If you are familiar with fundraising events then you just might stop to agree with me that they can be really interesting and fun. However, truth is that they can sometimes be a big task as a lot of things have got to be put in place just to make sure that all goes well and that it comes out a success.
Fund raising events didn’t just start today, as they have existed for long. In fact, fundraising events are organized all over the world for different reasons, and so it is needful that you know what and why you have decided to organize a fundraising event. This is so that you attract the right kind of volunteer donors that may be worth your while.
What is a Fundraising Event? A fundraising event is an event that is organized to raise money for a project or a charity. For a fundraising event to be successful you have to plan and you must be deliberate about making your fundraising event a success. There are a lot of things that must be considered and there are also thing that must be put in place to get things underway.
Normally, there are fundraising companies who are specialized in helping individuals and organizations raise funds for their projects at a fee or on a commission basis. This doesn’t mean that an individual couldn’t possibly plan a successful fundraising event. However, it only means that that individual must garner the right kind of information to do really well.
What are these successful fund raising tips all about, you just might ask? If you have been tinkering with organizing a successful fundraising event for whatever reason you must have deemed fit, then you just may want to consider some of the following tips in this article.
Adhering to the followings tips means that you would be on your way to organizing a most successful event. Well, here are sure fire tips to be considered when looking to organize a successful Fundraising event and getting donor money.
How to Organize a Successful Fundraising Event for an NGO
1. Choose Your Audience
For you to have a successful fundraising event you have to know who your audience are. Knowing your audience will make other aspects of planning for a fundraising event easier. For instance; your audience might be Students, CEOs of Organizations, Entrepreneurs or Business owners.
For example; if your fundraising event is to raise money to help younger entrepreneurs start their business, then Business owners and CEOs would be the best audience that will respond better to the fundraising event. What’s more, if you the essence of raising fund is to finance a community project, then you might get the whole residence of the community involved.
Although you just might know some things about fundraising events, but if you must organize successful fundraising events, then you may want to consider doing some study on fundraising events. Make the internet your friend and you would be able to garner a lot of information that would be of use to you and your team. You may also consider asking those who have organized any in the past so that you can take one or two cues from what they have done. Here is a sample non-profit business plan template you can use for FREE.
3. Choose an Event
Part of the routine for planning for a fundraising event is that you have to choose an event that will be the major point of attraction. Some events you can adopt for your fundraising program are: carwash event, baking sales bay and an auction event. There are many other events you can adopt for your fundraising, but the most popular event that fundraisers adopt is auction. In an auction event for fund raising, valuable items are purchased, and guests bid for the items during the items. The highest bidder goes home with each item; the money realised from the auction is channeled to the required project.
4. Get a Team
You couldn’t possibly organize a fundraising even all by yourself without a team. So therefore, you must carefully select those who have bought into the vision of that which you want to do. There would be an avalanche of volunteers who would be willing to go the whole nine yards with you. You must be very sensitive to be able to identify these kinds of people.
5. Define the Purpose of Event
This is one of the very first determiners you must put in place as you think to organize a fundraising event. This means that you must first ask what the purpose of this fundraising event is all about. Determine whether it is just a fundraiser or if there are other reasons to which you want to gather guests for this event. In most cases for example with charitable organizations, the aim of the fundraiser might be beyond the original intent. It may be to better known by the public and what have you.
6. Be Sure What the Goal Is
You, as well as the committee involved in organizing this fund raising event must decide on the goal of the event. If the goal is solely to raise money, then you must know the amount you aim to realize. Be sure to know that the money with which you planned the event with would be deducted from the total money that may be realized.
In order to organize a successful fundraising event, you must draw up your budget – financial estimate. After you choose an event for the fundraising, you need to work out a financial estimate of how much it will take to run the event. If you are going to run a car wash event, you have to consider how much it will cost to lease a large car wash for the period of the event and purchase equipments that will be used to wash the cars of all your guests that will attend the event. Even if you choose auction as your key attraction, you would still need to lease a venue for the event, pay for decoration for the venue and also purchase items that will be auctioned in the event.
