The Blog.

How to engage your board without letting them derail your event goals.  You’ve got the venue locked in, a killer theme, and a list of donors and sponsors ready to support your cause. Everything’s on track for your fundraising event… until your board steps in with their ideas. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, you’re not alone. While board members are essential to the success of your nonprofit, their involvement in event planning can sometimes cause more harm than good. But here’s the thing — it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s talk about how to engage your board in a way that supports your event goals instead of derailing them. Understanding the Problem Board members come with a wealth of knowledge, experience, and (hopefully) passion for your mission. But when it comes to fundraising events, their enthusiasm can sometimes manifest as unsolicited ideas, overstepping boundaries, or pushing for personal agendas. Suddenly, your carefully crafted event turns into a hodgepodge of random suggestions that don’t align with your original vision. Common board pitfalls include: The result? An event that feels disjointed, misses its fundraising targets, and leaves your team frustrated and burnt out. Setting Boundaries and Expectations The key to avoiding these issues is setting clear boundaries from the start. Your board needs to know their role in the event and understand where their input is welcome and where it’s not. Here’s how to do it: Giving Your Board a Purpose One of the best ways to engage your board is to give them a sense of purpose. People want to feel useful, and if you don’t assign them tasks, they’ll find ways to insert themselves into the process — often where they aren’t needed. Consider assigning board members specific roles like: When board members feel like they’re contributing in meaningful ways, they’re less likely to interfere in areas that aren’t their responsibility. Handling Conflicting Ideas It’s inevitable that board members will bring ideas to the table — and not all of them will align with your vision. The key is to listen respectfully while keeping the event’s goals in focus. Here’s a handy phrase to keep in your back pocket: “Thank you for your suggestion! Let’s bring that to the event committee and see how it aligns with our goals.” This response shows that you value their input but also reinforces that decisions are made collectively with the event’s success in mind. Celebrating Their Contributions Lastly, don’t forget to recognize your board’s efforts. Acknowledge their contributions during the event and in post-event communications. When they feel appreciated, they’re more likely to stay engaged in the right ways for future events. Final Thoughts Your board can be one of your biggest assets when it comes to fundraising events — but only if you manage their involvement wisely. By setting clear expectations, giving them meaningful tasks, and handling conflicting ideas with grace, you can turn potential derailments into valuable contributions. Remember, the goal is to keep everyone rowing in the same direction. With the right approach, your board will become champions of your event, helping you hit (or exceed!) your fundraising targets while keeping your sanity intact.

One of the most intimidating things about planning a charity gala or fundraising event is facing the task of cleaning up your invitation mailing list. This is the nonprofit equivalent of cleaning out your garage – you know you must do it, but you put it off for as long as possible! When is the best time to start organizing and purging your invitation mailing list? The answer is TODAY!  The beauty of taking the time to dig deep and clean out incorrect addresses, deceased donors, and duplicate names is that from this point on you will have a clean invitation mailing list that gets your invitations into the hands of prospective guests and alleviates the cost of returned undelivered mail. * Note – your event mailing list should be kept separate from your organization’s general mailing list. Contacts given to you by honorees and committee members, for the specific purpose of inviting friends and colleagues to an event, cannot be automatically added to your main list. If one of those contacts purchases a ticket, places a tribute ad, or donates then it is appropriate to roll them into your general mailing list. Here are the 5 steps to get you on your way to cleaning up your invitation mailing list. 1. Don’t Do It Yourself Your Board and event committee are key to efficiently cleaning up your existing event mailing list. The most efficient way to share the responsibility for editing this list is to send all board and committee members an email with a link to your mailing list spreadsheet and ask them for their assistance with removing and adding names and addresses.  However, it is important that you retain control over the integrity of the list. When sending the spreadsheet make sure that it is “read-only” for the recipients. Have each person send you the contacts they feel should be deleted or updated directly. This will ensure that no well-meaning committee or Board member accidentally messes up the spreadsheet which will make your task even more difficult. It is also important to have a date in the title of your spreadsheet so you can easily find the most recent version of the event mailing list.  2. Start by Eyeballing the List This step may feel intimidating to those helping you as many event mailing lists contain over a thousand contact names, so be clear at the start as to what you are trying to accomplish and give your team a list of details to look for. You will need the group to make a couple of passes reviewing the mailing list to get all the kinks out of it. For the first review, your team should just do a quick scan to see if any names jump out at them that need to be edited out or deleted. Have them email you a list of the changes so you have a record of which edits are being requested by each Board and committee member. For the next review of the mailing list, have them look more closely to ensure they didn’t overlook any obvious typos and name spelling edits. At this point, it is your job to delete duplicate names in your event mailing list. This can easily be done on spreadsheets by highlighting the first name and last name columns and then clicking Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values. 3. Look for the “3 Ds” When reviewing the event mailing list look for the following issues: Deceased, Divorced, and Doesn’t Live Here. 4. Don’t Forget New Donors & Last Year’s Guests Each year your organization will obtain new supporters and donors, so don’t forget to add those newbies to your event mailing list if they are good candidates for attending the event. If you are hosting a free or low-priced fundraising event, then you can include all your new supporters in the event mailing list. This is especially true if you are only sending digital invitations as you can send an unlimited number of invitations without incurring extra printing fees.  If you are hosting a gala, you will want to be more discerning about which new donor names are being added to the event mailing list as you will be mailing printed invitations and each invitation incurs printing and mailing costs. For charity galas and other high-end events, determine what is the lowest donation level that will qualify a new donor to be included, and then add all your new supporters at that level and higher to the gala mailing list. 5. Consider this a Stewardship Opportunity While it is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating to comb through an old event mailing list, you should consider the silver lining to the situation! Each contact on that list that needs updating is a perfect opportunity to reach out and connect with a supporter.  ____________________________________ Want to learn the strategies used by professional event planners to create engaging and profitable events? Sign up for our newsletter and get your organization on track for successful events and sponsorships. About A.J. Steinberg, CFRE, of Queen Bee Fundraising: With over 20 years of experience as a nonprofit event producer and engagement strategist, A.J. Steinberg has worked on over 100 successful events and raised millions of dollars for organizations with her Los Angeles-based production company. She is a recognized topic expert and trainer and presents on subjects such as nonprofit event planning, event sponsorships, committee and volunteer leadership, generational giving, and guest engagement. Website: www.QueenBeeFundraising.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ajsteinbergproductions   Twitter:  https://twitter.com/QueenBeeMalibu Facebook: www.facebook.com/queenbeefundraising

