Nine nuggets to nail your fundraiser

It’s that Gala time of year where everyone is competing for your attention and your hard earned dollars. So, what if you’re on the other side of that and trying to establish an effective fundraising event? How do you stand out? How do you engage with their right audience? How to you get people to commit their precious time, energy and dollars to your cause? 

Off the back of a super successful Play Rugby USA Gala last week, I realized I had never written about fundraising events (other than promoting them) despite being involved running them for the last 12+ years. This was a special Gala for me, as the first since 2004 in which I was a guest - a fly on the wall with the organization I founded- giving me a different perspective. Also, it was a really rewarding experience to be able to watch the event unfold successfully under the new leadership team.

So, if you’re involved with a charity / cause / school / club / foundation and looking to convene together some people to support it, hopefully these few points could provide some practical reference for success. Please feel free to add any I may have missed in the comments below. I have broken my recommendations down into three sections:

1. Core: The foundation - basic nuts and bolts. If you don’t get these right, the rest doesn’t matter.
2. Functional: These elements build on the foundation. Key vehicles for success.
3. Experiential: How we want people to feel, engage and act

1. Core:

a. Purpose - Why are you running this event? What is it for? What would be your ideal objectives? Why are these important? Is it truly a fundraising event, or is it more of a cultivation and awareness building event? Both are integral components of donor recruitment, retention and activation; they compliment each other. However, it is very important to define the specific purpose upfront as often the events that struggle are the ones that are not clearly defined and try to tick off too many boxes, not quite hitting any one purpose, well. If the purpose is fundraising, then you need to design the event very intentionally to raise funds! The points below dig into a little more detail, with the assumption that we are focused on a fundraising event.

b. Participants - 

i) Event Committee: it is almost impossible to run a successful event without an engaged event committee. As with picking any team- it’s about filling the right roles / positions based upon the skills, knowledge, resources and connections you need to succeed. Then, ensuring those roles and responsibilities are clearly defined towards stated objectives. For example, you may have people split by focus on ticket sales, sponsorship, auction item procurement, program (venues, running order, keynote, honoree, branding), promotion.

ii) Honoree: Honorees serve a couple of purposes depending upon the focus of your event. Some high flying corporate execs can bring both credibility and funding through engaging their company, employees, clients and partners in the event. Specialist honorees (from your sport, art, school, vocational area) can raise interest, awareness and credibility. Celebrities can bring credibility and draw additional guests and partners. The key with any honoree is to ensure that there is an authentic fit between their strengths and those of your organization. For example, in the rugby space, we don’t always need a rugby person but could focus on someone who exhibits rugby values or believes in the power of sport for young people’s development. As it happened Bryan Habana (who clearly has a little rugby experience) was a fantastic addition to Play Rugby’s Gala this year. He was completely engaged in both the run up and the during the event, was super passionate about the ‘power of rugby’ (the theme of the Gala) and in Play Rugby’s mission.

iii) Partners/Sponsors: Sometimes tied into honorees, event partners can help drive the success of the event in so many ways. In addition to paying sponsorship fees and often adding credibility to the event (which in turn may encourage other partners to support), event partners can provide content (keynote speakers), resources (technology / communications services or product gifts / giveaways) and a platform (social media followers, employees, customers, clients) that can add material value to the event and ongoing connection to the cause. The key to engaging with partners at meaningful levels is to truly understand what value they would like to get from the event and how they would like to contribute (and potentially how they are seen to contribute) to its success. Some events will provide a unique client hospitality engagement, others will be an opportunity to connect a retail brand to the end user. What is it your event can provide? Be realistic. It is unlikely that a small charity can help move the needle in terms of media and awareness for a huge company. So the value is likely more in their association with your mission. So, how can you increase the value of that? Most importantly in order for any partnership to succeed, there needs to be an underlying alignment of values, purpose and brand connection to the charity’s mission. 

iv) Guests: based upon what your objectives are, you will focus on certain types of guests. You may be running a high end intimate dinner for 30 people with 2 special guests. This would then want to be a sophisticated crowd who can connect to your organization’s mission and appreciate being given the unique opportunity to spend time with your special guests. This type of event could be interactive with guests being introduced to each other, to develop some connectivity and networking benefit. It would establish an intimate setting, safe for guests to share through facilitated discussion. There would be a very concise ask. Conversely a big cocktail benefit will draw on a more diverse crowd with the opportunity to sell different types of tickets for different experiences. The key as with so many campaigns or events is to start with the end in mind and work back, ensuring that your guests understand what to expect and what is expected of them.

c. Plan - 

Obviously the plan pulls everything together, setting the key milestones along the way for the event committee to execute. The value here is not only in the actual plan that is documented but as much in the planning process itself. It is during this process that all committee members contribute, share ideas, tease out conflict and ultimately document next steps. A plan could also include some event principles that align with your organizational values and mission and define how you want people to behave and interact during the event process, so that experiences can be optimized for all participants. From securing the honoree, date and venue, to setting sponsor targets, campaign deadlines, ticket sale dates and targets, it is key to lay everything out within a framework to set the direction, flow of actions and parameters of success for everyone to work towards.

