What is a sponsor?
A sponsor is the political entity behind an advertisement -- a party, NGO, candidate, or campaign organization. Political parties, NGOs, and advocacy groups often have multiple organizational units -- city associations, state branches, regional offices -- each running their own advertising campaigns. In The Taurus, you can create sponsors for each branch so that every unit can manage its own transparency notices while staying connected to the parent organization.
Each sponsor belongs to exactly one organization. You can create as many sponsors as your plan allows.
Why managing sponsors matters
Under EU Regulation 2024/900, every political advertisement must include a transparency notice that identifies the sponsor, the payer (if different), and other legally required details. When your organization has dozens of local branches, entering the same sponsor information over and over again is tedious and error-prone.
Sponsor defaults solve this by storing pre-configured values that automatically fill in the notice wizard whenever a member creates a new transparency notice for that sponsor. This means less manual data entry, fewer mistakes, and consistent information across all notices from the same branch.
What defaults can a sponsor store?
Each sponsor can configure the following categories of default values:
Sponsor details
These identify who is responsible for the advertisement:
- Legal name -- the official registered name of the local branch
- Email address -- a contact email for the sponsor
- Postal address -- the physical address of the branch
Payer defaults
If the entity paying for the advertisement differs from the sponsor, you can store separate payer information:
- Payer name
- Payer email
- Payer postal address
When "payer is different" is enabled, these values will pre-fill the payer section of the wizard.
Controller defaults
Some local branches are controlled by a parent organization -- for example, a city party branch controlled by the national party. The sponsor can store controller details that pre-fill when applicable:
- Controller name
- Controller email
- Controller postal address
Funding defaults
You can specify a default description of funding origins (for example, "membership fees, EU origin") that will be suggested when creating new notices.
Reporting mechanism defaults
Sponsors can also set a default notification email and instructions for the complaint/reporting mechanism that EU regulations require on every transparency notice.
Ensured vs. Verified sponsors
Not every branch needs to create and publish its own notices. The Taurus distinguishes between two modes:
- Ensured sponsors can create, edit, and publish transparency notices. This requires an Ensured plan.
- Verified sponsors operate in a free, compliance-only mode. They can receive publisher invites, manage complaints routed to them, and maintain their sponsor data -- but they cannot create or publish notices themselves.
Verified mode is useful for branches that primarily work through publishers or that are not yet ready to manage their own advertising compliance.
Managing sponsor settings
Organization admins can create and configure sponsors from the organization dashboard. The sponsor settings page lets you:
- Edit the sponsor name
- Toggle between Ensured and Verified mode
- Fill in all sponsor, payer, controller, funding, and reporting defaults
- Set a profile slug for a public compliance profile URL
- View members scoped to this sponsor (on Ensured plans)
Any changes to sponsor defaults take effect for new notices going forward. Existing notices that were already created are not retroactively updated.
How sponsors connect to publishers
When a publisher creates a sponsor record and links it to your sponsor, a Compliance Link is established. This connection enables data synchronization between your sponsor's stored defaults and the publisher's sponsor record. For more details, see the article on Compliance Links.
Summary
Sponsors give your organization a structured way to manage local branches within The Taurus. By storing sponsor defaults at the sponsor level, you reduce repetitive data entry, improve accuracy, and ensure that every transparency notice from every branch contains the correct legally required information.