Many nonprofits realize the benefits of hiring an experienced event planner to help them plan and execute their fundraising events. They know that the money they invest in a professional planner will reduce their staff’s stress and help to ensure a well-run guest experience.  There are a lot of event planners out there vying for your organization’s business. Many nonprofits are wondering how to find the best fundraising event planner to suit their particular needs. The first thing to know is that there are three types of event planners – social event planners, corporate event and meeting planners, and fundraising event planners. Social event planners specialize in weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other important life events which we celebrate. Corporate event and meeting planners typically focus on meetings and conferences that require meeting rooms, multiple meals and snack services, and often hotel accommodations.  Nonprofit organizations should use a specialized fundraising event planner. This type of professional is proficient at producing galas and fundraisers, and is experienced with tasks such as: To find the person or company that best fits your organization’s needs, start by asking these five questions. Question 1: What other organizations have you worked with? Getting references from the fundraising event planner’s past clients is the first step towards determining if they will work well with your organization. Always ask for a list of three-to-five past clients that you can call or email to find out specifics about the planners’ quality of work. Create a survey of questions to send to the past clients to make it easy for them to respond to your inquiries. You can use Google Forms, which makes it easy to create surveys and allows you to customize questions to be answered with a rating scale or a short answer.  For rating scale questions, with 1 being dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied, ask the past clients to rate their satisfaction with the fundraising event planner’s: For questions that require a short answer, ask questions such as: Question 2: How will you share the workload with our staff? Let’s face it, putting on a successful fundraising event is a lot of work! There are committees to manage, invitations to design, auctions to pull together, guest lists to finesse, and volunteers to deal with. Nonprofit organizations vary in staff size and resources, and this means their requirements for an event planner vary as well. If you are a small organization with a very small, or one-person, development department then you will need more hands-on help from your planner to fill in the staffing gaps. You will need an experienced professional who can take a big chunk of the workload off your shoulders and keep you on track with deadlines.  Tasks that can be handled by a professional planner include: Larger organizations that have adequate staff to handle some of the extra workload may want to manage some of these jobs in-house which allows their staff to have more control. Question 3: Will you manage our event committee? Working with a committee can be a lot of work, and often fundraising event planners will step in and help you organize committee meetings and work with committee members. Whether or not you want the event planner to participate and manage your committee is up to you and your organization. Why would an organization forgo their planner’s help to manage their event committee?  It is because some nonprofits want to use the committee experience to strengthen bonds with their committee members.  An event committee generally consists of a nonprofit’s loyal supporters and the time spent attending meetings and working together is an exceptional stewardship opportunity. Volunteer committee members find it is a great way to reinforce their affinity for your organization and your mission. However, if your organization lacks an experienced leader for managing committee meetings and committee members, then it is best to let your fundraising event planner step in and lend a helping hand. They can assist you by creating meeting agendas, leading the meetings, and taking notes which can be distributed to the group afterwards. Even if an event planner is leading committee meetings, there should always be a staff or board member present. They will monitor the meeting and ensure that all decisions made by the committee are in agreement with the organization’s rules and bylaws. Question 4: How can you help keep us within our budget? Some organizations obsess over their event budget. They spend hours crunching numbers and updating estimated costs vs. real costs, and then crunch the numbers all over again when any line item changes. This may make them feel like they have control over their budget, but it is an illusion. An event budget is no more than an educated guess, and it is a constant work during your event planning. The budget keeps track of how much each event element is expected to cost and then is updated as the real costs become known.  Though an event budget number is a moving target, organizations need a budget in order to get a general idea of how much the total event will cost them. Budget estimates help nonprofits set their sponsorship levels and ticket pricing, and set their expectations for how much money needs to be raised in order to meet their net financial goal. When interviewing prospective fundraising event planners you should ask where in the budget they feel you should invest money and where you can cut corners.  Some fundraising event planners are excellent at negotiating better pricing for their clients. This could be lower corkage fees, reduced pricing for AV, or better pricing from a florist. Other planners will look towards creating underwriting opportunities that will defray costs for line items such as valet, printing, and wine. In rare cases there are planners who have event vendors extend a 10% discount to their nonprofit client in lieu of pocketing the industry’s typical referral fee themselves. If you find a planner who does this as their policy,