2. Functional:

a. Budget: 

The budget will be determined, in part, by the broader organizational budget. What are the philanthropic targets for the year and what initiatives can be employed to fill them? How do they fit together? How big is the existing and potential donor base? How many engagements are we inviting them to? How much appeal could this event have? How much liquidity is available upfront to underwrite it (deposits, event manager, collateral)? As with any budget, there is strict discipline required in managing the expenses balanced by passion and perseverance from the committee to beat the revenues. The key connector is the ROI- what is the value proposition for each expense (investment) in the event? What actual value do they add? How do they contribute towards increasing revenue?

A basic event budget as a simple P&L statement may include:

i) Revenue - sponsorship (estimates by level), table sales (possibly different types), ticket sales (by category), live auction (estimates by item), silent / online auction, pledge drive, raffle.

ii) Expenses - Fixed: Venue rental, catering minimums (food and beverage), AV rental, lighting rental, appearance fees (if any from special guests), auctioneer fee, band/DJ, transportation (as relevant).

iii) Expenses - Variable: Catering costs per person over minimum (usually fixed during last week of event), consignment costs if used for auction items (fee per item if minimum bid is met), other auction item costs, merchant processing fees (for any payments taken on the evening).

The P&L is completed by a projected cash-flow statement, showing the anticipated timing of money in, money out. This is critical if liquidity is tight, as some of the larger fixed costs relating to the event (such as venue rental) are often due upfront, via deposits.

As a general objective, an ideal event budget would at least break-even on sponsorship sales (which can also help cash-flow with upfront payments), allowing ticket sales and on-night fundraising activities to generate a profit.

b. Venue

While a seemingly obvious functional component, the venue choice is absolutely critical to the event’s success both in being budget appropriate but also to deliver the optimal experience. Considerations regarding the venue should be driven initially by the budget (what can we afford, when do we have to pay) and then experience. What kind of experience do we want our guests to have? 

Decision making factors would then include location (accessibility, parking, setting, views - any ‘wow’ factors), size & space requirements, single / multi-room access and ease of flow between, staff suppler and service (and what’s included in rental vs additional), day-of access and ease of set up, preferred vendors (union requirements).

c. Technology

Technology is now a critical component in delivering an effective fundraising event. The basic decision as to what technology to employ will come down to cost vs functionality based upon needs for your event. So first identify what needs you have and prioritize them - must have, should have, could have.

In your must haves will be online payment and donation collection: There are some great systems that can drive the event experience and fully integrate payment processes from start to finish. They integrate the event website, sponsorship / table and ticket sales, on-night registration through to online auction items and phone/ap/tablet based bidding on the night. They auto-generate receipts for donors and can integrate tailored communications. The two critical components with the integration of any payment interface are of course security and ease of adoption. Think easy, secure registration combined with the equivalent of Amazon’s one click purchasing. Minimizing steps for guests to donate is critical, while they feel confident in using the system. Some systems have a fixed cost and low per transaction fee, while others employ a variable cost based upon purchase volume.

Other technology considerations may include: photo / video booth (fun & great for participant engagement and can integrate sponsor branding), social media integration (audience participation, hashtags, competitions), text to give, lighting additions.

3. Experiential:

a. Inspiration

Inspiring your participants and partners is perhaps the single most important thing you can do to optimize the value of your event. Once the core and functional elements have been determined, how can you inspire people to support from the time you launch your save the date, to after you send your post event thank you notes? Hope, inspiration and connection to a cause (that solves some kind of critical need to society), are they key motivators for people to give. So, having a common theme from start to finish, upon which you can build inspirational content will help create alignment, build momentum and even incentivize people to share and promote on your behalf.

b. Engagement

How will you engage with your participants and partners? Are there some unique experiences you can create - things that will make your event and cause stand out, something for it to be remembered by? Similarly to the inspirational content, the engagement process starts from your initial connection to the participant (them opening an email, clicking on a social media link, through to them purchasing a ticket, attending and post-event). What do you want their experience to be? How do you want them to remember and talk about the evening and their experiences with the organization? 

On the night, the program design is critical to effectively engage the guests. Balancing the informal mingling / networking time with formal content delivery (speeches, awards, beneficiaries, video, etc) is a tricky balance to achieve. The nature of engagement should largely be determined by tying back to the original event purpose. A couple of examples of things that have become unique but expected experiences at some of Play Rugby’s fundraisers for instance are reverse auctions of signed rugby balls and a pledge drive that results in a “team photo” up on a stage - a very efficient way to quickly recognize and thank people for their support that is then archived long past the event.

c. Action

Ultimately, to achieve your event’s purpose, you need people to act. Ideally, that would involve every guest contributing financially - both by purchasing a ticket (or table / sponsorship) and on the night itself (auction, pledge drive, raffle). Knowing your guests and their giving capacity is important here, to ensure you design in different ways people can support at different levels. The hugely obvious but critical piece here is “if you don’t ask, you don’t get”. Also however, that in order to have an effective ask; the core, functional and experiential ‘nuggets’ have to be aligned towards a giving outcome.

There are full books that have been dedicated to fundraising events so this article is only a high level overview. However, by keeping these nine nuggets front of mind, from start to finish, you won’t go far wrong!

For 2019, I’ll be writing twice per month- once professionally, once personally. The underlying theme will be around what I’m engaged in, why I’m excited about it and how I’m focusing my energy on it. I’ll refer to insights from both my core principles and previous articles that fit into three primary areas of Moments, Mastery and Mindset. My objective would be to keep me on track with progress, maintain positivity and to connect and learn from any of you who may be having similar experiences.

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@MarkGriffRugby @USARugby @VitaSportUSA @PlayRugbyUSA

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