What makes a great fundraising event

Identify somebody who is highly regarded and respected within their professional community. The best honoree is one who will personally reach out to their contacts for support. Although these people may not be up to soliciting their personal contacts, their status lends credibility to the event, which helps generate interest and, ultimately, can help in achieving your fundraising goals.

Entertainment is key. So look for an act that works into the theme of the event. It could be music, theater, dance, comedy—anything that captivates an audience. If the event is scheduled for three hours, then be sure to have it completely mapped out with time limits for each element. Limit the amount of talking heads at the podium. Have a "Run of Show" document listing all of the elements and the specific timing at which they are to occur. The successful outcome of any event depends on the careful planning and organizational skills of the committee.

In return, find a way to reward them—with tickets to the event, food, gift bags or a small party afterward. They need to be encouraged to come back, too. Your planning window begins four to six months in advance, and that includes promotion and publicity. Invite key media contacts, celebrities, influencers, and other VIPs to support the cause and who can help promote it. At the event, roll out the red carpet and make sure your professional photographers have the proper lighting to capture quality images.

If high-profile guests will be in attendance, consider investing in an experienced video crew to conduct and edit interviews that the organization can repurpose for evergreen marketing content. Showing gratitude goes a long way in keeping your key contributors engaged. Bonus: The best way to streamline the ticketing process is to work with event fundraising software that makes selling tickets or setting up event registrations simple.

You have a procedure in place for managing ticket sales and collecting attendee data. For complex or large-scale events , make sure you create clear day-of guidelines for everyone involved. A clear plan of action will ensure that all members of your team—from full-time fundraiser. Send out these details well in advance to provide ample time for answering questions or dealing with unforeseen issues.

It might also be a good idea to do a practice run-through with your technology and any entertainment. After all, you want everyone involved to feel confident that your fundraising event will go off without a hitch. By the time the big night actually rolls around, you might be tempted to check out or consider all your hard work done. While you can and should! You should promptly send thank-you notes to everyone who was involved with your event, including sponsors, guests, and volunteers.

Here are some examples of questions you can include in your survey:. Learning more about your donors after each fundraiser ensures that your events will keep improving and your fundraising dollars will keep climbing! That was a lot of information to cover.

For more information and advice on nonprofit topics, including fundraising event planning, be sure to check out these additional resources:. Skip to content. Search for:. In addition to raising money, you might also use a fundraising event to facilitate other goals, such as: Acquiring new donors. Promoting your cause or gaining publicity. Stewarding existing donors. Engaging prospective major donors. Start with questions like the following: How do your supporters prefer to get involved?

Have a strong volunteer base? Consider planning an event with a community service component. Database full of text-givers? Try a text-to-donate blitz event! Where do your donors live? If your supporters are spread across the country, tying in a virtual component, like an online auction or a livestream of the festivities, would be the most inclusive move. Will weather impact your event? An indoor charity gala, on the other hand, can be hosted year-round. Does your cause have a specific demographic?

Your fundraising goals will also heavily inform the kind of event you host. Every event is different, but here are a few examples of what you might include in your budget: Event space or venue. Catering or refreshments. Event planning or auction software. Tables, chairs, dishes, and cutlery. Sound or lighting equipment, if not provided by the venue. Promotional items. Devise a leadership team for fundraising event planning.

Ticket sales or registration. Volunteer management. Major donor involvement. Venue setup. Auction item procurement. Event follow-up. Cross this off your list when… Everyone on your event team has a clear role in planning and executing your fundraising event.

Keep the following questions in mind as you consult your calendar: Are we planning far enough in advance? Since you have literally all night, you can include as many special events as you like. Just remember that your staff will need to be engaged the whole time. Consider organizing shifts and encouraging staff to switch between tasks throughout the night. This kind of fundraiser relies mostly on the cost of admission.

