A fundraising event is a great opportunity to increase awareness about your cause and raise money to support it. It can also allow you to build relationships with potential donors and volunteers who believe in and support your mission.
However, it’s not always easy to organize and pull off such an event, especially if you have no experience planning one. Aside from making the necessary arrangements, like reserving a venue and hiring catering services, you could also face obstacles, such as finding enough volunteers to help or exceeding your budget.
Fortunately, with a few planning and preparation tips, you can host a successful fundraising event. To help you out, here’s a nine-step guide on how you can do it:
1. Define the Purpose of Your Fundraising Event
Before starting your preparations or brainstorming for fundraising ideas, it can help to know why you’re planning a fundraising event in the first place and who will benefit from your cause. Here are the questions you and your team need to discuss and decide on:
What is the event’s goal?
Your goal is what your organization is hoping to achieve. For example, you may want to raise money for your church or a local charity helping orphans. Or perhaps, you are selling raffle tickets and hoping to increase awareness for your advocacy to acquire new donors.
Whatever your goals are, defining them can guide and help you make decisions along the way. Your goals can also serve as your metric when assessing the success of your fundraising event.
Who will benefit from this event?
Having a clear picture of your cause and who will benefit from the money you raise can make it easier for you to communicate your message to your audience and encourage them to donate. People are likely to make donations if they know and understand your cause and how their contribution can support your organization.
How much money do you have to raise?
Most fundraising events have a monetary goal to help them support their cause. As such, it’s essential to determine a realistic amount of money you’re aiming for.
To help you with this, consider searching for similar organizations in your area. For instance, if you’re looking to raise funds for low-income families within a community, you can coordinate with a similar group and determine how much money it would take to make those improvements happen. You can also coordinate with a builder or contractor to get better estimates.
2. Brainstorm Fundraising Ideas With Your Team
Depending on your goal and target audience, there are various ideas you can consider for your fundraising event. For instance, if you want to raise funds for sports enthusiasts, you can host sports-related fundraising events to support your goal. You can check sites like https://www.hour-a-thon.com/baseball-fundraising-ideas/ to give you ideas that might help you.
Moreover, here are some fundraising ideas you can consider:
- Sell Exclusive Merchandise: A good way to generate more revenue from your event is by selling exclusive merchandise at your fundraiser. You can sell T-shirts, mugs, posters, and other items featuring your logo or name. These items are great because they are easy to sell and can help encourage people to donate money.
- Host A Grand Auction: A grand auction is another way to attract donors and generate revenue from your fundraiser. It involves selling lots of different prizes at once so that plenty of options are available for everyone who attends your event. Once again, this helps promote awareness about your nonprofit organization and incentivizes people to attend your event because they know they could win valuable prizes while helping out an important cause.
When choosing activities to include in your fundraising event, ensure it aligns with your organization’s mission and values.
3. Create Committees
Once you have defined your goal, it’s time to form committees to help bring your organization’s vision to life. This means delegating tasks and responsibilities to members of your team. For example, you can create a team leading the planning and preparations. This group will be responsible for the event’s logistics, ensuring all necessary arrangements are made. They’ll book venue and catering and hire lights and sound services, to name a few.
You can also assign team members to handle the donations and oversee the funds your organization is receiving. In addition, you can also create a dedicated team that will focus on the marketing functions, promoting your organization’s cause and event to attract more attendees.
If you have a smaller organization, you can look for volunteers who share the same passion as you. People in your community are likely to be encouraged to participate, especially when they see that you’re working towards a cause they also support.
As you look for volunteers, it can help to ask them whether or not they have experience participating in such events. You could ask them about their past roles and how they helped in the events they participated in. Pre-qualifying volunteers can be a good approach to recruiting people to your team who know how to do the job and help you ensure a smooth event and minimize team disruptions.
And while not everyone may have the experience, you can still consider onboarding them. You can conduct orientations and briefings to help get them up to speed on things they need to know about your event.
4. Set a Budget
Holding a fundraising event may require a significant investment from you to cover the event’s expenses. As you plan your budget, it can help to list all expected costs to ensure you don’t miss out on anything. This includes food and refreshments, transportation, necessary permits, entertainment, lights and sound services, and venue rental if you’re planning to rent one.
Don’t forget to leave a little room in your budget to help anticipate unforeseeable expenses. On the other hand, you can also start looking for partnerships and sponsors to help lessen your organization’s expenses.
5. Finalize the Event’s Time and Date
Choosing the time and date for your event is crucial. You wouldn’t want to schedule it too soon since doing so won’t give your audience enough time to RSVP. You also want to pick a date when people are likely to be able to attend, as this increases the chances of raising more donations for your cause.
As such, you’d want to schedule your fundraiser on a date that will be more convenient for your participants. For instance, if your fundraising event involves brunch, hosting it during weekends may work best compared to weekdays.
On the other hand, while it may seem ideal and convenient to schedule your event during the holidays, as most people will be free, your potential attendees are likely to have prior commitments already, which may affect your event’s attendance.
6. Choose a Venue
Selecting a venue is another key consideration for a successful fundraising event. For one, it can help set the vibe and overall atmosphere of your event and give your attendees a comfortable space to be at.
As a good start, scout an event space that can accommodate the number of guests you expect and fits the event you’ll be hosting. For example, renting a hotel function room may work best if you’re looking to hold a charity gala dinner. Such a space can provide the level of sophistication and elegance you aim for. Alternatively, if your event is more on the casual side, you can explore event spaces like rooftop gardens, restaurants, or other commercial spaces.
On the other hand, you can also host fundraising events online. You can create a virtual space using video conferencing services to gather all interested donors and conduct your campaign. This way, you don’t have to worry about finding a specific location. Moreover, it also allows you to reach and attract more participants worldwide.
7. Promote Your Fundraising Event
Once you’ve finalized the event details and logistics, it’s time to start promoting your fundraiser and let people know about it. You may contact local news outlets, such as television, newspaper, or radio stations, to get support within your community. You may also invite influencers within your locality to boost your event attendance by creating more buzz.
In addition, you can also advertise your fundraising event on social media platforms so that more people can be aware of your cause and help you achieve your goal. This can help you generate more donations from friends and family members who may not have known about such an event.
Wrapping It Up
Running a fundraising event can give you a wonderful opportunity to connect with potential donors and spread the word about your cause. This goes a long way in helping your nonprofit organization get the support it needs to fulfill its goal and mission. However, organizing a fundraiser can be challenging, especially if you don’t know where or how to begin.
You can take inspiration from this post to help you plan and organize a successful fundraising event, achieve your target donation amount, and create a community that moves towards a common goal.