The Nonprofit Fundraising Event Planner
Organizing a nonprofit fundraiser is a lot like running a race: You’ve got to start strong and finish strong, but you also need to know how to pace yourself along the way. And, just like a race, if you go into planning your event with no real process or strategy in place (“I don’t need to carbo-load tonight or stretch tomorrow, I’ll be fine”), you’re probably going to crash out long before you reach the finish line.
You don’t want that, and neither do we. That’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive guide to planning a nonprofit fundraising event. It covers every single step in the process, from choosing what kind of fundraiser you’re gonna throw to picking a venue, setting a budget, selling tickets, printing flyers—and even following up afterward.
Before we get started, this article is chock-full of awesome templates, checklists, and other resources that are all yours to use however you like. Specifically, it includes:
Nonprofit Event Planning Checklist
P2P Participant Email Templates
P2P Fundraising Campaign Planning Worksheet
P2P Participant Social Media Templates
Get All The Event Planning Resources
Decide What Type of Fundraiser to Hold
The starting pistol has fired, and you’re off! You’re feeling great. Not a blister or a cramp in sight. Maybe this is actually going to be easy?
Does picking the kind of fundraiser your nonprofit will hold feel super daunting?
If so, that’s good! Because picking the right fundraising event for your organization will, in fact, be harder than you think.
After all, this decision could mean the difference between a successful fundraiser and a mediocre one. If your donors and community members aren’t interested in attending the event you’re putting on, most of them won’t show up.
Start by familiarizing yourself with all the different kinds of nonprofit fundraisers you can choose from:
Common Types of Fundraiser Events
Gala
This is a big fundraiser, typically held annually, that usually features dinner, entertainment, and speeches. They’re also the perfect venue to hold a silent auction. Generally, this type of event serves to highlight all the great work that your nonprofit is doing in the community. While galas are a very common type of nonprofit fundraiser, they also require a lot of work. And a poorly run gala could create reputational problems down the line. So if you’re committed to putting one on, the stakes to execute it will be high!
(BLOG) 8 Questions to Ask While Planning Your Next Fundraising Gala
Endurance Challenge
This is an event where you gather participants to compete against each other in some sort of contest. It could be a charity 5k or a walkathon (and, to be honest, it’s usually one of those two) but it could also be a pie-eating contest, a dance-a-thon, or a battle of the bands. There are two ways to raise money from an endurance event. First, you can charge tickets for people to attend and cheer on their friends. Second, you can have your participants raise money from their networks to support their bid.
(BLOG) Fundraising Walkathons: 6 Steps to Hosting a Successful Event
(BLOG) The Nonprofit’s Guide to Hosting a 5K Fundraiser
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Peer-to-peer fundraising events mean empowering supporters to raise funds from their peer networks on your behalf. While you can run a peer-to-peer fundraiser on its own, this format often pairs well with “competition” events. If you’re hosting a charity 5k, for example, you should help your runners raise money to support their participation. That help could look like personal fundraising pages plus a whole kit filled with graphics, social media copy, talking points, and other assets that your fundraisers can use to customize their page and make their appeals.
Social Event
This is an event where the primary purpose is for people to hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Usually, your organization will be providing them with a venue or refreshments or some other theme that ties it all together—and then charging money for tickets. It could be a pancake breakfast, a barbecue, or a brewery fundraiser done in partnership with a local business. This event is sort of like a gala, but much easier to put on and with way lower stakes.
Performance
With this kind of event, your nonprofit is hosting and/or putting on a show, like a concert, play, or stand up comedy night. For performing arts organizations, an event like this will be right in their wheelhouse—although they’re not the same as the normal performances that your group puts on. It could be something like a preview of an upcoming season, a concert performance of a popular musical, etc. Raising funds and managing donors is a lot easier for arts organizations when their CRM integrates seamlessly with their ticketing software. Check out this story from the Pacific Opera Project to see how they do it.
The Perfect Duet: Pacific Opera Project’s Success with Arts People + Neon CRM
Ask Yourself: Who is Our Audience?
There are tons of different factors to consider when picking an event, like time, infrastructure, experience, and funds. But perhaps the most important question you should be asking yourself when choosing a fundraiser is:
Who is this event for?
If the answer is “our donors,” don’t stop there. Dig into your donor database and see what insights you can glean. Maybe your small donors and volunteers respond to a movie night, while your large donors respond to a silent auction. That information can guide your thinking!
