Refund Policy

Sponsor Public Media is a trade name of Market Enginuity, Inc. (“Sponsor Public Media,” “Company,” “we,” “our,” or “us”). We are a sponsorship sales agency that represents public media organizations and operates a platform through which businesses and organizations can build, submit, and pay for on-air underwriting messages on public media organizations and their licensees that are independent third parties and are not employees, agents, or representatives of Sponsor Public Media (each, a “Partner Station”). We review and approve each message before it airs, and a partner station also may review and approve each message before it airs on that station. By submitting a sponsorship on our platform you agree that any sponsorship fees paid are subject to this Refund Policy.

Sponsorship on public radio works differently from an ordinary online purchase. Your card is not charged when you submit. It is charged only after we and the Partner Station have reviewed your message and approved it as explained in the following section. We and the Partner Station each may accept sponsorship at our sole discretion, and each of us reserves the right to refuse underwriting from any sponsor for any reason. Any implied endorsements flow from the sponsor to the Partner Station, not from the Partner Station to the sponsor. This page explains when money moves and what happens if it needs to move back. This policy is part of, and should be read together with, our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

When you submit a sponsorship we place a temporary authorization on your payment method for the full sponsorship amount

When you finish the sponsorship builder and pay, we place a temporary authorization, commonly called a hold, on your card for the full amount of your sponsorship. A hold reserves the funds with your bank. It is not a charge, and it does not move money to us or to the Partner Station.

We then review your on-air message, and the Partner Station may also review it. As noted above, we and the Partner Station each reserve the right to refuse underwriting from any sponsor for any reason. If the message is approved by us and by the Partner Station, the hold is captured at that point and becomes a real charge for the same amount. If either of us does not approve it, no charge is ever made.

The temporary authorization will typically last seven days

Card authorizations typically last about seven days, and that is the window we work from, though some card issuers hold them longer, that is between you and your bank, not something we control. If your sponsorship has not been approved within that window, we release the authorization and the reserved funds return to your available balance. Your submission is not lost; we will contact you about starting the payment again.

Exactly when a released hold disappears from your statement is up to your bank, not up to us. Some banks show it as pending until the hold lapses on their own schedule.

You may cancel your sponsorship if your message has not yet been approved and your form of payment has not been charged

You can cancel a sponsorship yourself at any point before it has been approved and charged. Cancelling releases any authorization we are holding.

You may not cancel your sponsorship after your sponsorship has been approved and your payment processor has processed the charge. At this point, the sponsorship is scheduled to air and you will only be entitled to a full or partial refund as described below.

We have the discretion to refund all or part of your sponsorship, which depends on when you make the request and on the outcome of our review with the Partner Station.

The issuance of any refunds is made in our discretion after attempting to resolve the issue with the Partner Station.

If you believe a sponsorship should be refunded, contact us and we will review the request with the Partner Station at sponsorships@sponsorpublicmedia.com. We will inform you of our decision within 5 business days. Once we issue the refund, how quickly it appears on your statement is up to your bank, typically within five to ten business days.

Please raise a refund concern within 5 days of the affected message’s scheduled air date to sponsorships@sponsorpublicmedia.com. Failure to raise a refund concern within this time period may prevent you from receiving any refund because we will be unable to investigate the issue.

Full Refund: You may request a full refund up to 48 hours prior to your sponsorship message being read on air by the Partner Station. We may, in our full discretion, issue you with a full refund. A full refund returns the entire amount you were charged to the card you paid with, reverses our platform fee, and reverses the payment to the Partner Station.

Partial Refund: If only part of a multi-week sponsorship is affected (e.g., one message in your schedule is preempted for breaking news or an emergency broadcast) we will work with the Partner Station to reschedule the affected message. If it is not possible to reschedule the affected message, we may, in our full discretion, issue you with a credit or refund of the portion of your payment attributable to the affected message. This partial refund will not include our platform fee or administrative charges associated with your sponsorship. You agree that you will not be eligible for a refund of the full sponsorship or cancellation of the sponsorship.

If we or a Partner Station ask for changes

Public radio has content rules to follow. We or a Partner Station may send your message back with notes rather than approving it. In that event, we keep your original authorization on file so you are not paying twice. You revise, resubmit against the same hold, and the charge still only happens on approval. If revisions take longer than the hold window described above, the authorization will lapse. At that point we will ask you to reauthorize payment for the sponsorship.

Questions and Contact Information

On your card statement, charges from this platform show as MKT ENG* SPONSOR MEDIA. If you do not recognize a charge, or something about it does not look right, please contact us immediately at sponsorships@sponsorpublicmedia.com.

Write to us
Market Enginuity d/b/a Sponsor Public Media
5227 N. 7th St. Suite 18012
Phoenix, AZ 85014
sponsorships@sponsorpublicmedia.com

You can also reach us through sponsorpublicmedia.com. Our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy cover the rest of the relationship.