Events like fundraisers are synonymous with the budget being drawn. Therefore, it is very needful that you and your team draw up your budget. Things to be included in the budget include the following; employees, the cost of invitations, space to be rented for event, catering, entertainment, transportation, security, utilities, and other unforeseen bills that might be required to make the event a success. However, you must bear in mind that whatever you plan to raise must be more than the budget so that you do not run at a loss.
8. Consider Those to be On the front burner
As with many fundraising events, you must be able to determine those who would be the leaders of the events. This may include the following; the host committee, as well as the chairpersons. You must bear in mind that these people comprise of local celebrities, wealthy donors as well as business leaders. These set of people to a very large extent determines the success level of the fundraising event.
9. Draw up a Program
It is very expedient that you draw up before hand the program as to how the event would go on the D-day. Consider determining things like; where would the event hold, what would the duration of event be, would you be catering for the people, would there be entertainment, what kind of decoration would be needed, as well as the dress code for the event.
10. Pick a Date and Time
The next important step is to pick a date and time for the event. You have to choose a date that will suit your audience. If your audience are workers or CEOs, then weekend preferably a Saturday will be the best day to hold the event. Time is also important, so ensure that you fix the event at an appropriate day of the month and also a convenient time. The perfect time for fixing a fundraising event is in the afternoon from 2.00PM and the ideal day will be a weekend towards the end of the month.
11. Pick a Venue-: You have to pick a venue within the environment that will be a driving distance to your guests since it is a few hours event; most people won’t want to drive a long distance just for the sake of attending a fundraising event.
Advertising isn’t only limited to products and services, it also applies to your fundraising event. This means that you must be ready to go all out to market your event; and a good way to start is to draw up your marketing methods. This is why we provided a sample non-profit marketing plan template to help you get started.
The next step is to print and send out invitations to your guest, since you know your targeted audience. This makes it easier for you to invite them. Make a list of all potential guests and mail a copy of your invitation to them.
Note that you should send out the invitations well ahead of the time to give your guests time to clear their schedule for the day and also to make financial preparations for the event. Don’t limit your I.Vs to those on your list, you can spread your tentacles, and invite other people to the event.
You may want to consider the good old word of mouth mode of advertisement where you are able to convince your audience that the event would be worth their time and money. You can also consider any of these; mailed invitations, direct phone calls and direct mailing system.
You do not want the day of the event to come and then your guests’ leave disappointed and feeling they wasted their time and resources. You must therefore give room for you and your team to practice. In order to make sure that things run smoothly, then you and your team must make out time to go to the events venue and put things in place.
14. On the Day of the Event
You have to make the event very lively and fun filled to achieve the aim for the day; one way to light up the whole event is to get a Lively M C. The M C is the event coordinator and so a lively M C will make the fundraising event very lively. If you can get an M C with a touch of humour- that is a stand up comedian, it will add more colour to the event. Secondly, you can add some refreshments as part of the event. Finger food and drinks and a photo booth can serve this purpose.
15. Reminder
Don’t allow your guests to get so carried away with the fun that they forget the purpose of the event; you should have a menu for all activities that will take place during the event. Try to map out enough time to go into the main aim of the gathering which is fundraising. Tell your guests the details of the project, and also what they stand to achieve by sponsoring the event. if it is a fundraising to sponsor a Food Pantry project for instance, let them know that every dime that will be raised in the event will be used to set up a Food pantry that will feed thousands of hungry people around the world.
16. Collect Donations
Most people will come with the money for their donations to the event, whilst others may decide to issue checks or make pledges. You have to organise workers with high integrity to help in getting together the money being donated in the course of the event.
17. Vote of Thanks-: You have to close the event with a big vote of thanks to your guest because they valued your project enough to make out time to come, and even contribute their hard earned money towards your project. Be sure to thank them immensely.
18. Do Not Forget to Say Thank you
After the fundraising event might have come and gone, do not forget to appreciate those who made it a huge success. Much more than your team who worked tirelessly to make it a success, you must also be sure to thank all the volunteer donors who put smile on your face. You may consider thank you cards, direct mails, as well as phone calls to show appreciation for what has been realized.