Take advantage of your Night at the Museum fundraiser to reward museum members. You can offer special perks to participants in your membership program , like early access to tickets, the best seats in the house, or a few free drink tickets. What are you waiting for? An art auction consisting of work donated entirely by local artists is great for the art museum hosting the event and the culture of the surrounding community as well. Curate the event and display the pieces like you would any new exhibit.

Invite members of the community, including your museum patrons. Your patrons can even help promote the auction themselves through their social media pages, especially if you create a Facebook event or a Twitter and Instagram hashtag for the event. People will be more inclined to bid if they feel connected to the work. Have museum staff on hand to guide thoughtful discussion and provide talking points about the work on display. You want the evening to appeal to a museum regular, while still being accessible to a first-time patron.

The auction is there to raise money, but the event is about promoting local artists and building sustainable relationships with the members of the community. Once monthly, host a family fun day fundraiser. Aim for a day like the second Saturday of every month so that parents and children can attend together. They should be educational, but by no means boring. If your museum is an art museum, teach painting classes. If your museum is about the history of your state, let the kids dress up from different time periods and act out momentous events.

Outside of the activities, design tours geared towards children. If you handle field trips, your tour guides will already have the script. When planning the day, think back to the ten-year-old version of yourself.

Would you have been more interested in learning about the emotion behind an impressionist painting or practicing sculpting with clay? Appeal to both parties with entertaining activities that have educational undertones. Once a few families find out and attend, word will spread, and your monthly program will be packed.

Happy parents who discover your museum through this fundraiser could be high-quality donation prospects that you might not have otherwise found.

Use the family day to initiate donor cultivation with the parents while the kids are playing. Museums were made for galas.

The beautiful art is its own theme and decor. People host everything from weddings to proms in museums, so if you already have the location, you should be taking advantage of the venue. Your gala should be a glitzy black tie affair.

It can be themed around one of your permanent or visiting exhibits, but make sure that the people in attendance know what cultural efforts their money is funding. Success takes planning — way, way, way advanced planning. Begin early and form a staff and volunteer committee to get everything that you need accomplished. The fundraising component has to be your first concern.

Try to keep expenses low by securing in-kind donations and tiered corporate sponsorships. You'll also need to plan how you're going to raise money during the event. Many fundraising galas incorporate charity auctions just for this purpose.

In contrast, you can host a fundraising raffle using in-kind donations from sponsors as prizes. To make the entry process quick and simple, use a donation kiosk; guests can give with their credit cards. However you decide to raise money during your event, make sure your volunteers and guest speakers can show guests just how easy it is to give!

Chances are, if your supporters are museum patrons, they love history and looking at beautiful, old artifacts. Take this passion outside of your doors by hosting a cobweb scavenger hunt that challenges teams to find a series of historical landmarks throughout your home city.

Scope out the streets beforehand to find some hidden gems, so everyone will have to search a little to find all of the stops on your list. Participants can join by paying a small entrance fee. You can also encourage groups to create online donation pages where people can make pledges for landmarks found. The day of the event, give each team a printed list of destinations and set a time limit. The more locations they find, the more money they raise, so encourage teams to maximize their efforts by splitting up.

Each time they find a landmark, have them take a selfie in front of the location with their phones. If you want to raise even more awareness, request that they share these selfies on their social media pages.

Heighten the stakes by offering the winning team a prize. And what about healthy competition for a good cause? Allocate a set amount of time for the fundraising period and divide your office into teams.

Marketing versus sales! I can hear the trash talk now. Who knows? Maybe the dream office fundraising team is the perfect combination of Jenny from IT, Luke from sales, and Vivian from accounting? The event can take place over a week, a month, even a few months. In order to keep all of the information and donations straight, set up a crowdfunding page for the competition and then let each team run a sub-page.

The web platform will organize and track all the donations gathered, and it makes the campaigns easily shareable across email and social media.

