by Ben Delaney, © 2013
According to my former boss, and development guru, many, in
fact most, events lose money. He pointed out that the cost of a good event is substantial
and that the immediate payback from it is not always high.
He explained that key to really using an event well is to
use it both as a reward and cultivation opportunity. In other words, it's a
place where you reward the people who have been helping you the most. Bringing
your staff is a great team builder and incentive. It also helps fill seats in
case your event isn't the sellout you hoped for (more on that later). The other
people you reward are your donors, those who have really helped you out. Not by
asking them to buy a table or to support the event, but rather by giving them a
table or providing recognition from the stage.
Now there are as many types of events as there are
organizations. For the purposes of this chapter, I'm thinking about an evening
gala. I think you'll find that most of these ideas apply no matter what sort of
event you are producing.
 |
| A well done event makes your entire organization look good. |
The highest value of your event is
cultivation. Cultivation means talking to people that may give to your
organization and talking to people who have given to your organization with an
eye on getting, or increasing the amount of, their support. Events do this by providing
a good meal and an entertaining program that helps them feel good, better
understand the organization, and see how well run it is.
It's essential to demonstrate competence, because the
impression that people get from your event is going to carry over to the entire
organization. Think about your reaction when you have a great waitress at a
restaurant. The food tastes better. In a great restaurant, if the service is
bad it leaves you less excited about the food. The impression you leave with is
dependent on the totality of your experience.
Enveloping your planning for the event itself is all the
promotional and impact planning, as well as establishing measurement points for
evaluating the event. Your event planning should start with concrete and
measurable goals. Those goals might include developing five new major donors,
or having X number of City Council members attend. Your goal might include a
dollar amount, such as raising $100,000. It's important to have all the goals
in mind because this will guide the event planning, and allow you to make
informed decisions on the budget and which ideas contribute to the overall
impact of the event. After the event, they provide the measuring stick against
which you evaluate the event's success.
Event planning as
part of Systems Marketing™
Let's think a little bit about events and how they connect
to your full marketing effort. In an organization with Systems Marketing thinking,
event planning would start early. A year is not too early to start thinking
about a large event. Annual events are often on staff work plans as a
year-round effort, because there's always something to do to prepare, and
there's always follow-up activities. As Systems Marketing organization knows
that a big event is going to impact virtually everybody in the organization.
Every event should have a planning committee that is made up
of people from the various departments that are affected by the event or
contribute to it. These people are conduits for information from the teams with
which they work directly, to the committee and back again. Obviously the
communications team has to get the word out early and often, and plan follow-up.
In fact it's recommended that you follow up an event with a press release that
describes how well it went, how much money raised, what dignitaries attended,
whatever else is important, and announces the date of next year's event.
The event committee needs to keep in mind all aspects of the
event. The planning checklist varies a lot, but will include things like
catering, decorations, printing of a program, door prizes, program, securing a
venue, and, if you have an auction, arranging for donations for it, as well as
the many other items critical to the success of the event. That is just for the
event itself. As you can see from that list, which is nowhere near complete,
there's an awful lot of aspects to pulling off the big event. At one event I
worked on, we produced a nine-minute video that took three months to produce. It's
important to do your planning in advance, and understand the time and the
budget.
It's also important to evaluate what you can do in-house and
what you want to hire expert help for. Catering is an obvious task that is
usually best to contract out. AV production, decorating, and printing are other
aspects of events that are often handed off to contractors. Be realistic in
balancing your resources – some things you can and should do in house, some
things should be outsourced.
The event committee needs to work closely with your
communications department to make sure that the branding of the event,
including its name and logo, are appropriate both to the event and to the
larger branding of the organization. It's possible to completely confuse your
audience by mixing up your messages. A clear purpose and messaging are essential
to garner positive attention and attendance.
Often the development team is the lead team on event
planning because it's so critical to their work. As we discussed earlier, donor
cultivation is a major goal of many events. This is where the development team
shines. Events give the development team a reason to personally reach out to
major donors. It also enables fund raising, especially from corporate and
foundation supporters, who will buy tables and sponsorships. It's an
opportunity to raise money through raffles and auctions, and thereby a chance
to reach out to in-kind donors who will provide the items that you offer. The
development team will also see your event as an opportunity to invite people
who haven't donated to come to see what your organization is all about.
It's very important for the development team to be thinking
about goals and accountability related to the event. If your goal is to invite
20 new potential owners, sell 12 tables, and raise $15,000, you need to write
those goals down and measure the appropriate data to determine whether or not
you've hit your targets. This is easy when you build in specific points to
measure at the planning stage.
The event
Let's plan a hypothetical event and take a look at what it
takes to make the event work well. Our hypothetical organization is Kitty Rescue League. Kitty Rescue League
collects feral cats, sterilizes them,
and re-releases them or finds them adoptive homes. The hopefully annual Fat Cat
Bash is being attempted for the first time. The goals are to bring in 20
potential new donors and raise $10,000. There also will be recognition of
existing donors.
In order to raise interest and recognize major supporters, Kitty
Rescue League is going to make three awards to people or organizations that
have really helped save the most kitties in the past year.
A quick sidebar on awards
Why do so many
organizations give so many awards? It's not a conspiracy by the award industry.
Awards are a great way to gain positive attention, recognize your donors and
others in the community, and give your organization a topic for a good press release. Awards bring in the recipients and their friends and families. They
increase interest, and rightfully bestow recognition on those who work hard for
your cause.
Awards don't have to be
extravagant to be appreciated. A nice trophy, an engraved clock, or some
similar trifle says thank you over and over. No one gets all the attention they
need or deserve; your organization can make its donors feel great by
recognizing them at an annual event, where the community can hear about their
good deeds and express its appreciation.
