The Event Fundraising Blueprint: What Every Nonprofit Needs to Know
by Laurie Hochman | | Strategy | 0 comments
min to read ✭
There are a lot of tools out there that claim to be able to help you support your organization’s mission and put on successful events. When you’re stressed about putting on a fundraiser, you want tried and true tips plus trusted tools at hand to help you keep things running smoothly. Thankfully, partners like Auctria and Community Boost are here to help!
Organizations use Auctria to plan and run event and auction fundraisers; they’ve raised over 1 Billion with our fundraiser software. We also love sharing the tips and tricks other organizations have used to put on successful fundraiser events! These tips will help streamline your planning process, keeping you focused on the most important parts:
- Filling Seats
- Filling Sponsorships
- Filling Hearts
This might sound deceptively simple, but we’ve found that focusing on these three pillars are an easy path to success.
Fill Your Seats
An organized auction is a successful auction! Investing extra time in your planning and preparation will help your event go off without a hitch and ensure your participant’s enjoyment. If you have an event like a gala, silent auction, or live auction, follow this auction planning timeline from Auctria. If your auction is online only, check out this online auction planning timeline. We can’t know every detail of what your auction needs but we hope these guidelines will help you start on the right foot towards a successful auction with careful planning and preparation.
Once you’ve got your timeline worked out, it’s time to make sure people actually show up! Here’s a few tools to help fill those seats and keep your event running smoothly:
- Create a custom website for your event. This website should be linked to your main website for easy access but having a second, event-specific site gives you greater control over adding helpful tools like bidding automation, selling tickets, hosting online raffles, collecting donation payments, and more. This ensures potential attendees can find all the information they need in one place!
- Sell tickets through your website. This allows you to easily track inventory and alert potential attendees when tickets are running low. You can also use smart ticketing: smart ticketing makes it easy to offer versatile ticketing options, keeps payment transactions secure, and gives you real-time sales data. Attendees can even add their tickets to their Apple or Google wallets for the ultimate convenience.
- Use a mobile admin app. This allows you to quickly check in attendees, scan e-ticket QR codes, put cards on file, process payments, and more. You could also use a bidding app to support fast, easy bidding during your event.
- Add a raffle or other benefits! There’s a lot of ways to add extra excitement to an auction event – raffles are one of our favorites because of how successful they typically are. Additional monetizers including merchandise and sponsorship sales are also a great way to increase your overall revenue. Every dollar counts when you’re putting on a successful fundraiser!
A happy attendee is an attendee more likely to pull out their wallet – or be a little looser with the purse strings than they originally planned. On the other hand, an unhappy attendee might lose trust in your organization, potentially causing you to lose a supporter.
Transparency is key when selling seats. Always make sure to clearly communicate the cost of the ticket, what proceeds from the event will be used for, and any fees or additional costs associated with the event or donations. Your attendees will appreciate you being up front with them instead of hitting them with guilt-tripping tips or hidden fees later, which builds trust with your organization!
Trust is one of our biggest currencies with our supporters – with trust, we turn one-off donors into long-time supporters.
Showing where funds have gone and what your organization has achieved with those funds shows your donors that the money they give you is truly going towards what they care about. Pointing to the tangible outcomes of your fundraising also shows sponsors that the event is worth partnering with, as well as giving both sponsors and donors a specific outcome to tell non-attendees about in between events (never underestimate the power of word of mouth!).
Fill Your Sponsorships
You can’t run an auction without participants! To attract bidders, you need to make your event irresistible. Choosing a reasonable ticket price, inviting interesting keynote speakers, and advertising your event on social media can all help fill seats at your event; however, one of the most reliable ways to ensure you sell tickets and raise money is by choosing items for participants to bid on that they’ll be interested in! Pick your donor businesses, retailers and service providers carefully – if you have good sponsors, your participants will be much more excited and willing to bid on items during the auction.
Clear, effective auction item donation request letters are essential for planning a successful auction event. Auction donation request letters are sent out when you need items or services rather than direct monetary contributions, such as when you’re looking for fundraising event auction items. These letters will be your organization’s first introduction to potential partners. They will outline that you’re holding an event to raise money and awareness for your mission, that you need auction items to be donated, and what recognition and visibility donating to the event will afford donors.
If you’re still nervous about reaching out to potential donors, you should check out this blog about requesting auction donations! Navigating sending procurement letters and requesting donations can be intimidating, but we want to take the anxiety out of the process for you.
- If you’re looking for locally-based requests, then you can take a face-to-face approach. Reach out to retailers and vendors that you’ve worked with before – they’ll be more likely to help out since you already have a relationship with them.
- If you’re reaching out to corporate sponsors, you’ll need to be more formal. Make sure to give these requests more lead time than you would for local requests.
Fill Their Hearts
So you’ve made your plans, your team is organized, you’ve sent your procurement letters and collected the items for bidding – now it’s time to seal the deal!
People don’t donate out of the blue. They donate because they’ve learned about an organization that’s focused on a cause they care about and they feel that donating to the organization will make a difference.
- What makes your organization tick?
- What’s the heart and soul of why you do this work?
- What’s the change you want to see in the world?
- What are the tangible outcomes of the money you raise?
If you have video footage or stories from people your organization has helped, use them. If you have data about the work you’ve done (number of houses built, books donated, meals funded), share it. From there, you’ll need to craft a compelling narrative using the data and stories you have.
Here’s one basic framework you can use:
- Present the problem with a focus on an emotional plea
- Present your organization and its work as the solution
- Show data or stories that demonstrate the way your organization has made a difference
Get comfortable telling this story over and over again. It should be on your social media, on your website, and woven into your event. You want to use this story in many forms to attract volunteers, attendees, and sponsorships before your event. Then, you need to also be able to use this story to convince them to donate once they attend the event!
It doesn’t have to be complicated – in fact, keeping things as simple and clear as possible is better. Just be honest about why your organization does the work they do. A genuine, heartfelt explanation is likely to resonate with your attendees, especially since they’ve already indicated an interest in your mission by coming to your event. You just need to push them over that finish line to get that donation.
Event fundraisers typically grow each year; all you have to do is get the ball rolling. Every dollar you raise is another dollar that goes towards the cause you care about. With each event, you’ll continue to streamline your process and raise more money so you can make a bigger difference for the causes you’re passionate about. We hope these tips and resources help you kickstart your journey!
Want to learn more tips on how to run a successful fundraising event? Check out our webinars (they’re always free to attend!).
Special thanks to Laurie Hochman from Auctria for the expert advice.
Auctria is a powerful engine to organize and run your event and auction fundraiser. From in person events to online and from the first donation to the final collection, Auctria helps you stay on top of the details so you can focus on maximizing your fundraising. Since 2011, over 50,000 event fundraisers have used Auctria to raise over one-billion dollars.