Remember that the key to succeeding at your fundraising event is that you must take the following tips given above really seriously. This is because those who have done so have really had success stories to tell.
10 Superb Fundraising Event Ideas for Non-Profit Organizations
There are times when money becomes scarce and non for profit organizations begin to run helter and skelter looking to raise money since they need it to help bolster the day to day activities of the organization. However, the truth is that there are times when one runs out of ideas and it is fact that these ideas are what makes a fundraising event unique in itself.
For this reason, it becomes very important that one is creative in all ramifications, as it is the creativity that one brings to the table that would help fundraising ideas pop up. If you have tried all the ideas you possibly could come up with and you think that you are running out of ideas, and then you just might look to taking the tips to be provided in this read really seriously.
Here are 10 fundraising event ideas that have worked for some other non -profit organizations that might help you in raising plenty of resources that you thought weren’t just possible to raise. Below are the very creative fundraising events ideas
a. Consider the Minor Donor Groups
The minor donor groups are a lot different from the major donor groups. This is because the major donor groups targets a section of people who can give on a big level. For instance: the major donor groups target those who give on a small scale. Whilst, some non-governmental organizations may neglect this section of people, it however very advisable that you consider these small givers as you wouldn’t be losing out on any front when you do this.
One way to also do this is to have these givers give consistently on a lower level. Furthermore, you can give this group a name so that they have some sense of belonging and you may decide to schedule meetings for the group. This might be monthly, quarterly and what have you.
b. The Affinity Fundraising
This has to do with a situation where you have a network or a group of people who believes in your vision, whose sole responsibility is to help you raise funds from different people as well as individuals. You may consider making it a professional group, like where you have a group of lawyers raising funds on your behalf, or doctors, housewives and what have you.
c. Consider Super events
What could super events mean, since you already are organizing events? Well, super events as the name indicates refers to a simultaneous train of fundraising events that goes on at the same time where you have hosts who would raise funds on your behalf. This means that if one event is able to raise 4-000 dollars for example and the others say like 9 does same, then you are on your way to gathering many funds. Therefore, it is important that you have very strong supporters to adopt this fundraising idea.
d. Get People to Donate
Here what happens is that you may decide to have people donate food as well as entertainment just so that the event is a lively one. After these has been done, then you may put out an announcement stating that you are having a party and that so and so amount of money would be charges as the gate fee. You would be amazed at the amount of money that would be realized when this is done.
e. Organize a Spelling Competition
There are several ways you could raise funds by organizing a spelling competition. How this would be done, you just might ask? Let each contestant collect donations for the number of words they are able to spell correctly, when this is done and after the spelling contest is finished, then the overall top winners can then receive the donated prizes. This is one way funds can be realized for a non- government organization like yours.
f. Do the Strike Gold
This fundraising just as the name suggests has to do with gold. Here, participants are asked to get family and friends to donate old jewelry they no longer wear, as well as turn the gold in for cash. What this mean is that since gold is an essential commodity that yields money, you can be sure that some goods funds would be raised when this idea is adopted.
g. Raffle Tickets
One way you may also want to consider as a quick way to make money for your nongovernmental organization is when you sell raffle tickets. How does this work? Sell Raffle tickets Sell raffle tickets and offer half of the proceeds as prizes. Some nongovernmental organizations are adopting this means and so you too must too as you definitely would make good money.
h. Hold Auctions
Ask people to donate some products as well as household goods that may be of need by people and have them auctioned. Auctions are a very good way of raising funds as you would find that there are loads of people who might be interested in this. Send letters as well as invitations to people and you would be amazed at the number of people who show up.
i. Sell Meals
This simply means that you would get volunteers together who are willing to cook good meals in their houses and donate them to be sold. Since, people really love to eat good meals; you cannot underestimate the number of folks who might turn up to buy these meals when they are ready to be sold to the communities in the neighborhood.
So, when you just can’t find a reason to organize a fundraising event, then you can be sure to make headway with some of the ideas earlier.