Big shout out to the community and events fundraisers

Has there been a more challenging fundraising sector over recent years than community and events fundraising?

Running, walking, baking, shaving and jumping out of planes raises a significant chunk of funds for charities, but the sector has had several unique challenges, starting with the huge disruption and rapid ‘off/on’ caused by the pandemic.?

Community and events fundraisers experienced the horror of having to cancel all those in-person events, and then the joy of realising that some people were now trapped at home, bored and flusher of cash.? The virtual event was born, with many charities raising record amounts during the first year of the pandemic.

With the end of the pandemic, we were immediately thrown into the cost-of-living crisis, creating a new set of challenges unique to the sector.? Community and events participants – particularly those doing some form of physical challenge – tend to be of working age, and therefore more likely to be affected by mortgage interest rate and other cost of living rises.?

The core events and community fundraising mechanic relies on these folk asking their friends and family for sponsorship cash, something they are understandably more uncomfortable doing.?

Throw in an increasing lack of product differentiation, plus greater competition from commercial companies targeting the ‘experience sector’ and, well, you get the picture.

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Exhausted?? Not a bit of it.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that community and events fundraisers might be somewhat tired by these events, but the best fundraisers are of course born optimists. Our experience is that fundraisers are hopeful about the future fundraising potential of events and community products whilst rightly wondering whether their product portfolio really is fit for purpose anymore.

Certainly, clients we’ve recently worked with are actively questioning their community and events offer, and testing ideas that better match the new market reality. Research we conducted in Feb ’24 amongst people who are considering participating in a community or event fundraiser highlights this is indeed a good thing to be doing.

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The chart show net agreement (all who agree minus all who disagree) meaning 47% MORE event participants agree than disagree with the statement ‘It’s much harder nowadays to ask friends/family to sponsor me to take part in an event.’ 29% more agree than disagree with the statement ‘Charities should be more imaginative/innovative with their events’.

As the data shows, critical questions that community and events fundraisers might ask themselves include:

1.??????? How do I help participants feel more comfortable asking for sponsorship?

2.??????? Do my products really ‘stand out’ anymore??

3.??????? Which products have greatest potential for growth?? Where do I focus my resources?

4.??????? Do I need a suite of virtual products?

5.??????? Or do I double-down on the ‘in-person connection’ that has become increasingly precious since the pandemic?

Our view is the that the next chapter of community and events could be truly exciting, giving donors rich, memorable experiences that fire the emotions in a way that few forms of fundraising can.?

But our research also suggests the market has changed, and many supporters are demanding more than a nice walk in the countryside.? Community and events fundraisers are in true product marketing territory here, needing to build greater engagement into the products themselves and a richer sense of experience into the advertising.? They might look to the worlds of gaming, theme parks or tourism for inspiration.

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K.I.S.S.

We’ve also noticed that community and events departments tend not to be flush with insight to answer these questions.? Whilst say, the individual giving department might have more data and segmentation models than they know what to do with, community and events fundraisers can be the poor relation in comparison.

We’ve learnt that a little insight (if it’s the good stuff) can go a long way, especially in this sector.? What’s more, audience segmentations and needs are similar across most charities, driven by a) the type of cause and b) the type of participation one prefers.

Indeed we believe that understanding where a particular charity’s community and events growth will come from should be a relatively painless, straightforward affair.? Similarly, we feel there’s growth to be had by rebooting the advertising of a particular product before one reaches for the new product development option.? And the products themselves might be strengthened by sprinkling in some exciting new ingredient, not a wholesale ‘back to the drawing board’ innovation process.

So, perhaps the sector’s most challenging moments are already behind it.?

Having turned themselves inside out and back again, community and events fundraisers have proved their resilience.? Adapting to the task ahead could be much easier in comparison.? The role for insight is to calmly spotlight the key opportunities, not throw everything up in the air again.