Take a look at audience demographics. If a lot of your donors have small children, a family-friendly event will likely do better than one that’s aimed squarely at adults.
Understanding your audience will help you nail down what kind of event serves them best.
Need Some More Ideas?
Those are the basic types of nonprofit events your organization can offer! As you drill down, these two (exhaustive) lists of ideas for fundraisers and events will be a huge help: Between them, there are 150 ideas you can choose from!
Feeling stuck? Click the “Shuffle!” button and we’ll serve up a fundraiser idea to get you started.
Want to see all of our nonprofit and fundraising event ideas?
Create an Event Team
You pass the first-mile marker. One down, nine to go. Remember what you talked about with your running group and pace yourself.
Now that you’ve decided on what kind of fundraiser you’re throwing, your next step is to assemble a small, dedicated team that will be tasked with the strategy, planning, and execution of the event.
Make sure the team includes at least one board member. Given the incredible financial and logistical challenges that come with putting on an event, your board should always be a part of the process.
The rest of your event team should be made up of key staff members and any volunteers who have both the interest and the expertise to contribute. That last part is key: Putting on events isn’t easy, so triple-check that any volunteers you include are both enthusiastic and experienced.
Make sure that individual tasks and responsibilities are distributed clearly and evenly. If your entire team is responsible for “decorations” or “entertainment,” then what that really means is that no one is responsible for “decorations” or “entertainment.”
Keep a running list of all your team member’s different jobs and responsibilities. It will help you catch on if any one person’s plate is getting too full.
Pro Tip: If your nonprofit hosts events regularly, you should create a standing event sub-committee on your board to help ensure that your events strategy aligns with greater organizational goals—and that the lessons learned from one event are carried over to the next one.
Set Goals for Your Fundraiser
You’re still feeling great—a little sore, a little winded—but you feel like you could go so much faster. Don’t. You’ll need everything you’ve got to cross the finish line.
The goal for a fundraiser is to raise funds, right? Glad we agree. On to Mile 3!
Not quite yet. Setting a revenue goal for your event is only the beginning—there’s so much other stuff that an event can do!
Looking beyond the total funds raised, there are lots of ways a fundraising event can move the ball downfield for your organization. Like any fundraising campaign, a charity event can—and should—have multiple goals.
Examples of Common Event Goals
Total Attendees/Tickets Sold
If your event hits its financial target due solely to a single deep-pocketed donor, then that success could be obscuring other ways in which your event failed. By tracking total attendees and/or total tickets sold, your nonprofit can gauge what kind of impact you made in the community at large and/or how successful your marketing strategies were. Many of those attendees are potential future supporters. Keep track of them!
(WEBINAR) Nonprofit Tech Circle: Event Registration Pages (+ Free Checklist!)
Total New/Returning Donors
Every nonprofit has to deal with donor churn as new donors sign up and existing donors fall away. By measuring how many new donors a fundraiser acquired and how many existing donors participated, you are gathering valuable information that will help you combat that churn. If you acquired a bunch of new donors, putting a new donor welcome email series into place will help you retain them.
(DOWNLOAD) The Fundraiser’s Guide to Welcome Email Series
If your existing donor participation was low, you know that those donors are in danger of dropping off. In that case, you can turn to your donor stewardship strategy to prevent that from happening.
New Volunteers
If you are running a volunteering event, this is the primary metric you’re going to use to judge success. But you can also work volunteer sign-ups into other types of events as well! Beyond looking at dollars raised, looking at new volunteer sign-ups tells you how well your nonprofit is doing at telling your story and how engaged people were at this specific event.
(BLOG) The Nonprofit’s Volunteer Recruitment Guide + 11 Great Ideas to Try
Total Number of Donations
Any person who decides to donate to your nonprofit has demonstrated a connection to your work and mission. Even if they just donated a single dollar, that one dollar could be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship. Look at the total number of contributions made to get a better view of your donor base. If you are relying on a few major donors and not seeing many small contributions, that’s a sign that you need to shake up your fundraising strategy.
(BLOG) The Power of Small Donations: Why They Should Matter To Your Nonprofit
Set SMART Goals
Whatever your nonprofit decides, make sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T., which stands for “Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Ambitious, Relevant, Timely.” For more details on setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, check out this article:
Set an Event Budget
You’re almost a third of the way done, and it’s time to find your comfortable pace. Not too fast, not too slow, just right. Just like you planned.
