What's the difference between an executive sponsor and a project sponsor?

Question

What is the main difference between an executive sponsor and a project sponsor? Is it just that the project sponsor reports to the executive sponsor?

Do we need to have executive sponsors (in addition to project sponsors) on all our projects?

Answer 1

In formal project management terms, there is no difference and there should be only one project sponsor.  In reality the sponsor may be a group of executives or work in a hierarchy. Ideally there is one single point of contact for project sponsorship so that everyone stays on the same page and gets the same message.