In the world of fundraising, special events certainly play a role. They can be effective at broadening the brand of an organization, or for introducing new people to the mission of the organization through first-time donations.
Special events can also provide opportunities for existing donors to make second-mile donations, such as through table purchases or donations during a paddle raise.
At the same time, we see many nonprofit leaders -- both executive directors as well as development directors -- get the special event cart before the horse.
Rather than first deciding, “we’re going to do a special event,” we would propose nonprofits be more intentional, thoughtfully asking a series of questions to help determine whether a special event is the best approach for the desired outcome(s).
Before your staff or your well-intentioned board of directors decides to either launch a new special event or to continue an event strategy from the year(s) prior, consider these prompts:
Create a detailed event budget, including both likely (realistic) income and expense.
What is our plan for post-event relationship-building with event attendees? This should be a written-out, documented plan that includes responsible party and deadlines for those tasks. If you can’t do the follow-up, think twice about the event itself.
How can we secure first and last name, email, phone and mailing address for each person who attends the event? Whether they are the guest of someone who bought a table or they purchased a seat themselves, it’s vital to have contact information for every person at the event if we are going to follow-up after the event. And to be clear, this isn’t simply for table buyers; this is for all people attending the event.
Could we raise this amount of money through a means other than through a special event?
What is our net income for the event, especially when factoring-in the time invested by all staff? (Conduct an analysis of staff time allocated to the event and include those expenses as part of event-related expenses when calculating the event’s net income.)
And we can’t end this blog post without mentioning committee size and committee make-up. All too often we watch a well-meaning nonprofit launch a special event with a steering committee that is magnitudes too small. As a general rule, we advise the following three hints related to special event committees:
Size: The special event committee should include a 1:2 ratio for the number of people on the committee related to the number of tables (or the equivalent) to be sold. For example, if the event has a goal of selling 50 tables, the committee should include at least 25 members. While this may feel like a larger ratio than expected, we’ve seen this work well at a number of organizations.
Make-up: The special event committee should not be composed exclusively of board members. If your committee has, perhaps, 25 people on it; consider including 2-3 from your board of directors; a number of existing corporate partners; a handful of new or first-time corporate partners; volunteers, potential board members for down the road; past board members who have rotated off; and of course individual donors. Further, this committee is only focused on your special event and should not be confused with your organization’s standing development committee as part of your board committee structure.
Frequency: Consider holding your first committee meeting two months earlier than what you think might be helpful. Gather people together in a positive, energetic, special gathering and use this as a time to get everyone on the same page. Could this be a good time to secure their own table commitment before each of them commits to go into the community and sell or secure another three tables by the time the committee meets again in 30 days?
Special events play an important role in the overall development program of many organizations. But to maximize the returns of these events, most nonprofits will be wise to rethink how they plan and prepare for these events.
Cape Fletcher Associates
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