In setting your budget, you are beginning to make specific decisions about things like what kind of venue you’ll be able to afford, what kinds of food and drink you can serve, and how many attendees you can handle.
Don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. Do your research! Look up the costs and start getting quotes from local vendors so that you have a good idea of what things will actually cost.
If you have held an event like this previously, that will be a handy guide, but make sure you check that costs for things like venues and catering haven’t gone up.
In general, a budget will contain the following items:
Venue
Where are you going to hold your event? If your nonprofit has a space already, great. If not, you’ll need to find something. Maybe it’s a ballroom or restaurant; maybe it’s a park or outdoor concert venue. Make sure you have a good idea of how many attendees you’re expecting, as that will determine the types of venues you’ll need.
Food/Drink
Lots of events involve serving food. Decide early whether you’re going to be hiring full-on catering with serving staff or whether you will have your volunteers handle serving and distribution. This is a great place to look for donations from local restaurants and breweries.
Decorations
If you’re running a gala, decorations are probably going to be a major expense. If you’re hosting an outdoor picnic, some signage, tablecloths and balloons might be all you need.
Technology
What kind of tech are you going to need? For most kinds of live events, you’re probably going to need some sort of sound system. For a concert, it’s going to be even more involved. If you’re holding a lot of events, it might be worth it to purchase your own equipment.
Staff
For the most part, your staffing will be your organization’s volunteers. But if you’re hiring a specialist like a DJ or a live auctioneer, you should be paying them. Still, this will likely be one of your smaller line items.
Marketing
One of the great things about digital marketing channels, like email and social media, is that they’re cheap. But for more traditional marketing channels like posters and flyers, print ads, or radio spots, the costs will add up fast.
This budget will likely need executive or board approval, so make sure it’s as detailed as possible before presenting it to them. This is another area where research will come in handy: The last thing a board wants to see is an event planner who’s guesstimating how much something will cost.
Pro Tip: Include a line item like “administrative costs” where you anticipate the actual costs will be much lower than what you’ve budgeted for. This will allow you a cushion to move money around if another item ends up going over budget (just make sure your board is okay with it.)
Pick a Date, Venue & Platform
Okay, you feel like you’re hitting wall number one. Stay focused, stay positive, and push through. Making it through this stage is critical.
Picking a Date & Venue
Obviously, these two things—date and venue—are going to be linked, as some venues won’t be available on specific dates. When picking venues and dates, make sure you have Plans B, C, D (and maybe even E) ready to go.
Dream venue not available on the dates you need? No worries. Rather than pushing your event back three months or holding it on a Tuesday night (instead of on a Friday), you can simply move down the list and choose a venue with an availability that works.
The same holds true in reverse. Have a list of dates ready to go that all work for your event. Your top venue might be unavailable on your first choice date, but if it’s available on your third choice, that might be worth the trade-off.
Of course, your event might be tied to a specific date, in which case finding an available venue will be a bit harder. If this is the case for your event, our only advice is to start planning it as early as possible.
Picking an Event Management Platform
If you’re running a small event, you might be able to run it on a combination of gumption, quick wit, and a sneaky smoke or two (or 10). But for anything larger than that, you’re going to need some technological assistance.
You’re going to need event management software.
Why? Because it’s going to help you plan, manage, and optimize your event by streamlining essential tasks like registration, ticket sales, fundraising, marketing, and data management. It’s all the sorts of stuff that gets way too difficult for larger (or even mid-sized) fundraisers to track by hand.
Without an event management platform, you’re going to be tearing your hair out over everything that needs to get done. But with the right platform, you’ll be able to efficiently coordinate your event logistics, track attendee engagement, and integrate fundraising efforts into your overall event strategy.
Sounds great! But now comes the hard part: Figuring out which event management platform is the “right” platform for your nonprofit.
The first step is to consider the types and sizes of events your nonprofit typically hosts, ensuring the chosen software is a good fit. Some platforms excel at managing small workshops, while others are designed for large-scale conferences or fundraising galas.
Next, you’ll want to evaluate the software’s features and functionality. Key elements to look for include registration and ticketing tools, donor management, marketing automation, and event customization options.
Finally, you’ll want to consider some other important factors like ease of use, cost, scalability, and integrations.
A user-friendly experience ensures that events run smoothly without unnecessary technical difficulties, while scalability will allow you to accommodate larger events over time without having to change systems.
