How to find sponsors
for a book club
or supper club

The entry unit is a room of thirty people

Ask for examples of sponsored clubs and what comes back is almost always run clubs. Not because running is the only format that works, but because it grew fast enough to get written about. Everyone else did the same deals quietly.

Some communities do publish their terms. Reading Rhythms runs reading parties across more than thirty chapters. On its own partnerships page it claims 800 or more events, 50,000 tickets sold and a 200,000-strong digital audience, and it sorts what a brand can buy into three sizes.

The largest run from 100 to more than 1,000 guests, built around a launch. In the middle, custom events designed for 30 to 100. And at the bottom, sponsoring an existing local chapter, product integration included, stated attendance 30 to 50 guests.

That bottom tier is the one to read. The organisation claiming fifty thousand tickets sold does not hide its small events. It sells them, by name, as the way in. A brand can buy a room of thirty.

If your club gathers forty people, hold on to that number. You are not below the threshold. You are at the entry tier of an operation that has done this eight hundred times. These are the club's own published figures rather than an independent measurement, but they still say what it believes it can sell.

Build your tiers from your own format

Bread & Butter Supper Club is smaller and independent: themed dinners for women, drawn from books being adapted for screen. Its partnerships page lists six tiers, and the names tell you how it thinks.

• Signature Cocktail Partner : a tier that exists only because the club serves cocktails. Nobody sold it to them from a template. They looked at their own evening and named the thing a brand could own without disrupting it.
• In-Kind Partner : product instead of cash. Having it written down removes the awkward moment where the brand says it has no budget and the club has nothing else to offer.
• Annual Partner : a commitment across the year, for a brand that prefers continuous presence to a one-off.
• Presenting Partner : the brand presenting a given evening, the format a campaign budget reads most easily.
• Experience Partner : integration into the experience itself rather than a logo placed on top of it.
• Community Partner : the looser exchange, often between organisations speaking to the same people.

That move is available to any club with a format. A climbing gym has its warm-up wall. A book club has the book everyone goes home with. A hiking group has the thing waiting at the top.

What the Coach partnership does not prove

In November 2025 Marie Claire reported Coach's partnership with Sunnie Reads, a Gen Z book club from Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. Coach built The Book Nook there: a book swap, and bookmarks made from leftover leather taken from pre-owned Coach bags. Its chief marketing officer framed it as a long-term partnership built on shared values.

It is a good activation and it is the wrong template. Sunnie Reads belongs to Hello Sunshine, a media company. A brand buying into it is buying a media property with a book club format, not a community that would exist without a commercial plan.

The distinction matters to you, because the two are sold differently. A media property sells audience. An independent club sells something a brand cannot buy anywhere else: a group that would have met anyway, and an organiser whose standing depends on not overselling to its own members.

Keep that clear in how you present yourself. It is your real advantage, and it disappears the moment you describe yourself as a media channel.

What to copy if your club has forty members

These three communities differ in scale by orders of magnitude and all three published a list. The list is what turns vague willingness into something a brand manager can take to whoever holds the budget.

• Write your tiers before anyone asks. A list is read in two minutes; a thread of emails takes three weeks.
• Build them from your format, not from a template. The cocktail tier exists because there are cocktails.
• Put an in-kind tier at the bottom and name it. It is where most first partnerships land, because product comes out of cost of goods rather than a marketing line, which is a far easier internal approval.
• Publish attendance, not community size. Reading Rhythms sells an evening on 30 to 50 people in the room. That is the number a brand can act on, and the one you can prove.

Frequently asked questions