How about having your supervisor do them for you? Find supervisors willing to participate as fundraising incentives. Let them each charge for their time by the half hour or hour and set aside a day for the festivities. When the day rolls around, employees can schedule their supervisors for various tasks. The tasks obviously need to be respectable and within reason, but have fun with it.

Is your car in desperate need of a scrubbing? Hand your boss a bucket and a cloth. Have you been meaning to file that huge stack of papers on your desk? Your supervisor probably has the skills to get the job done. What about those envelopes that need stuffing? Your manager can fold with the best of them. If your office wants to raise money for environmental organizations, like land trusts or conservancies, in particular, a recycling drive is the perfect event for you.

This fundraiser is as much about cause awareness as it is about the money brought in. Have employees work to gather as many recyclables as possible from friends, family, neighbors, and the like. If you want to broaden the scope of the event, you can even advertise the drive and hold a collection day for those in the community to drop off their items. At the end of the drive, bring all the cans and goods to your local recycling center and exchange them for a cash reward.

Can drives combine a volunteer spirit with the practicality of straightforward donations. All good things for the environment. Ah, the coveted front row of parking spots. Life is easier in the front row. Fewer steps in the rain, the wind, and the heat. As long as your office has reserved premium parking, it is the perfect fundraising incentive. Host a car-themed trivia contest to determine the winner of the coveted spot. The winner keeps the spot for a month and then has to defend his or her title in a new round of trivia.

Challengers have to pay to play, but the space holder gets waived entrance fees. And depending on the size of your office, you could raise quite a bit of money throughout the year. The charity of your choice will be grateful for that. Employees love watching their superiors complete embarrassing tasks.

Start by choosing an embarrassing task. A pie to the face, a dunk tank of ice cold water, or a silly outfit should do the trick. Next, ask a few popular and good natured! For each person that gives you their permission, set out a small bucket labeled with their name and photo. Leave the buckets out for a week or so. At the end of the week, all the money is donated to your cause.

The employee with the most money in their bucket will complete the task in front of the entire office. This one is a classic. The closest to the number wins the jar, and your organization gets to keep all the donated participation fees. Step four: Decide how much you want to charge participants. You can always use a set amount, or just ask for a donation of whatever amount the entrants can give.

In the latter instance, you run the risk of receiving smaller-than-desired donations, but you also have the chance to see donations exceeding what you would have ever expected. Step six: Get the competition going.

Then provide a deposit box for the envelopes. Step seven: Find and announce your winner! These games work well in office and school settings, in particular. Or, what about those cookies on your kitchen counter that call out to you as you go to bed? You and your supporters can, if you host a weight loss-a-thon.

You read correctly. Instead of walking laps or biking miles, this a-thon is about dropping pounds. Donors can pledge money for when you reach your target loss, or they can offer a donation amount per pound lost.

Getting back into your skinny jeans while helping a good cause? People will be lunging to join. Instead, the money goes to the fundraiser. Do you remember playing truth or dare as a kid?

This fundraising event will bring all of your dare supporters out in droves. And those who leaned towards truth can participate by donating, promoting, and supporting. Dollars for dares fundraising events are the perfect complement to peer-to-peer fundraising. If your nonprofit wants to run one of these events, it should pick one dare that all participants sign up for.

Or, if you want to do this on your own, the risk is your choosing. The dares are honestly limitless. Exciting and entertaining, flash mobs are the grand gesture that will bring all the right attention to your cause. Once the details are set, ask people in your network to participate and spread the word to others they know.

Just remember, you want to have the element of surprise on your side, so avoid posting about it on your website or social media pages.

To fundraise, charge a small fee for each participant. Obviously, you want your mob to be as large as possible so you can raise the most money and create the biggest impact. Schedule the actual event on a weeknight between 6 and 7PM when the majority of your participants will be off of work. This is also the hour when there are the most people on the streets. A little before the time of the event, have participants meet at the venue and go about business as usual. This type of event is just like a normal raffle, except without the traditional prize.