Cost is, of course, a significant consideration when selecting event management software, and understanding a given system’s pricing structure is always going to be crucial.
Not sure where to begin in your search? We’ve got some good news: You can start right here with Neon CRM.
Click below to take a self-guided tour of the system’s events management module. If you like what you see, you can join us for a group demo or schedule a 1:1 session to learn more.
Create an Event Planning Timeline
The good news is that you pushed through the wall. The bad news is that you can feel another wall coming up. You could really use some encouragement!
Planning an event means managing lots of different moving parts. By creating an event timeline with specific goals that need to be hit on or by certain dates, your entire event planning team can make sure that everything is staying on track.
Your timeline will take place over months. Depending on the type of event—and especially the type of venue you need to secure—your timeline could cover more than a year!
An event planning timeline should cover the following steps in, roughly, the following order:
- Picking a date and venue
- Securing sponsorships or in-kind donations
- Securing refreshments/caterers
- Securing technology
- Booking entertainment and/or speakers
- Recruiting and training volunteers/staffers
- Launching ticket sales
- Event marketing
- Event set-up
- Major day-of-event tasks
- Event
- Post-event follow-up
Take those steps and add them to a single calendar that all of your team has access to, and make sure each individual knows which steps they’re responsible for completing. Encourage the team members who own specific tasks to add sub-tasks that they can check off as they complete them.
With a timeline in place, your team will know instantly whether a given element of your event is falling behind schedule. The earlier you detect problems like these, the easier it will be to correct them!
For Neon CRM Users:
After you assign activities to individual staff members, they can keep track of their own timeline using the calendar widget. Any upcoming tasks will be right there for them to see!
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising 101
Feeling a little fatigued? Maybe a little hopeless?
This rally point is here to perk you up by cheering you on!
Let’s talk about the impact of peer-to-peer fundraising, because if your nonprofit hasn’t yet tried into this strategy, then it’s about time you started.
Peer-to-peer fundraising—which you’ll sometimes see styled as “P2P”—is a strategy that taps into the power of social proof, transforming your biggest supporters into fundraising champions and empowering them to rally their personal networks on your behalf.
P2P fundraising works because people are far more likely to donate when a friend, family member, or colleague asks them to support a cause they care about. This builds trust, creates a sense of community, and makes fundraising feel more personal and impactful.
The two biggest factors to ensuring a successful P2P campaign both come down to taking care of your participants. First, you’ve got to equip them for success. Second, you’ve got to keep them motivated!
When we say “giving your fundraisers the tools they need to succeed,” we’re not speaking figuratively. You should be literally equipping them with stuff like easily personalizable fundraising pages; pre-written email and social media templates; and logos, graphics, and other branded assets.
You can even send them a cheat sheet of fundraising strategies and storytelling tips to help them craft their appeals.
Equipping your fundraiser doesn’t stop once the campaign is launched, either. That’s because a successful P2P fundraiser isn’t a “set it and forget it” initiative—it requires active engagement and motivation.
Keep your fundraisers inspired with leaderboards and incentives like shoutouts, small gifts, or VIP event access to create some friendly competition. As the event progresses, send encouragement emails, celebrate milestones, and share updates about the impact their individual campaigns are making.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is more than just a great way to raise money (though it’s definitely still that). It’s also a really excellent method for generating excitement for your cause and expanding your nonprofit’s community of generosity.
If you’re considering a peer-to-peer campaign, then there are three things we have to recommend you do:
- Read through all our P2P guides, articles, and webinars
- Consider Neon Fundraise for your platform
- Download our free Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Toolkit
Got all that? Let’s take them one at a time. First, here’s a roundup of all our peer-to-peer guides, articles, webinars, and templates.
Why Neon Fundraise Is Your P2P Solution
Choosing the right P2P platform can be quite literally a make-or-break decision. It might mean the difference between a fundraiser that smashes its goal and leaves your supporters buzzing and a failed campaign that doesn’t even make a stink, it doesn’t leave any trace at all.
That’s why, when it comes to all the ins and outs of launching and sustaining a peer-to-peer campaign, Neon Fundraise is the platform you want—because it does everything you need.
With Neon Fundraise, you can easily spin up individual fundraiser pages, create a seamless experience for your donors, gamify the event for your participants, dig into the data for strategic insights, and so much more.
Now, granted, Neon Fundraise is part of the Neon One platform, so you could say that we’re a little tiny bit biased. Don’t just take our word for it. See for yourself!
