e-support for special events

Posted by Michael Johnston on May 30th, 2006 at 07:49pm

Special events are an important part of how many nonprofit organizations raise money, strengthens its brand, and maintains donor relationships.

The online environment can be a more important part of the future of events for your organization and I’ve got a few recommendations in this area.   

Most likely, your events program has a supporter base that will not convert quickly to online giving. Like converting donors from single gift giving to a monthly committed giving plan, the conversion is incremental and small.
The future success of your online giving program doesn’t lie in your existing event database. 

Your event donors should be given every opportunity to give online.  A valuable incentive is to offering them an online receipt.  Some of your donors may choose to switch to online giving in order to take advantage of an instant receipting for their records. 

In addition, the event donors can be told that giving or registering online is the most efficient way to help your organization and that “their money will go to work faster” if they register/buy tickets/give online.

I usually recommend that an organization provide event donors every opportunity to give online and provide information on instant receipting and buying tickets online.  This way you will encourage some of your donors to move to the online environment. 

Most likely, your current prospective and past event goers receive a text-only email that reminds them to buy their tickets and to participate in a particular event. They do not have the opportunity to use their credit card and buy tickets through a real-time transaction online.

Your event emails sent out currently are probably text only and have a hypertext link to a PDF form. A wonderful improvement is to send an HTML email with key points and linked calls to action in text only with the overall look and feel in HTML. If you’re already there, what the heck are you reading this for?!
As an example of best practice online promotion of fundraising events, HJC would like to highlight the work of Rethink Breast Cancer, an innovative fundraising organization that concentrates solely on helping young women, and their families, who struggle with breast cancer. Their constituency is largely younger and they have created effective online promotions of their events.

The following examples should inspire your organization in the creation of HTML, and perhaps Flash, promotions for its events:
The use of a link in an email invitation can lead to fun, cool, and hip use of Flash. If you go to http://oxygen.ca/clients/rethink/discoball.html, you will see a great use of animation to sell a unique event:  The Little Sweetheart Ball, an event for young parents and their young kids. The end of the animated promotion piece also gives high branding position to the corporate sponsors.
 

The use of graphics and a forward-this-to-a-friend function gives this invite a powerful viral marketing ability and gives it a hip look. Try it out for the right event and the right group!

Under fundraising