Instead, all of the money that goes into the pot will be split evenly between the winner and your organization. The more money your donors spend on raffle tickets, the bigger the prize will be!

You can either host the raffle to make extra money during one of your other fundraising events or see if a popular local spot will host the raffle for you. When people buy, have them write their name and phone numbers down on the back of each ticket before they throw them into the pot, so you can contact the winner by phone. Now all you have to do is set a time limit. A tree planting fundraiser is the perfect way to raise money and awareness of your cause while also doing something beneficial for the environment.

Start by deciding where participants will meet up to plant. Get in contact with someone from city hall to figure out where your city could use more trees and to make sure you have all of the necessary permissions.

In the interest of keeping the event as affordable as possible, see if a local gardening store will donate some trees. If not, you can also buy cheap plantable tree containers and seedlings. Raise money by selling the trees to people who want to participate. Once the trees are planted, you can also hold a silent auction where people can bid on naming each tree.

Make the event fun by providing refreshments and blasting some feel good tunes while people plant. Nobody can resist cute pets. Ask a workplace or college campus in your area if you can stop by for a few hours one day with a group of cats and dogs that need homes.

When employees and students need a short break from their stressful days, they can make a donation to hang out with the pet of their choice for 10 or 15 minutes. You can set a donation amount or simply request that people give as much as they want. If not, team up with an animal rescue organization. Make sure to set up your furballs in a busy outdoor space where lots of people will see them. Then, sit back and let their overwhelming adorableness do the rest of the work for you.

Contributions can be anything that can be sold for donations, such as food dishes, arts and crafts, or small trinkets. The day of the market, have volunteers set up booths in a local school gymnasium, park, or other large communal space. Encourage them to go all out in representing their heritages by decorating their booths. Each participant will sell their contributions to raise money for your cause. Advertise through all channels available to you to ensure a solid buyer turnout.

Not only will you be raising money, but shoppers will have fun learning about cultures from all over the world! The main event of your non-event will be a series of compelling email appeals sent to your donor list. You want to be as authentic and transparent as possible so donors will see the logic behind your choice.

Throughout the week, send donors a series of follow up emails reminding them to donate. Remember to send thank you notes to donors who act on your appeals. Non-events work best when you have an easily quantifiable fundraising goal in mind.

With a non-event event, you can save all the money you would be spending on an event and instead put it towards your cause. Throughout the week you can plan different fundraising events to supplement awareness with action. The type and number of events you put on are up to your organization. It all depends on how big you want to go with it! For example, one day of the week, you could throw a letter writing party where supporters get together to draft letters to legislators.

Another day you could send out an email campaign with a link to an online petition supporters can sign to voice their desire for change. During cause week, you can amplify all of your important efforts to reap the greatest opportunity for change.

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Check out the top 60 fundraising event ideas so your nonprofit organization can plan better events and engage your donors. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Peer-to-peer fundraising is perfect for all types of event fundraising! Learn more about Salsa's peer-to-peer fundraising software. Charity Auctions Auctions are some of the most profitable fundraising events around. Start organizing your first charity auction today. Donation Kiosks Giving kiosks are the perfect addition to any fundraising event.

Check out giving kiosks to add to your next fundraiser. Online Donations Accept donations online before, during, or after your next fundraising event to drastically increase the amount raised.

Learn how fundraising software can help you accept donations online. Create Custom T-Shirts Adding unique gear like t-shirts can be a great addition to your next fundraising event. Crowdfunding Crowdfunding campaigns are a great way to engage a large population of small dollar donors. Start a crowdfunding campaign today. Annual Fundraising Event Ideas.

A date that usually has good weather. A committee to help attract sponsors and participants. In-kind donations for event day needs, like golf balls and drinks. Plenty of promotions. A plan for the closing ceremony and awards. Learn more about charity auctions. Fundraising Event Ideas for K Schools. See how fun trivia can be?