Hit the button below for a simple, self-guided tour that takes you through how Neon Fundraise and Neon CRM work together to create the ultimate peer-to-peer fundraising powerhouse.
Peer-to-Peer Participant Toolkit
Want to give your participating P2P fundraisers a leg up? This toolkit has everything they need to launch and sustain their own campaigns!
Our Peer-to-Peer Participant Toolkit includes:
P2P Fundraising Email Templates
P2P Fundraising Campaign Planning Worksheet
P2P Fundraising Social Media Templates
Download your free toolkit today and start turning your supporters into fundraising champions!
Secure Event Sponsors and/or In-Kind Donations
Alright, you’re back on pace, and—look at that!—you’re past the halfway mark! Granted, keeping up your pace is a struggle, but you know the hardest part is yet to come.
Getting a corporate sponsor for your fundraising event means finding a for-profit business that is willing to donate money or in-kind goods and services in return for their support being highlighted on your event materials. Securing a sponsor will lower your total event cost, increasing the likelihood that your fundraiser is a success.
When scouting out corporate sponsorships for your nonprofit, start with businesses with whom your board members have personal or professional connections. Those relationships will be important in building a connection to your organization’s work.
When talking to a business, be sure to tailor your pitch to their needs and interests while also being clear about your organization’s needs.
If your event needs food sponsors, for example, approach a small local bakery that could donate tasty desserts for your event. Meanwhile, when you approach the local branch of a multinational corporation for a cash donation, talk about all the ways that you’ll highlight their sponsorship both at the event and in the community at large.
Even better, for companies that want to give directly, create a corporate sponsorship ticket level for your event to make the process even easier for any interested businesses. With this level, you can add perks like a certain number of attendees, signage at the event, merch, raffle entries, and maybe even some extra drink tickets.
If your event is a silent auction, getting in-kind donations from local businesses will be a vital part of your event’s success.
When pitching them, think about these items or experiences the same way you would a more straightforward sponsorship. The more you can demonstrate (with data!) the reputational benefits of working with your organization, the better!
Set Up Ticketing & Registration
Hills. Why did it have to be hills? Thank god you splurged on those good running shoes, otherwise this (all things considered, very gentle) incline might be too much.
Choosing an inefficient ticketing solution could really doom your event before it gets started. While your dedicated supporters will muscle through a confusing, laggy registration process, your more marginal supporters and brand-new prospects will likely get frustrated and click away.
Many nonprofit fundraisers have different tiers of tickets that come with different perks or levels of access depending on price. Set those tiers and create descriptions so people know exactly what they’re purchasing.
Make sure you also decide on any discount codes before you start setting up your system.
Once you have your ticket price tiers in place, you’ll need to create registration forms that can be shared in your own marketing and by your supporters, too.
While you’ll want general forms, you can also create customized forms with different messaging or images for certain segments of your audience.
Even if your event doesn’t have paid attendance, ticketing will allow you to collect information from your attendees. That’s valuable data!
The ideal ticketing platform will allow for automatic syncing with your donor database and existing user accounts.
Market Your Fundraiser
You’re in the final third! Time to push! Give it everything you’ve got! It might feel like you have nothing left in the tank, but you’re not gonna stop moving long enough to find out.
Marketing your event means more than just informing people about it. It means getting them excited about it. Here are some ways you can market your event and build anticipation about it using established communications channels.
Common Event Communications Channels
This channel works best for your existing supporters. It’s the nonprofit equivalent of “turning out your base.” Create an email campaign—or even better, multiple campaigns that target different audience segments—highlighting what your event has in store, why people should attend, and how they can help spread the word.
Social Media
Don’t just post about your event. Tell a story. Better yet, use social media to highlight the behind-the-scenes work that goes into your event. Make your team the stars! Those sorts of posts will be a great supplement to your more traditional channels and play to the strengths of social platforms by highlighting individual people.
Direct Mail
Direct Mail is very expensive, but it can also provide a great ROI. Be targeted with your direct mail, but don’t be stingy. If you’re sending out an official event invite, take the time to do it right and spend the extra money on fancy paper. And make sure you include a way to register, like a QR code that takes people directly to your page where someone can buy tickets.
Here’s How QR Codes Work in Neon CRM
Local Press
While earning actual press coverage for a nonprofit event is always a crapshoot, sending out a press release (and posting it on your website) is still a good way to spread the word. When crafting a press release, think like a journalist: What makes your event notable or unique in a way that their readers or listeners would want to hear more about?
