Hosting a nonprofit event sounds easy...until you actually do it! There are a million little pieces that have to come together for the big day, and I wanted to talk about all of them. There was so much great information in my interviews this week that I have to break this episode of the Nonprofit Jenni Show into two parts. In Part Two, we continue chatting with Holly Clark, a seasoned nonprofit events planner and owner of Holly Clark Events. Holly tells me how she plans and coordinates an upscale signature event for a well-established nonprofit (Dancing for Safe Haven) and helped plan a brand new outdoor event for a young organization (FrankTown Festival of Lights). She explains how she uses the support of volunteers in addition to nonprofit staff, how to set expectations for a new fundraising event, how to work with in kind donors and corporate sponsors, how to decide on event add ons (like silent auctions), and so much more.
What is a nonprofit signature event?
In the nonprofit world, a signature event (sometimes simply called an annual fundraising event) is a themed fundraiser which occurs annually. In addition to (hopefully) raising a significant amount of money each year, nonprofits often host annual signature events as a way to engage their major donors through a creative, fun experience. Signature events usually have a catchy name because another goal is for the event to become so well-known that people in the community will come out to the event even if they’ve never heard of the hosting nonprofit organization before.
Example of a Nonprofit Annual Signature Event: Dancing for Safe Haven
Holly actually used to work full-time as the Events Director at Safe Haven Family Shelter, a nonprofit I’ve featured several times on the podcast before. She still works with them each year to plan and coordinate Dancing for Safe Haven, one of their annual signature events.
Holly explains that Dancing for Safe Haven is sort of like a local version of Dancing with the Stars. Safe Haven asks a handful of local “celebrities,” including well-known corporate executives, local media figures, and community leaders, to train with professional dancers leading up to a dance competition. In addition to selling tickets and corporate sponsorships for the actual competition, Safe Haven also raises money before the event as the celebrity dancers lead peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns online.
All the Moving Parts for an Upscale Signature Event
Holly has a ton on her plate when she plans and coordinates Dancing for Safe Haven, and the same is true for any development director or event planner working on a similarly upscale and complex event. Some of the main “behind the scenes” components of Dancing for Safe Haven include:
Choosing a date: Safe Haven checks with other local nonprofits which host their signature event around the same timeframe so they won’t accidentally schedule DFSH for the same night. They also try to consider the school calendar (to avoid holiday breaks), major sporting events, and other major events which take place every spring.
Planning the timeline: Safe Haven has to confirm all of the star dancers, judges, and dance instructors for the competition with enough time to help the dancers start their peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. Dancers are also given fundraising toolkits with suggested timelines for meeting their fundraising goals.
Venue coordination: There are limited venues in the area which can accommodate the large number of guests, dance floor, and other items needed for this production! Holly has to find a venue with availability and which meets all of Safe Haven’s requirements. Then she has to walk the space several times to plan traffic flow, attend menu tastings to finalize drinks and food, and plan for the event flow.
Marketing: Safe Haven has its own marketing and development team sending out invitations and promoting the event online, and MP&F (a professional PR firm) provides pro bono PR services to spread the word.
Sponsorships: After corporate sponsors are confirmed, Holly still has to coordinate all of the benefits they have been promised, such as having their ad appear in the event program and receiving free tickets.
Volunteer coordination: Not including the volunteers who help out prior to the event date, about 20-30 volunteers are needed on the event date, and they all cycle through several “jobs” throughout the evening. This number also doesn’t include the skilled volunteers from BlueSky Filmworks who donate their time and expertise with lighting, sound, and videography.
Event takeaways: Most events have some type of favor for guests to take away, and Safe Haven always includes an info card or brochure so event attendees can learn more about their nonprofit. Last year, Safe Haven added a new component--a text-to-win feature offering guests a chance to win a high-value prize if they provided their phone number.
Holly’s Thoughts on Event Add-Ons
Many fundraising events include some sort of add-on, such as a “wine wall,” live or silent auction, coin toss game, or something else which encourages guests to spend more money at the event. Holly says these event add-ons can be great, but only if your organization has the event space and capacity to execute them well. Safe Haven has never added one of these extra fundraising activities to DFSH because there’s already so much happening at this event. However, their other signature event (Hike for the Homeless) has included high-value raffle items during some years.
And now for something completely different...
In 2018, Holly worked with FrankTown Open Hearts to host their first ever signature event, the FrankTown Festival of Lights. Over the course of a month, families from all over the region (some who even crossed state lines!) came to drive through FrankTown’s one-mile long trail of lights. Each car was charged $25 per ticket to enter the lights show and gain entry to Santa’s Village at the end of the lights.
All the Moving Parts for an Outdoor Seasonal Event
A nonprofit’s first fundraising event is always quite a challenge to pull off, but the Festival of Lights came with its own unique challenges:
It takes 3-4 weeks of volunteer time to set up the one-mile trail of lights.
The Festival of Lights is not just a one-time event… The festival is open every night for over a full month.
Volunteers had to be prepared for cold, rainy weather some nights, plus fight against rush hour traffic to make it to their volunteer shifts.
The Santa’s Village activities required even more planning because food was served, animals were onsite, and carnival rides and games had to be reserved.
Many of the other planning components were similar to DFSH:
Timeline: A trail of lights is a great event for the winter season because families are always looking for things they can do with the kids over the winter break from school, especially with the sun setting so early in the evening.
Marketing: Many of the marketing efforts were similar, but FrankTown was able to partner with local TV station News2 and local radio station Mix 92.9 to promote the event to families.
Corporate sponsorships: Although the sponsor benefits were different, the process of obtaining and coordinating sponsorships is pretty similar for every major nonprofit event.
Volunteer coordination: Scheduling volunteers every day for six weeks is much more challenging than finding 20-30 for the night of DFSH!
Get Help With Nonprofit Event Marketing and Fundraising
Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed as you plan, promote, and wrap up your next nonprofit event! Nonprofit Jenni offers affordable coaching and consulting services to nonprofit professionals who would like one-on-one support to develop their marketing and fundraising initiatives. You can even schedule a free initial consultation call to decide if we would work well together! You should also subscribe to the Nonprofit Jenni Show for free, because I love talking about fundraising and marketing with other nonprofit leaders.
Speaking of fundraising events, I highly recommend using a couple DipJars at your upcoming fundraiser. DipJar is a seriously fun credit card machine which lights up and plays music every time someone makes a donation. It’s perfect for raffles, wine walls, entry fees, and countless other uses. Hundreds of nonprofits trust DipJar for their events and everyday donations, and they offer a 5% discount to Nonprofit Jenni Show listeners!
Plus, don’t forget to check out Little Green Light, my favorite donor management system. Their super affordable software includes an event ticketing system, mail merge functions to help with your invitations, and communication logs to keep track of your relationship building efforts with each event attendee. Use the code JENNI to get $150 off your first year!