Holding a Special Event

A special event is a poor vehicle for raising lots of cash in a short period of time. In fact, relative to the amount of labour involved, holding a special event is a poor fundraising technique, period. It will require months of planning, a major commitment on the part of everyone in your group. A significant number of volunteers will have to be conscripted, and many donations will have to be made before you can even get the project off the ground. On top of that, the possibility of not raising very much money at all, or worse running a deficit, is real. So why bother? Why not put the same amount of energy into a less labour intensive, more predictable form of fundraising like face-to-face or direct mail? I think it’s often fair to say that the amount of money raised at many special events doesn’t in and of itself justify their being held, but the fact is that there are other reasons to hold an annual event that make it more than worth the trouble.

In fact, there are things a special event can accomplish that no other form of fundraising can accomplish so well. One of the most important things an annual event will do for your group is raise public awareness. The opportunities to get free publicity are great, especially if your event takes place on a slow news day. Long weekends are typically light on news and if you have large numbers of people out riding their bicycles, walking for a cure, or engaged in just about any highly visible activity, the local television news channel is almost certain to send a camera team out to cover you. At the very least, even without television coverage, you will gain increased public awareness of your group and the challenge it addresses. If your event is set up in such a way that it also makes a small dent in your group’s challenge, then an additional benefit will be increased morale on the part of your workers and volunteers. For instance, if a literacy group holds a Read-a-thon or some other event that gets people reading, then the issue of improved literacy is addressed in the event itself, and those people working on the event will feel that, on top of raising money, they also did something to address the issue directly in a highly visible way.

Similarly, Community Living groups can hold events that get their clients out in the community. Health groups can hold events that gets people doing something active and healthy, and so on. A third benefit of special events is that they tend to bring people into your organization, and that can be a very major benefit indeed. Of course, any major event is going to need volunteers to direct traffic, offer refreshment to participants, and just generally look after the thousand-and- one little details that crop up. This is good news. It gives you the opportunity to recruit volunteers from the community. More significantly perhaps is that an event gives you the opportunity to ask major donors to become more involved with your group. A large project will need people to chair the various committees such as Publicity, Finance, Tickets, and Volunteer coordination. Asking a large donor to play a small organizational role is a good idea, because it could very well lead to an enhanced sense of involvement with your cause, and consequently a major gift from that person at some point down the road.