Nonprofit Public Relations Strategies That Build Trust and Credibility
Posters
Posters and flyers are an old standby, but they come with some serious downsides. First, putting them up takes a lot of time. Second, a nice poster is expensive to print. If you’re going to make a poster, make sure it’s a poster that excites people instead of just informing them. Look for local graphic designers who might be willing to donate (or at least discount) their services.
Marketing for nonprofits is both an art and a science. It means pairing your skills as a copywriter and graphic designer with tried-and-true best practices and a data-backed understanding of your organization’s specific audiences.
See Our Easy-to-Use Email Builder in Action!
Need some help with your event marketing strategy? Neon CRM’s built-in email tool has you covered. Take this simple, self-guided tour to see how it all works!
Recruit & Train Volunteer Event Staff
Running. Whoever thought this up in the first place? They should be punished. Running is awful. The worst. You’re never doing this again. Ever.
Any event, large or small, is going to need volunteers to staff it. Most nonprofits have a core of regular volunteers they can draw from, but, depending on the event, you might need to recruit some brand-new volunteers from your larger network.
Once you’ve secured your volunteer staff, you need to make sure you train them well and give them all the tools they need to succeed. Otherwise, neither you, your volunteers, or your attendees will enjoy the event.
Here are some best practices you can follow when finding and training volunteers for your event.
Make Expectations Clear
There will likely be different roles for volunteers to fill. For each role, create a comprehensive list of responsibilities so staffers know exactly what’s expected of them. If people understand what they’re signing up for, they’re less likely to back out later.
Make The Benefits Clear, Too
| Volunteers usually aren’t approaching their work with a “what’s in it for me?” attitude, but you can still highlight the perks and benefits of volunteering for this event, like free food and drinks, the chance to enjoy live music, etc. If your nonprofit has merch, a free t-shirt or hoodie makes for a great event uniform and a great thank-you gift. |
Create Customized Sign-Up Forms
Don’t just send interested or new volunteers to your general website sign-up form. Create a volunteer form that is specific to your event. This will help people feel certain in their decision to volunteer for you; they’ll know that their application is being assigned to this specific event instead of falling into some general inbox.
For Neon CRM Users
Did you know that you can assign volunteer opportunities to specific events? That way, when someone applies for a role staffing your event, their application will be automatically associated with that project in your CRM.
Tap Everyone’s Personal Networks
Don’t just tell supporters to ask their friends, family members, and colleagues if they’d like to volunteer without putting some thought and resources behind it. Put together a few resources that lay out your organization’s mission, the volunteer staff roles and responsibilities, the perks of volunteering, and links to your customized volunteer forms.
Create Training Documents
Invest the time and the effort to train your volunteers properly. It’ll save you a thousand headaches on the day of the event. The most efficient way to train volunteers is to train one experienced volunteer and have them train the rest, but be sure to also create training materials that all your staffers can refer to both before and during the event.
Keep Them in the Loop
Your volunteer staffers will play an important role in helping your event succeed. Treat them like they’re important! Send them regular updates and reminders that express your excitement for the big day and your gratitude for their contributions. Overcommunicating here has way fewer downsides than undercommunicating.
When you’re keeping a tight watch on your event expenses, it can be easy to let your volunteers slip through the cracks—after all, they aren’t costing you a thing! But overlooked and underappreciated volunteers are a recipe for a poorly run event.
Take care of your volunteers, and they’ll take care of your event. It’s that simple!
Hold Your Fundraiser
There it is! The finish line is in sight! You can hear the crowd cheering! You turn on jets and book it. Everything you have, nothing left. You got this.
It’s the big day! This is where all your careful planning is going to pay off. Between all the great sponsors, the oodles of tickets you’ve sold, and your enthusiastic, well-equipped volunteers, you’ve got all your bases covered. But maybe the best part of a well-planned event is the fact that you, the planner, will actually get to enjoy it.
Of course, there are still things you’ll need to keep an eye on at your event. Even if your event is well-planned, you’ll probably still be managing behind-the-scenes tasks while mingling with your guests until the very last chair is folded and put away.
Still, there are steps you can take to help your event go smoothly. Setting aside the risks of literal acts of God, here are a few steps you can take to ensure your nonprofit’s big night goes off without a hitch.
