Going Virtual With Your Fundraising Event

UPDATE: Get our COVID-19 fundraising event toolkit HERE

We can help you transform your in-person celebration into a virtual event. The benefit is that you might be able to hit a bigger audience. The downside is that you may not see the same financial return you had hoped for without the excitement of being live in the room. But going virtual still allows you to fundraise! Here are some virtual options for you to consider.

Online Auction

Host an online auction instead. If your procurement is done, upgrade to mobile bidding in your Greater Giving account. A promotional discount is being offered at this time and allows you to turn your event into an online campaign. Swaim Strategies can help you to make the switch, set up your auction packages and promote your campaign.

Virtual Event

You don’t have to stop with an online auction. You can actually hold a virtual event that allows people to log in, watch and participate. A virtual event will allow you to share your program, fulfill your sponsorship benefits and raise money during the broadcast by doing an appeal. We recommend tying your online auction into the virtual event but announcing the closing during the event.

Here are some key recommendations for your virtual event:

• Keep it to 30 minutes or less.
• Ask a few people to join you as a live studio audience.
• Run a social media challenge during the event to encourage people to share out photos and social media to spread the word.
• Use mobile bidding via Greater Giving for bidding and donating.
• Promote your auction packages and close your auction during the virtual event.
• Include your speakers and video content.
• Do an appeal and drive people to a donate button.
• Consider creative ways to still engage your vendors. Can table hosts gather small house viewing parties with catering being delivered to them? Can you photograph the live feed for a look behind the scenes?

Here are some learnings from other virtual galas:

• Communicate to guests, sponsors and donors quickly. Make the decision to go online and let everyone know immediately. Guests are expecting you to cancel and you want to leverage this moment to capture their interest and attention to log in and go virtual.
• Plan content that inspires. You thought your gala guests were noisy before. Imagine now when they’re at home doing other things while tuning into your event. You will want content that is short, concise and captures their attention. Don’t just replicate your gala on screen. Condense your gala to the following 30-minute format:
  • Pre-Cast: This is how to register as a bidder
  • Go Live: Welcome and introduce incentive to register as a bidder
  • Promotion for online auction, begin bidding
  • Organizational video
  • Organizational speaker
  • Continued promotion for online auction, check in on bids
  • Appeal video
  • Ask
  • Donate now, accompany with a push via text to donate now
  • Use the appeal board to recognize gifts as they come in
  • Entertainment / honoree
  • Close the auction

• Make your stream accessible to everyone so that you can increase your audience.
• Test all of your technology before you go live.
• Use a host that can keep the energy up, continue to promote the online activity and create content in the moment to celebrate bidding.
• Have fun, you’re exploring a whole new world so share that story with donors so that they connect with you in this new effort.
• Finally, ask a sponsor if you can repurpose their funds into a matching challenge that can inspire mid-level online giving to stretch—challenge at the $500 level is ideal.

A Virtual Team

Effectively raising money through a virtual event will require communication, producing a mobile giving switchover on Greater Giving, an auctioneer host and powerful, concise content. Here are the critical resources we can provide:

• Data Team: Our data team can set up your mobile giving platform on Greater Giving, can prep all of your packages to go online, can source photos for every package and can support data tracking and registration support during the virtual event.
• Content Team: We will reshape your 3.5-hour event into a powerful 30-minute virtual event.
• Communications Team: We will craft all of your communications to attendees and sponsors plus create email, website and social media content for you to market to a broader audience.
• Production Team: Come to our studio or we’ll come to your event venue to film and host your virtual event. We will create overlay tools for you to promote your sponsors, market your auction and track your giving. Additionally, we can use created content such as videos for your live feed.
• Pre-Virtual Event Production: Are you interested in capturing a few speakers such as sponsors or honorees to include in your virtual feed? We can pre-film them at their own convenience in our studio and build them into your virtual feed.
• Host / Auctioneer Team: This is going to require someone who is fast on their feet, can promote a lot of content in a short period of time and can be engaging. We can provide you a virtual event host that can support your content and your fundraising.

If you’re still trying to figure out your options, we have a free webinar in which we have covered all of these variables and demo a virtual event for you.

Watch the Webinar: The Show Must Go On—Fundraising Despite the Odds

We have assembled a team ready to help you flip your event to a virtual event or to answer questions. Contact Samantha Swaim at Swaim Strategies to engage a virtual team. She can be reached at 503-234-4546 or sam@swaimstrategies.com.