Splitting Your Event + Tailoring It to Your Audience
More isn’t always more. More guests don’t automatically increase your fundraising potential. Having the right people in the room is what does. You want your biggest supporters who will help you create momentum in the room to motivate even more people to give. The best events are full of engaged supporters that want to be a part of your fundraising success.
A great example of this was Start Making a Reader Today’s 25th Anniversary Gala held this spring. SMART has a long and very deep presence in Oregon and over its history has engaged a huge number of volunteer readers and donors. But when they looked at the numbers, having more people at their event year after year didn’t necessarily mean that they got more donors.
So they sectioned out their audience to play to their strengths. They split their event and held a fundraising dinner where the auction and appeal took place and then threw a ball in another part of the venue for the rest of their supporters and volunteers that the guests of the dinner folded into.
SMART scaled back the number of attendees in the dinner and dressed up the event to celebrate 25 successful years. They celebrated key volunteers, leaders and donors, and made them feel great about the work that they do. And they grounded the program in the work they do to make books and reading available to all children.
In celebration of their anniversary they published a collection of 25 children’s stories from Oregon authors and illustrators and had a child read one of the stories from the stage.
The dinner then built into a live auction and successful appeal.
They then transitioned into the Alphabet Ball to continue the celebration with a larger crowd of supporters. The event had appetizers, drinks, a great cover band and a limited program celebrating SMART’s lifetime volunteers. The strategy was to celebrate engagement and utilize a few activities, like an A to Z silent auction celebrating reading, to raise some funds.
But really the celebration was in the dancing to the great cover band.
Splitting the event for the two different audiences they already had, enabled them to engage everyone. They raised more money and elevated the overall guest experience.
photos by Brit Forbes
