Hosting a fundraising event can be fun, rewarding, and a great way to bring in revenue for your organization. Fundraising events can also be harder to pull off than most people anticipate. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case for you.
Successful fundraising events require careful planning, marketing, and tools that make it easy for attendees to participate and help your organization meet its targets.
At Bid Beacon, we’ve been helping organizations host successful fundraising events for years and have learned a few things to simplify the process. Follow these 10 steps for planning a successful fundraising event to make life a lot easier and meet your organization’s goals.
1. Define Your Goals
For most fundraising events, the goal isn’t as simple as just raising as much money as possible. Of course, that would be great, but it isn’t necessarily the only goal that a fundraiser should seek to achieve.
Here are some goals your fundraising event may be looking to accomplish:
- Raising awareness and engagement: Fundraising events are great opportunities to engage with the public about your organization’s work. Raising awareness about that work is a great way of generating continued engagement with potential donors.
- Building relationships: Building a donor base is important for any non-profit, whether that’s a sports team, a charity, or a school. Fundraising events can be a great opportunity to make first contact with potential new donors and build long-lasting relationships.
- Realistic financial goals: It’s important for any fundraising event to have attainable goals when it comes to raising money. Determine how much money you are looking to raise. Communicating financial goals can drive donors to spend in an effort to help your organization reach them.
2. Identify Your Audience
Every fundraising event is different, and they are likely looking for different donors, too. Are you looking for big corporate donors? Maybe parents or alumni from a school. If a fundraising event is specific to a community, it will likely need to appeal to members of that community.
Identifying your audience is an important early step in a fundraising event, as it helps guide decision-making throughout the rest of the planning process.
3. Choose the Right Type of Event
Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to figure out what exactly your fundraising event is going to look like and how you will actually meet the goals you’ve set.
There are a couple of questions worth asking:
- What type of fundraiser is likely going to maximize participation? If you have information on past fundraising events and how much money they’ve raised, that can be a great guide for planning your next event.
- Will the event be in person, online, or a hybrid? We’ll get to how technology like Bid Beacon and Raffle Rocket makes it easier for attendees and donors, but utilizing online tools can be a great way of increasing participation at fundraising events. Even for in-person events like black-tie galas, having an online component can be a game-changer.
- Is your fundraising event hyper-local or appealing to people from different areas? This obviously impacts what type of fundraising event you host, as it can be beneficial to create opportunities for donors to participate in events from afar in many cases.
Types of Events
- Raffles: Whether it’s a 50/50 Draw, a non-cash prize draw, or a cash raffle, online raffles offer a low cost of entry and are easy to plan and participate in. They can easily be integrated into other fundraisers, and Raffle Rocket provides an all-in-one approach that makes hosting one simple.
- Silent Auctions: Silent auctions, meanwhile, can bring in high revenue, especially when they have high-value items included. They are easy to participate in and get the competitive juices flowing for participants. Bid Beacon’s platform makes hosting and bidding incredibly easy and straightforward.
4. Pick the Right Technology
Online tools like Bid Beacon and Raffle Rocket make hosting a fundraising event a lot easier than it used to be. They streamline event management, make it easy to add items, and even simplify the marketing process by sending out promotional materials through email while promoting your fundraising event on social media.
During the event, our online silent auction platform will even send real-time updates on the status of bids to people participating, which encourages them to open the app and bid more on items they really want.
Picking the right technology isn’t just about making it easier to organize your fundraising event, though. It actually has tangible, measurable impacts on how much money is raised. Bid Beacon’s users report an average increase of 25% in revenue from their online silent auctions.
5. Set a Budget
How much is your organization willing to spend on its fundraising event? This is an important question to ask, as the goal of your fundraising event is obviously to raise more money than it costs to host it. There may be limited resources—both financially and when it comes to time and people available.
It’s important to have a contingency fund available for unexpected costs, but depending on what type of fundraising event you’ve chosen to host, make sure to budget for:
- Venue rental
- Staff
- Marketing
- Catering
- Permits
6. Assemble a Team
Organizing a fundraising event is a lot of work, and more often than not, it’s too much for one person. Building a team that can help with various steps of the process is important, and it can rely both on volunteers and other members of your organization who want to devote some of their time toward putting on a successful fundraising event.
Splitting up the various duties is important, and the team should ensure that these areas are all covered:
- Pre-event planning: This covers many of the areas we’re going over in this blog, but it can help to have team members focused on booking a venue, hiring the right catering company, securing permits, or finding items that might go up for auction.
- Promoting the event: The right marketing will make people want to attend your fundraising event, so it’s important to have team members designing and distributing promotional material that appeals to your target audience.
- Coordinating volunteers: Volunteers are often an important part of any fundraising event and can help with everything from promotion to greeting guests at your event to selling raffle tickets.
There are lots of other areas where team members can help, including greeting guests when they arrive and the technical, behind-the-scenes work that goes into pulling off a successful fundraising event.
However, having a team in place with clear responsibilities is key to any successful event.
7. Select a Date & Venue
The right venue helps elevate your fundraising event and inform the direction your evening takes. But the date is no less important. Certain times of the year, like the holiday season, are already busy, and attracting guests and potential donors to your event can be hard.
Should your event be on a weekend? Does your preferred date conflict with any other major events on the calendar, whether that’s a big sporting event like the Super Bowl or a popular event in your community?
- Pick a date that’s far enough in advance for people to plan to attend.
- Even if your event is one-night-only, consider incorporating elements like a multi-day online silent auction. This allows bidding to start before or continue after the event, and might even allow people who can’t attend to place bids and help your organization meet its fundraising goals.
- If you’re looking for your event to become an annual event, consider what time of year is best for it to be hosted.
8. Market Your Fundraiser
Marketing and promotion are two of the most important parts of hosting a fundraising event, and they can be a huge factor in whether your organization meets its goals. In the simplest possible terms, you need people to know about your fundraising event—and you want them to be excited about it.
Emails and social media are easy and effective tools to contact people who might attend your fundraising event directly, while printed ads, direct mail with QR codes, websites, and even TV and radio appearances can all drive interest.
An online tool like Communibee, which integrates both Raffle Rocket and Bid Beacon, and acts as a community management suite, can help boost promotion and fundraising efforts.
9. The Final Touches
When the big day arrives, and it’s finally time to host your fundraising event, make sure that all the logistical details are accounted for. That includes:
- Seating arrangements are made
- Final communications have been completed
- Everyone understands their responsibilities
- Permits are in order
- Technical equipment is ready
10. Follow Up After the Event
Once the event is concluded, the work isn’t over just yet.
It’s vital to ensure that any items that are won by bidders (whether that’s in a silent auction or a raffle) are delivered in a timely and safe fashion. Send thank-you notes to attendees, volunteers, and donors, and make sure you share the results of your fundraising efforts. This will make everyone who contributed feel like they contributed to your organization reaching its goals.
If you’re planning another event, a follow-up email or letter can be a great way of getting people excited about what comes next. With online tools like Bid Beacon, Raffle Rocket, and CommuniBee, you’ll be automatically collecting emails from your donors, making it easy to re-engage them in the future.
Make Your Fundraising Event a Success!
Fundraising events are an important tool for non-profit organizations to raise money, and while they can be a lot of work, they can also build awareness and excitement and provide vital cash flow. If your organization is considering adding an online silent auction to its fundraising event, Bid Beacon has everything you’ll need in one place.
For more information on how Bid Beacon can help your next successful silent auction, email us at [email protected] or fill out our contact form.
