BLOG - Event Fundraising - Are the results worth the effort?

 

Event Fundraising - Are the results worth the effort?

Your organization is looking for ways to raise money. Usually the first suggestion from volunteers is to have a golf tournament, auction, ball, gala, race, or person of the year celebration. The volunteer raves about the event they attended and how much money the group raised. Everyone gets excited about the possibilities and what the organization could do with that kind of money. Are they blinded by the possibilities? Are events really the best way to raise money for your organization? 

This is an age old question that fundraisers and non-profits continue to struggle to answer. Throughout my career, I have seen some really good examples of events where the effort was well worth it, others where it was probably a wash, and many where the real return was not worth the overall investment. Sadly some of the last group become the hardest to get rid of because we have not evaluated the big picture. 

Each year more non-profits are created and most look at some sort of event as a way to raise philanthropic support. Is this a good strategy? Does event fundraising really provide the return on investment that non-profits hope it will?   

Here are three key questions that non-profits should ask. Staff, leadership, and the board should all agree on the answers to these questions before moving forward with the event. 

What is the goal?

A key element to any potential fundraising event (or fundraising effort for that matter) is to clearly define the goal. If you do not have clear measurable goals, shared by all stakeholders, please reconsider the event until you do.  

Some typical goals of events are:

  • Raise a specific dollar amount to meet a budgeted need
  • Cultivate existing donors
  • Identify new potential donors
  • Steward key donor(s)

Often an organization tries to incorporate as many of these goals as they can into their events. The challenge is the more that you try to do with your event the more time and effort is required to achieve it and it can dilute the key goal. 

The organization should also consider if an event is the best way to achieve this goal.

What is the real cost?

How many organizations include in their event budget the time of staff, board members, and volunteers in the cost to run an event? 

Really well run events take time and effort to plan. They take a focused group of volunteers to execute. Finally, they require significant follow-up to ensure everyone is thanked and new prospects identified are contacted. All of this time and effort should be included in the cost of the event. 

Another cost to consider is the asking and arm-twisting done by staff, volunteers, and board members to get their contacts to buy a table, provide a raffle item or sponsor a hole. We should ask ourselves, is that the best way to use that contact. A board member got their contact to buy a $1500 table to our gala, will they be able to go back to them for a $5,000 campaign gift? How many times can we or our volunteers go back to the same donor? Have you ever heard a donor say, "Well, I already bought a foursome at the golf tournament, I thought that was what you wanted me to do." 

Organizations should also consider what opportunities were missed because staff or board members were working on getting another attendee or sponsor and not out finding an individual large donor or grant opportunity.  

Understanding these addition "costs" as part of the total expense is important. This provides a clearer understanding of the actual return on the event. 

Will we be able to follow-up appropriately? 

The time and effort that goes into planning and executing an event is significant. Once an event is over, people are usually ready to get back to their other work or things that have been set aside to focus on the event. This makes it extremely difficult to do appropriate follow-up. 

Does your organization prep staff, volunteers and board members to engage with key selected attendees? Do you gather their feedback after the event and identify new prospects and next steps with those prospects? Are you able to do further research on those prospects to assist with next steps. Do you track who shows up to the event year after year? 

Follow-up is likely the most important step in an event and yet probably the one we give the least amount of time. While the revenue generated from the event is nice, newly identified prospects provide a great opportunity to increase the value of the event. 

What to do with your answers 

If you can get clarity on these three questions, you will be in a better informed about launching a new event or the fate of an existing event. This is extremely difficult for all non-profits. They see others announce that they raised $1 million, $100,000, $10,000 through an event and they would love to have that kind of money to support their cause. Typically, what is not clear in the announcement is how much effort went into that event.  

Even if you have an events person on staff, do you incorporate their salary and benefits into the expenses of the event? If not, did you really make what you thought you did? What would happen if you eliminated the event and turned the event person into an individual gift officer, would that give you a better return? 

Each organization needs to decide what is a worthy return on any investment of their limited resources. There are events that are well worth the time and effort and produce a great return. There are also many that do not, yet fundraisers and non-profits continue to see this as the best solution to generate revenue for their cause.