2012 POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
The Winston Fellowship makes every effort to ensure that all aspects of the Health Policy Ball comply with applicable laws regarding government ethics. For this reason we have instituted a series of procedures and policies designed to protect our guests and sponsors from violating ethics rules and to assure the ethics officers of various agencies that the government officials can legitimately attend. We hope that you will understand why these policies are so important to protecting the event, its attendees and sponsors and make every effort to comply.
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Congressional and Administration guests may not accept invitations directly from table sponsoring organizations. Therefore, these guests must be invited and assigned to tables by the Fellowship. Please do not invite or seat any Congressional or Administration guests at your table that have not been assigned by the Fellowship, as this may place these individuals, yourselves, and others in jeopardy of violating ethics rules.
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The Fellowship will identify those government officials who will be invited to attend the Ball. The number of individuals to be invited will be determined by the number of seats sponsors donate back to the Fellowship for this purpose.
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The Fellowship will extend invitations to the Ball directly to government officials and will receive their RSVPs. The Fellowship will then assign government invitees and their guests to sponsor tables.
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After the guest has been assigned to sit with a table sponsor, the table sponsor and the government guest will be notified of their seating assignment by the Fellowship. The Fellowship cannot, of course, guarantee the attendance of the government guest and encourages the table sponsors to coordinate with the assigned guest(s) prior to the Ball to ensure attendance and to coordinate a meeting place. If the government guest notifies the Fellowship prior to the Ball that they will not attend, the Fellowship will contact the sponsor as soon as possible. If the government guest notifies the table sponsor prior to the Ball that they will not attend, we request that the table sponsor notify the Fellowship as soon as possible. Attempts will then be made to assign another guest to your table.
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Should a sponsor invite a government guest directly, the Fellowship may have to consider withholding an invitation to that sponsor in the future.
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Payment for table reservations is due to the Fellowship no later than January 13, 2012. Table reservations that are not paid by January 13th may be released to the waiting list.
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New: Cancellation Policy: Cancellations received prior to December 1, 2011 will not be assessed a cancellation fee. Cancellations received between December 1, 2011 and January 13, 2012 will be assessed a 5% cancellation fee. For cancellations received after January 13, 2012, a 10% cancellation fee will be assessed. Should the fee not be paid in full before March 1, 2012, the Fellowship may consider withholding an invitation to sponsor a table in the future.
The Fellowship’s position on sponsor-hosted parties held in conjunction with the Health Policy Ball is as follows:
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Ethics approval for government guests to attend the Ball extends only to the reception, dinner, and dance hosted by the Fellowship. Table Sponsors who hold a separate event must inform invitees that they should obtain separate ethics approval to attend that event.
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Table Sponsors who opt to hold an event must send a copy of their invitation list for government invitees to the Ball staff (lmiddleton@aupha.org) not later than January 13, 2012 and before sending invitations. Staff will review the list and indicate to the sponsor any government invitees on the invitation list who have not been invited to the Ball. To avoid confusion over seating at the Ball, Table Sponsors are asked to invite only government guests to sponsor-hosted events who are also invited to the Ball.
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Table Sponsors may not reference the Winston Health Policy Ball or use the name of the Winston Health Policy Fellowship in their invitations to any event. The name “Winston” and the words “Health Policy Ball” may not appear on the invitation.
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