Rethinking Donor Events
This week I was honored to teach fundraising at a United Way nonprofit capacity-building program. The room is always filled with organizations doing amazing work, and I learn so much from them!
We were talking about finding ease in donor engagement.
One group had planned a breakfast celebration with their youth program participants. During our discussion they rethought the event…
“What if we invited donors to the youth breakfast, so they can see the impact by connecting with young people in the program?”
Donors, meet our youth. Youth, meet our donors. Why not do both: Celebrate those your program supports and engage donors. It’s interesting, unexpected, and offers a really beautiful human connection.
Brilliant! And who doesn’t like pancakes?
How To Make Donor Events Easy
Inspired by their creativity, I’ll add my suggestions for sanity-saving events. It doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive to give donors a chance to “show up,” get to know a nonprofit they like, and meet the people it impacts and, especially, those who make the work happen.
1. Repeat
If you’re doing it once, do something similar a few times. Not everyone will be available on the same day (and the second time is always easier to plan than the first). You could even do a single invitation with two dates. I’m willing to bet that donors would start looking forward to a semiannual gathering with youth.
2. Give it time to stick
There’s value to a donor in just being invited. If they don’t attend, they have no idea how many people were there or what they missed! So forge ahead for at least one year. Plan small, easy events two to four times to create some momentum, consistency, and visibility.
3. Keep it simple
For lots of reasons — including these articulated so well by the brilliant Armando Zumaya in this terrific article called “Kill Your Gala” — I am not a fan of big galas. (Boards may love them, but they’re a ton of work for staff. And, sadly, folks usually attend for social reasons, not because they’re drawn to your mission.)
Consider something simpler instead, like the board-hosted gathering suggested in last week’s blog. (Side note: Board members play such an important role in supporting good donor events: as sounding boards and as hosts. Utilize this resource!)
4. Leverage what’s in the news
I love the idea of a quarterly (or, better yet, monthly) online Fireside Chat or Brown Bag Virtual Lunch with the Executive Director. I’ll bet your ED wouldn’t even need to prepare — this is what they do all day. There are a lot of changes happening around us, and your donors care how they affect you. This is a timely, easy, and engaging way to tell them.
Play with some ideas, try something new, and have fun.
Whether eight or 80 donors show up to your breakfast event or Zoom lunch with the ED, they’re the right donors: they are interested in what you do.
After all, would you rather run through a required list of gala VIPs or spontaneously chat over coffee and pancakes to learn how a donor came to care about your work?