Create a “Run of Show” Document
A Run of Show is like a play-by-play that takes every individual element of the event and specifies when and where it’s supposed to happen—plus who’s in charge of making sure that it does. By creating a Run of Show document and distributing it to all your staffers, you’ll be able to rest assured that people have your event plan within easy reach. When something goes wrong, people will be able to identify the problem quickly and find a solution. In fact, you should encourage your lead staffers to use the Run of Show to identify any issues before they happen.
Communicate Often and On Schedule
Create a check-in and communication schedule for all your lead staffers. Every hour or half hour, a few of your team members can check in with your different event staffers to make sure everything is going according to plan. This empowers staff members to solve small issues independently while allowing you to keep a close eye on the bigger picture. For larger issues, make sure that your run of show documents includes listings for which staffers own what elements of the event. That way, someone can easily locate them and determine next steps. The great thing about scheduling your check-ins is that you can keep a close eye on how the event is going without having to dash madly about talking to every individual staff member or volunteer.
Event check-in in Neon CRM is a snap!
Collect Information
If people have bought tickets ahead of time to your event, you’ll already have their details stored safely in your database. But if you’re still selling tickets on the day of the event, make sure you’re collecting information from people who are attending. Of course, you also want to collect that data ethically. No one likes to be added to an email list without their knowledge. Using your POS system, give people the option to sign up for your nonprofit’s newsletter or other email communications. You can also add physical sign-up sheets around the event if people feel inspired in the moment to keep in touch.
Have Fun
We’re serious. Not only do you deserve to have a good time after all your hard work planning this event, but it’ll help your organization. If you are able to greet, mingle, and charm your attendees, that will do a lot more to help your nonprofit’s reputation—and possibly bring in more future donors—than you would as a living ball of stress. So when we say, have fun, that’s not a suggestion. It’s an order!
After the Event, Follow Up
You’re walking like a baby giraffe on ice skates, but you feel like your legs will fall off if you stop moving. You walk in circles for a while, delirious, wondering when the next race is.
You did it! Your guests have gone home, your decorations have been taken down, and your fundraising goal has been achieved.
That’s the end of your event planning to-do list, right?
Not quite yet.
After your event, there are still several best practices you’ll want to follow to make sure that your attendees stay engaged with your organization beyond this one-time event.
Say “Thank You”
Thank everyone who was involved with this event. Of course, that means sending a thank-you note to your attendees, but make sure you thank your volunteers and sponsors as well! For most attendees, a heartfelt thank-you email will suffice. But, for sponsors and major donors, a handwritten thank-you note or even a phone call from a board member will be a welcome personal touch—one that may pay off down the line.
Share Your Wins
Did your nonprofit meet your fundraising goal for the event? Did you have a record number of attendees? Let people know! You should include this information in your thank-you message, but you can also share it on social media or in a blog post on your nonprofit’s website. When your organization has a win, don’t be shy! But when describing the impact of your event, tell the story of how it positively changed the life of one person. Studies on the psychology of fundraising find that people are more likely to be motivated by helping an individual person than by helping many.
Take a Psychological Approach to Fundraising With These 5 Tips
Ask for a Favor
The Benjamin Franklin effect is this odd little psychological phenomenon wherein people are more likely to feel positively towards you if they’ve already done you a favor. When following up after an event, you don’t want to ask people for more money after they’ve already contributed to your organization (seriously, don’t do this), but you can ask them for a small favor like filling out a survey or sharing your event recap post on social media. This will strengthen their warm and fuzzy feelings towards your nonprofit.
The Best Event Survey Questions for Nonprofits (+ 60 Examples)
When you’re managing your event in Neon CRM, post-event follow-up is a breeze.
Data on event attendees will automatically sync with your database, allowing you to easily track and segment your attendees and create customized follow-up campaigns.
Use This Checklist For Your Next Fundraising Event!
Event planning for nonprofits is all about nailing the little details. You’re not going to have the same resources to throw at an event that a large corporation would, but you can make up for it with a close attention to detail at all steps of the process.
Follow the best practices laid out in this article—from putting together your events team and setting your budget to creating a timeline and a failsafe training program for your volunteers—and your nonprofit’s next event will be sure to have people buzzing.
If you want to put on the best fundraiser possible—and who doesn’t—you should use our Fundraising Event Planning checklist! It not only comes with all the steps you need to throw an awesome fundraiser, but it also lets you check the first item—-download event planning checklist—off your checklist.