Category: Boards And Committees

Who’s in Charge of Your Fundraising Event?

11/25/2019

I know, I know. This seems really basic.

Before you begin planning your fundraising event, you need to have a conversation about who is in charge.

There’s a few reasons for this:

When asked, most nonprofit employees and volunteers will get overly involved in things that aren’t their business. For example, planning the annual fundraising event is not a good use of your Executive Director’s time, but if given the opportunity most will get in there and micromanage the heck out of it.
It should be clear who is running the show. Discussions will happen throughout the planning process, but eventually decisions need to be made. It helps to make it clear who the final decision maker is. The phrase, “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” exists for a reason.
This is an area where many Development Directors clash with their CEOs. Most DDs feel like they are in charge of planning events, because they are the DD. Most CEOs feel like they are in charge because they are the CEO. This dynamic should be addressed before the planning process begins to avoid any awkward or uncomfortable squabbles in front of board and committee members, which happens a lot more than you think.

Being in charge of planning an event doesn’t mean that you stop listening to the people around you. This is not a “my way or the highway” situation. Good leaders know how to listen and take advice from those around them, before weighing their options and coming to a decision that may not be what they personally wanted but is the best decision for the organization.

Additionally, before the day of the fundraising event, you and your colleagues should decide who is going to run things on the day. You need one person who people can go to with questions, one person handling any small metaphorical fires that pop up. There’s nothing worse than 35 people all running around trying to solve the same problem. Avoid that disaster and delegate from the beginning. Your auctioneer should be made aware of this person, so they know who to go to with any questions on the day of the event.

Delegating leadership roles like this from the beginning makes the planning process run smoother. Do yourself a favor by approaching this topic head-on before jumping into event planning.

How does your nonprofit decide who is ultimately in charge of events? Let me know in the comments.

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Should You Use a Fund-A-Need to Launch a Capital Campaign?

11/15/2019

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When I sat down to write this article, I had just come out of a meeting with a long-term client. This was a development committee meeting with a new Development Director. I went into this meeting having never met her—let’s call her Sarah—before, but I had a great relationship with the previous DD, we shared a lot of the same ideas about fundraising.

Sarah led the meeting, as she should in her capacity as Development Director. In attendance were some major donors who sit on both the board and the development committee.

This nonprofit has two major sources of revenue: a raffle and a Fund-A-Need. Their Fund-A-Need started out generating around $250k when I began working with them and we’ve managed to increase that by about 10% each year. Their event is relatively small, maybe 200 people, and they have an amazing participation level. About 98% of their attendees make a gift at the event, including a number of major donors.

During the meeting, Sarah explained that they would like to use this year’s Fund-A-Need to launch and complete a capital campaign.

If you are unfamiliar, capital campaigns focus on raising large amounts of money for a specific purpose: new buildings, major renovations, etc. During a capital campaign, you approach your major donors and ask for large donations specifically to fund these projects.

When Sarah introduced this idea, I was stunned. Their goal of raising $3 million with this capital campaign was way above our annual 10% increase and very difficult to meet with an event of this size. As we dug into this idea, it became clear that Sarah wanted to make a huge splash in her first year and this was how she chose to do it. Unfortunately, they hadn’t completely thought things through.

However, they thought their plan was solid for a couple of really good reasons. They had a need that they felt was immediate and would have an impact. Immediate is good. Impactful is good. To run a successful capital campaign your need must be both immediate and impactful, the problem is making a capital campaign ask at a live event.

Here’s why.

Why Not to Launch a Capital Campaign at a Live Event
Regardless of what level they give at, most donors who have the capacity to give don’t make giving decisions on the spot. Giving decisions require conversations with spouses or partners. Depending on the amount asked for, these decisions may necessitate a conversation with a financial advisor. These decisions certainly require a conversation with the nonprofit. When people do raise their hand for a spur-of-the-moment donation, it’s never a large amount. No one donates $100k impulsively unless they are a billionaire.

This fundraising event is how this nonprofit closes their annual gifts. Donors come to the event with the understanding that they are making whatever their annual gift is at the event, whether that is $500, $1,000, or $5,000. Running a capital campaign at this same event would mean soliciting attendees twice, once for their annual gift and once for a donation toward the capital campaign. With a goal of $3 million, these aren’t going to be small asks. It’s easy to see how this would make donors feel bad about the event and the nonprofit. Major asks, such as those required by a campaign of this size, should always be done privately and in person, not at an event.