The Fat Cat Bash budget
Kitty Rescue League has a mailing list of approximately 3,500
names. They're hoping that they can get 5% of that list, or 175 people, to come
to their bash. So now the planning team needs to create a budget that shows how
to pay for the cost of the event and show a profit.
Kitty Rescue League's budget for the Fat Cat Bash looks a bit like this:
EXPENSES
Space rental $1,500
Catering, 200 5,000
Audio/visual 1,500
Programs and favors 875
Program 15,000
Marketing costs 5,000
Decoration 1,000
-----------
Total $29,875
INCOME
Tickets, 175 at $75 $13,125
Sponsorships 20,000
Program ads 1,000
-----------
-----------
Total $34,125
NET $3,250
As you can see, even if Kitty
Rescue League meets their goals, they miss their revenue target. And it means
that the planners need to decide if they want to proceed with a smaller return
likely. That illustrates the difficulty in event planning.
Looking at this budget, the event
committee has several options. They can change their goals, they can change the
cost of the event, or they can figure out a way to bring in more revenue.
Key to making this evaluation
is determining what's more important: cultivation or immediate revenue. If
cultivation is more most important, then it may make sense to run the event expecting
a low return, or even take a loss, in order to have the opportunity to meet and
interact with the people that you need to talk to. If revenue is a prime goal then
it is important to look at both sides of the budget to see what can be reduced
or grown. For example the $15,000 cost for the program includes creating a
video montage of the award winners. Perhaps money could be saved by instead
doing a montage of still pictures which would require no original taping. Or maybe
a video production company can be found that would donate part or all of the
cost of production. Other expenses should be looked at too, but it's always
best to start with your biggest expense, because that's where you're most
likely to find some fat to trim.
On the income side of the
table, there aren't very many options. Calculating the increase in donations
resulting from the dinner will help, but is a very unreliable figure. Kitty Rescue League can charge more for
tickets, but that may make it more difficult to get people there. Additional
sponsorships may be possible and it may also be possible to raise the cost of
advertising in the program to raise more money there. Maybe adding a raffle or
auction would increase revenue, but with additional costs that have to be
figured in. Perhaps bigger actually works better than smaller. Because your
expenses do not go up directly with the number of attendees, it may make sense
to increase seats to 200 or 300. However the challenge then becomes getting
those additional people to the event, which typically would require increased
marketing and communication costs, and often more staff time.
Which brings up the
importance of filling seats. Nothing is worse than a partially empty banquet
hall. It is far better to oversell a small event, and bring in extra tables,
then to undersell the room. You may have the same number of people there, but
the packed room looks infinitely better. This where you use staff people to
help out. A good rule of thumb, if your staff is large enough, is to have one
staff person at each table. Board members can help with this usually pleasant
assignment. They can answer questions about your organization and help make
your guests feel welcome. But staff and board members and their (adult)
families can also help fill seats to ensure that the room is filled to
capacity. It is a nice reward to invite your staff, and they will help your
event succeed simply by being there.
The Program
What is going to happen at
the Fat Cat Bash? You don't want people to simply come in, eat and leave. So a
program is in order.
First, don't overdo the
program. 30-45 minutes is usually enough. If you run late, people become
impatient. If you are boring, it's even worse.
The program needs to be both
entertaining and interesting. Again, an award ceremony, if it is appropriately
brief, is a great way to create excitement and enthusiasm. A door prize drawing
does the same. Perhaps Kitty Rescue League has connections to a musical act, or
a staff member who is a good magician. Adding that entertainment to the bill
can be very enjoyable. But again, be sure the entertainers, unless they're cute
children, are professional enough to entertain, and not embarrass.
A keynote speaker is often
considered de rigueur at nonprofit event. This can be good or bad. Some very
impressive and effective people are not good presenters. Some speakers enjoy
their own voices so much you almost have to drag them off the stage. Either of
these situations can really bring down the mood.
If you have a keynote
speaker, find someone who knows your organization and can say nice things about
it. Have someone go see them present before you book them to ensure that they
will provide a good presentation. If at all possible, get someone with name
recognition who will help you sell tickets.
Finally, don't forget the
ask. No one is going to be offended by having your Executive Director or
Development Director make a brief pitch. People are there because they care. So
Kitty Rescue League will tell them about the tremendous impact they've had over
the past year, some of the challenges facing the organization, and how X more dollars
will make a huge difference in the coming year. For added impact, have a
donation envelope under each plate.
After the event
After the event, there are
two important tasks – follow-up and evaluation.
Follow-up means that your
event and development teams get on the phone and call people to thank them for
attending. Nothing cements a relationship like a personal touch. One could
write an entire book on cultivating donors, but suffice it to say that you need
many touches with each donor, and your post-event phone call is an important
one. This is when you can ask for support, get feedback on the event, and stay
in touch with the people who keep you going. I can't overemphasize the
importance of this step in funder cultivation.
Also thank your in-kind and
other donors that helped you stage your event. Again, your personal attention
is worth a lot, don't be stingy with it.
Finally, a few days after the
event (when people have had a chance to catch up on their sleep) get the event
team together for a postmortem. What went well? What would you do differently?
What was awful? Be honest and fair. Evaluate the work plan, the promotional
efforts, and your vendors. Take notes and refer to them before your next event.
Only through an honest appraisal will you be able to improve on your event.
This chapter addressed planning for a dinner event, but planning for any other type of event is not dissimilar. Obviously, a 5K run has different details, but the process is similar.
Events can be a lot of fun,
good money-raising opportunities, and ways to acknowledge the people that help
you carry out your mission. But they are complex and important, so do the work
up front, and then enjoy your event. As my old boss always said, “Have fun
kids!”
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