Does Otakon accept sponsorships?
Yes and no. It depends on what you mean by sponsorships. Yes, we can accept donations, but no, we don’t use the traditional trade show model for such things, mostly because we are not a trade show. Otakon takes great pride in being entirely fan-run, and our membership has traditionally been suspicious of a too-cozy relationship with corporate interests. Because the bulk of our budget comes directly from membership fees, the needs of our membership will always come first, and large donations never come without strings attached. Thus, we do not accept direct sponsorships from anyone — by which we mean that while we frequently work with our friends in industry on specific projects, we do so within very specific boundaries. For example, we do not allow industry to sponsor rooms (“The MyCorp Theatre” or “MyCorp Presents The Video Gaming Hall”) or control programming content as a rule. Generally speaking, we do not allow any corporate logos (other than ours) on official convention merchandi