At fundraising events, 20% of the guests make 80% of the donations, the remaining 80% of the guests make 20% of the donations. It’s important to think about how it will make your donors feel if you suddenly start asking people to raise their paddles to make a $250k donation to a capital campaign. It’s going to make 80% of the people in the room feel like their donations are inconsequential, that’s the exact opposite of how you want them to feel.

Additionally, most capital campaigns come with naming opportunities. Think about all the names on the buildings where you live. It’s likely that many of them are there because that person, or their family, made a large donation towards that building. If you are running a capital campaign at an event, how do you deal with the naming opportunity? Does the honor go only to the person who makes the largest donation? How will that make your other donors feel? Do you have a plaque made with the names of everyone who made a donation that night?

Capital campaigns require a lot of planning and work. You can’t throw a successful one together quickly. Campaigns of this magnitude require every department working together to achieve success. And your whole budget changes. Say your nonprofit has ten major donor families who always buy a table at the event. Do you solicit them for a capital campaign contribution, and then ask them to buy a table on top of that? What does this campaign mean for sponsorship? What effect might it have on your smaller donors? How does it change your budget for the year? Before launching a campaign of this magnitude, you really need your ducks in a row.

So, How’d it Turn Out?
Ultimately, the committee heard me out and decided they would separate the capital campaign from their Fund-A-Need. They’ve decided to approach their major donors privately and ask them to contribute to the capital campaign funding their project. At the Fund-A-Need, we’ll call attention to the campaign and the generous donations by those families, but we won’t be asking for donations to the campaign at the event itself.

I still think they will need to adjust their fundraising expectations for the event. The Fund-A-Need is probably not going to do as well because the donors that normally generate 80% of their revenue will have already been approached to make a donation to the capital campaign. They may not want, or be able, to give again.

This isn’t meant to scare anyone away from running a capital campaign. These campaigns are important and certainly have their purpose. But, you do need to make sure you take into account the major asks you will be making throughout the year, when it comes time to planning your fundraising event. Hold events specifically for those donors who aren’t asked to contribute to the capital campaign. Or perhaps make the decision not to hold an event in the same year as a capital campaign, communicate this with your donors and set their expectations for the solicitations they will receive. Just please, don’t run a capital campaign at a live event.

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Keep Your Planning Committee Focused on What Matters: Fundraising

8/12/2019

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Most of my clients have committees tasked with leading, or assisting with, the event planning process. This is the case despite the fact that, if you ask, most nonprofit professionals will tell you that overseeing a committee is one of the hardest parts of their job.

Imagine, if you will, a circus with twenty different and unique monkeys who are all very talented but who are also all very determined to focus on the wrong thing. Instead of performing in the big tent they are eating popcorn, climbing an audience member’s head, and spraying paint on the walls.

Why are they doing these things?

Because eating popcorn is a lot more fun than performing.

When left to their own devices event planning committees tend to focus on the easy stuff first, leaving the hard stuff for last. This makes sense, they just want to do the fun stuff. They want to go to food tastings, decide on color schemes, and pick out tablecloths.

Everyone likes to plan parties, no one likes to fundraise.

Don’t get me wrong, tablecloths, color schemes, and menus are decisions that need to be made if your event is going to be a success. But these are not decisions that need to be made by committee. You don’t need thirty people to pick out tablecloths.

So, what should your event planning committee be doing?

Planning committees should be deeply involved in making the guest list and recruiting people to attend the event who have both the capacity to care and the capacity to give.

Committee members should be following up on recruitment efforts. If voicemails have been left, they should be following up with emails. If emails have been sent, they should be following up with a phone call.

They should be soliciting items and experiences for any live or silent auctions taking place at the event.

Committee members should be soliciting potential sponsors.

They should be passing on any helpful, pertinent rumors about members of the community and their capacity to give/interest in your organization. Committee members are your eyes and ears in the community.

Set the expectation that your committee members will help your development department (or development person!) do the actual work of reaching out to and engaging with potential donors prior to the event. People need to know what they are getting themselves into from the beginning. Your committee’s job is to help the development team make sure that not only are there a plentiful number of butts in seats on the day, but that the right butts are in those seats. That means people with both the capacity to give and the capacity to care.

For more on committees, take a look at this post about keeping committee members engaged at fundraising events.

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Who’s in Charge of Your Fundraising Event?

Should You Use a Fund-A-Need to Launch a Capital Campaign?

Keep Your Planning Committee Focused on What Matters: Fundraising

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