How do you enhance your potential revenue? What other options to capture profit exist? Who will pay for it all? These questions are answered in chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 covers the basics of sponsorships and their key role in financial success. Who are likely sponsors and why do we need them? How are they approached and for what amount? What do they get in return? Why shouldn’t they be given everything they ask for? How do you recognize sponsors and thank them for their help in your success? How should you collect their contributions? What is the value of a sponsorship? How should you treat competitive businesses? Can your and your sponsor’s promises be kept?
Most community problems are too big for one organization to solve alone. Often several are working to deal with the same issues. This concept of collaboration can apply to fundraising events. Chapter 7 explores potential partnerships that may enhance and even amplify your success. You’ll learn how to construct a successful collaboration—from letters of agreement to joint celebration.
The next step is staging the event. In Chapter 8, event logistics are treated in detail, including timelines, regulations, location, food, supplies, rentals, permits, sound, and accessibility—the million details that require your attention. Where will guests park? What is your liability? The list can seem endless, but the worksheet contained within the chapter should help a logistics chair sort through the items in order of importance and sequence.
Guests almost always need food and refreshment. Whether you are providing water coolers and granola bars at a 10K race, or serving a seven-course meal with champagne at a formal gala, the best way to welcome and show hospitality to guests is to feed them. Chapter 9 covers food and beverages. What rules and regulations will you have to deal with? What will be served and how? Are warming, cooling, and cooking facilities needed? And, in today’s world, how are special diets taken into consideration?
Chapter 10 explores different ways performers and entertainment can add value to your fundraising event. How do you begin to scout possible entertainers? How much should you pay? Do they require special care? If yes, who is in charge of that? What kind of special equipment might be needed?
Chapter 11 presents ways to tell your story. How do you construct a compelling message? When is the right time to share it? We’ve all been to events where the speakers drone on while our stomachs growl and our eyelids start to droop. What is a realistic attention span for guests? This chapter shows different ways to get your message across at the actual fundraiser.
Chapter 12 offers ways you can increase your profit during an event. It gives specific details about on-site auctions, raffles, the sale of related merchandise, and approaches for soliciting additional donations from your guests.
Chapter 13 explores how to share results and lessons learned and celebrate success. I provide insights and illustrations from past fundraisers and detail the building blocks to mount your own event so as to maximize your values, goals, and intention. I share stories from my thirty years of experience of the ups and downs of community fundraising and include interviews of key committee people, sponsors, foundation partners, and guests.
There is another, often unanticipated outcome of community event fundraising. Sharing a meal with neighbors knits us together in a dense web of support for those in need and enhances our identity as a community. Community fundraising builds relationships; those relationships determine our vitality as a town. An intricately connected community can weather most storms.
What’s good for building community is good for philanthropy. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam observes, “volunteering is among the strongest predictors of philanthropy, and vice versa.”1 “In round numbers, joiners are nearly ten times more generous with their time and money than non-joiners. Social capital is a more powerful predictor of philanthropy than is financial capital.”2 Peter Block, in Community: The Structure of Belonging, states, “The context that restores community is one of possibility, generosity, and gifts, rather than one of problem solving, fear, and retribution.”3 Feeling connected allows a new conversation to take place—one focused on possibilities rather than problems. It requires citizens to act authentically and to choose to exercise power as a collective rather than relinquish voice to a select few. This cultivates a space where all voices can be heard and collective decisions made that are in the best interest of the community.
A great fundraiser builds on our community’s assets to lift those who need a little help in this world. In the process we continue to reinforce our dense web of social connection. We celebrate each other’s successes, share our talents, and have fun together. But that’s not all. Lew Felstein, retired director of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, said, “We must learn to view the world through a social capital lens. We need to look at front porches as crime-fighting tools, treat picnics as public health efforts, and see choral groups as occasions of democracy. We will become a better place when assessing the impact of social capital becomes a standard part of decision making.”
Fundraising events can be a recipe to build social capital in a community. They offer citizens a reason to work together, to celebrate their assets, and to shine. The results can be improved food access, stronger relationships, and denser networks and webs of communication. And the “profit” goes way deeper than the money raised. The true profit is a healthier, more positive community that can take pride in its accomplishments. This profit takes our attention away from mere problem solving and leads it toward a celebration of who and where we are as a people.
* * *
EVENTS CAN be an important part of a fundraising plan. But there are good reasons not to do a fundraiser as well. Events don’t usually raise a lot of money compared to individual donations, and they don’t necessarily build loyalty to your organization. One obstacle to your success can be the lack of access to good volunteers! Most events work best with a full team of committed, excited volunteers who will plan the event, raise the sponsorships, sell the tickets, and do the work it takes to “set the table” for your guests. If volunteers are not available, don’t plan a fundraiser.
Don’t hold a fundraiser if your organization is in financial crisis. Successful fundraising events take a long time to plan, usually a year. They enlist a tremendous amount of volunteer and staff time. And they don’t raise the kind of money an organization can generate by directly asking donors and receiving a check. Besides, it’s hard to have fun when in crisis.
The main reason to do a fundraiser is to have fun, raise your visibility, and attract new supporters to your mission. If the board is worried about how the organization will continue to survive, if they have to lay off staff or go out of business, a fundraiser is not the answer.
If you are not in crisis and have a strong core of volunteers and a creative, fun idea, then you’re ready. Now, let’s look at how your idea to raise money aligns with your purpose for the greatest impact!
NOTES
1. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 118.
2. Ibid., 120.
3. Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehner, 2009), 29.
CHAPTER ONE
Ask the Right People
TEAMWORK