 hours.

If your nonprofit isn’t listed yet, email us at hello@sponsorpolk.com with your EIN and we’ll add you.

Once your claim is approved, go to your dashboard, click “Post event,” and fill out the details — date, location, cause, expected attendance, and the sponsorship tiers on offer. You can offer cash tiers, in-kind tiers, or both. Drafts save automatically; publish when you’re ready.

Give sponsors a clear menu. Good tier structures typically include three to five options, each with a distinct benefit package:

• A cash tier at the low end ($250–$1,000)
• A signature cash tier ($2,500–$10,000) with naming rights or prominent logo placement
• An in-kind tier (food, printing, venue, professional services)
• A founding/underwriter tier (when applicable)

Be specific. “Gold sponsor” tells a sponsor nothing; “$2,500 underwriter — logo on stage banner, 30-second intro at opening, full-page program ad” tells them exactly what they’re buying.

You get an email notification immediately, and the expression shows up in your interest inbox. From there you can see the sponsor’s profile, their note (if any), and a direct “Reply via email” button. The exchange stays out of the conversation from there — you and the sponsor work out the logistics directly.

From your My eventsdashboard, every row has an “Edit” link. The edit page mirrors the create form — you can change title, description, date, tiers, location, and cause areas, or revert a published event to draft. The slug stays stable so existing share links keep working, and the description is re-embedded on save so semantic search reflects the edits.

Go to /dashboard/brand or visit /settings/nonprofit. Upload a PNG, JPG, WEBP, or SVG up to 2 MB; square images work best. Logos show up on directory cards, your profile page, and the host-organization sidebar on every event you post. You can replace or remove anytime.

A sponsor profile says, in one glance, what you care about and how you like to give. Fields include:

• Organization (or individual) name and optional logo
• Type: business, individual, foundation, or DAF
• Causes you support (arts, education, hunger, youth, etc.)
• Typical budget band (keeps you out of mismatched conversations)
• Whether you give in-kind in addition to cash
• Optional public bio so nonprofits can understand you before reaching out

Yes. You can choose “private” visibility when creating your profile — you won’t appear in the public sponsor directory. You can still express interest in events; nonprofits will only see your identity when you reach out.

On any event page, click the tier you’d like to sponsor and select “Express interest.” You can add a short message if you want to introduce yourself. The nonprofit gets notified immediately. This is not a commitment — it’s a way to start a conversation.

Yes. Visit /alignand type a sentence describing what you fund (e.g., “I want to back youth STEM programs”) — you’ll get back ranked nonprofits, events, and a one-paragraph “why this matches” explanation per result. Searches are cached so repeat queries are free and instant. Your dashboard also surfaces personalized recommendations based on your stated interests. No data is ever sold or shared with third parties.

Visit /dashboard/brand or /settings/sponsor. Upload a PNG, JPG, WEBP, or SVG up to 2 MB. Square works best. Your logo appears on directory cards and your public profile.

A semantic search surface. Type a natural-language sentence describing your interest (“Family foundation funding K-12 STEM in low-income districts,” “Small business that wants to back conservation work”) and you’ll get three ranked lists: nonprofits, events, and sponsors that match. Each result includes a one-paragraph explanation of why we think it’s a fit.

We embed every nonprofit mission, sponsor narrative, and event description with OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-small model and store them in pgvector. Your query gets embedded the same way, and we return the closest matches by cosine similarity. The “why this matches” explanations are generated by gpt-4o-mini against the actual profile content (no hallucination — the model only sees real text). Read the deeper write-up at /notes/how-the-matcher-works.

Cost discipline. Each fresh search costs ~$0.001 in API spend; cached searches are free. Caches are keyed on a hash of your query and held for 30 days, then quietly refreshed. If you tweak wording even slightly, you get a fresh search. Practical effect: popular phrasings get instant results without us burning OpenAI budget on every page load.

Go to /signin and use your email + password. We also support magic-link sign-in as a fallback (tab next to the password form) if you prefer not to remember a password.

Use the “Forgot password?” link on the sign-in page, or go directly to /forgot-password. We’ll email you a link to set a new one. The same flow works if you originally signed up via magic link and want to set a password for the first time.

Check your spam folder first — transactional emails from new-to-you senders often land there. If it’s not there, wait 2-3 minutes (some mail providers delay) and request again. If it still doesn’t arrive, email us at hello@sponsorpolk.com and we’ll investigate.

Email hello@sponsorpolk.com from the address on your account. We’ll confirm and delete within 7 days.

Nonprofit listings are compiled from IRS Business Master File, IRS Form 990 filings, Florida Sunbiz, and local registries. We verify active status before a profile goes live. Contact info for claimed organizations is controlled by the org itself.

Exactly what you give us: email, optional profile fields, and your interactions (events you’ve expressed interest in, etc.). We don’t use third-party trackers. Full details live in our privacy policy.

Yes, in your email preferences. Transactional emails (password resets, sign-in links) can’t be disabled — we can’t operate the service without them. Everything else is opt-in or opt-out.