Special Events: A Recipe For Success
Bring
up the idea of staging a new special event at your next staff or board
meeting, and chances are you will be met with shrieks of horror, glazed
expressions and incoherent mumbling. Rare indeed is the nonprofit organization
that approaches a sit-down dinner or a Las Vegas night with glee.
If your nonprofit is serious about staging a special event, you must begin
by asking yourself one extremely important question (and rarely asked
in advance):
Do you want the kind of event that will
A) attract the largest number of community members, or
B) make the most money?
Suffice
it to say that a special event is the most difficult, the most labor-intensive
and the most harrowing means of nonprofit fundraising known to humankind.
Let it be added immediately that a well-orchestrated special event
is crucial to your overall development effort. In fact, fundraising
staff and volunteers who ignore special events may well be imperiling
the very survival of their organizations.
If
your nonprofit is serious about staging a special event, you must begin
by asking yourself one extremely important question (and rarely asked
in advance): do you want the kind of event that will
A)
attract the largest number of community members, or
B)
make the most money?
It
is the rare event that covers both bases (although many nonprofits try!).
If you want to welcome your neighbors to your new homeless shelter, send
out invitations to everyone in you locality, serve cookies and punch,
and show them around. If on the other hand you want to raise big bucks
for the homeless shelter, rent a banquet room at a downtown hotel and
invite upper-crust types at $300 - $500/couple. You really can't have
it both ways. Each type of event serves an important purpose: which is
appropriate for you in the coming year or two?
How
to Implement a Special Event
What
is the most effective means to implement a special event and to steer clear
of the pitfalls that imperil your success? Let's use a sit-down dinner as
our example; this is the most complex and difficult kind of fundraising
event, so if you master the dinner, other kinds of events should prove somewhat
easier. Understand immediately that you will require between nine and twelve
months to plan and execute a sit-down dinner. Allow enough time to ensure
the success of your event!
Dinner
Committee Members
The first step is to convene a dinner committee to oversee the event.
You are inviting disaster if you expect your staff to mount the dinner
entirely on its own. Remember: fundraising is a peer-to-peer process.
An enthusiastic, well-connected committee is critical to the success of
your event. The committee should be made up of members of your board of
directors who have expressed interest in the dinner, ex-board members
who retain an interest in your organization, and other volunteers who
may not have the time or inclination to serve on your board, but who can
be of great value in helping with the event.
Committee
Responsibilities
The committee is charged with making all important decisions relating
to the event and overseeing the work of staff. The staff is responsible
for the "detail work" and for prodding committee members to complete assigned
tasks (the relationship between staff and committee parallels that between
staff and board). The committee should meet at least six times. If you
have nine months between the first meeting and the event, Zimmerman Lehman
suggests meeting every month for the first three months, and every other
month for the final six months, with the understanding that an emergency
meeting might have to be convened at any time, should circumstances warrant.
Dollar
Goal
At its first meeting, the dinner committee decides upon a dollar goal
for the event. Decisions must then be made (at this meeting and the next)
concerning event locale, date, ticket prices (both sponsorships and individual
tickets), food and drink, emcee, speaker and honoree.
The
event site
The event site should be located close to public transportation and to
inexpensive parking. You should choose a time of year when people are
likely to be in town and when potential weather problems are at a minimum.
A good meal that is affordable is of course central to a successful sit-down
dinner. You must also consider whether to serve wine with dinner and whether
to have a cocktail hour before dinner. If you choose to have a cocktail
hour, will the bar be open or no-host?
Emcee
You will want an emcee who is personable, humorous and able to keep the
program moving along. The right speaker or honoree will also help to guarantee
the success of your event. Give thought to the individual's involvement
in the kind of work that your organization does, and to the ability of
that person's name to sell tickets.
If
the committee needs more information about any of these items, it is the
staff's responsibility to do the necessary research and to report back
at the next committee meeting.
Selling
Tickets
Committee members must understand the crucial role they play in selling
tickets. Let's use a legal aid society dinner as an example. Assume that
individual tickets cost $200, a "sponsored" table of ten is $2,000, and
the legal aid society hopes to persuade the 15 largest law firms in town
to be sponsors. It would be pointless to ask the legal aid society development
staff person to call the firms to sell sponsorships. Instead, committee
members should decide who has the best contact at each firm, and it should
be the appropriate member's responsibility to call his/her contact to
sell the sponsorship. Remember: this is a peer-to-peer business.
Committee
members must also decide how many individual tickets each member will
be asked to sell, and who else (staff, ex-board members, other volunteers)
will be expected to peddle tickets.
Staff
Responsibilities
By the third meeting, the committee should have made all decisions concerning
the site, speaker and honoree (you need not have both a speaker and an
honoree, but the combination can help to sell tickets). Staff is then
responsible for making formal arrangements with the hotel or other site
and taking care of all program arrangements (e.g..--scheduling the speaker,
purchasing the wine, getting the names of the honoree's family in order
to send them complimentary invitations, etc..). The committee must also
decide how to publicize the event; it is the staff's responsibility to
implement the committee's recommendations about publicity. Again, however,
if a committee member has an "in" with a local reporter, it is that member's
responsibility to make the connection.
The
Program
The committee and staff should develop the evening's program together.
Keep it short. You might want to ask the emcee to make introductory
remarks and to acknowledge the presence of notables before dinner. After
dinner, the main program might include a description of your organization
(delivered by the executive director or board president), introduction
of the speaker, speaker's remarks, introduction of the honoree and honoree's
remarks. Remember: it's nighttime, people have had a filling meal, and
most would like to leave as soon as they can respectably do so. Keep the
program short.
Other
Important Items
Other important items include preparation of the written program (be sure
to acknowledge all sponsors!), processing of tickets (mail reservations
and pick-up at the door usually work best, provided that you have enough
staff on site), provisions for members of the press (you may want to make
dinner available for them, or you may simply want to invite them for the
program, not for dinner) and appointment of a "point person" to deal with
the inevitable snafus that will raise their ugly heads on the big night.
The more time that you allow yourself to plan, the fewer the nasty surprises
at the dinner, and don't forget to plan an evaluation meeting! Plan ahead
and keep your sense of humor!
Copyright
2007 Zimmerman Lehman.
This
information is the property of Zimmerman Lehman. If you would like
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