Recently, a friend asked me, “What do you do if your fundraising event goes flat?”
My friend works for a national organization with a signature fundraising event. She can’t just stop doing the event. Her chapter of the organization is required to use the event to raise funds every year, but for some reason, her community just isn’t having success with it. The event seems to have lost its appeal.
“So what can you do to turn things around?” she asked.
Early requests for sponsorship support were disappointing. One company’s response was typical, “How come, if you’ve been serving the community for 23 years, we’ve never heard of you before?”
Not promising as far as beginnings of sponsorship campaigns go.
The organization needed to re-introduce itself to the community. We decided to hold a Corporate Breakfast.
“I miss the adrenaline of special events,” my friend Emily’s email message read. We had worked together at a nonprofit organization a couple of years back and had worked side-by-side through many events. I had sent her a message and mentioned that I had an event the next day.
About 5 minutes after I read Emily’s email, I got another email message from the Operations Manager of the next-day’s venue. With less than 24 hours until our guests arrived, the manager’s message read [paraphrasing],
“Dear Event Organizer: We know your event is tomorrow, but we’re writing to tell you that we’ve changed all of our rules. Here are our new rules, including the rules you must follow before your event. If you don’t follow every single one of the rules, your event will be cancelled. By the way, surprise: here is your new invoice. We’ve changed that, too.”
Note to self: “must tell Emily not to write foreshadowing email messages.”
ponsorships can make the difference between an event being successful and an event being a failure. Sponsorship dollars are critical. Fortunately, sponsorship dollars are something that are easy to raise (yes, you read that right) – easy because they are a win-win. Companies receive several benefits from sponsorships: