Cost Effectively Increase Donations At Your Next Fundraising Event!

Posted by Ben Crook on 17 October 2019

Significantly increase donations at your next fundraising event by creating a competitive environment and feeding real time data to your MC or auctioneer, the combination of these two elements will play a key role in helping you hit your fundraising target!

Do your research

According to Harry Santa-Ollala, MC and Fundraising Consultant, typically 75% of attendees haven’t paid to be at your event. Therefore, its paramount to analyse your guest demographic, if you understand who they are, it will be easier to pinpoint what’s going to motivate them to donate. For instance, if the majority of your demographic are young professionals, source auction items and experiences that will directly appeal to them.

If you’ve hosted similar events in the past, take the time to analyse data from those events and discover where in the fundraising narrative there were spikes in donations. This will give you a strong indication of when to strategically ask for donations during the evening as well as highlighting lulls which you could potentially eliminate with the advice below!

Hire an effective MC

Here are a few qualities you should look for in an MC:

– Willingness to invest time in understanding what makes your particular guest demographic tick and create activities/initiatives to suit them

– A bubbly yet sharp persona to captivate and engage guests

– A willingness to stick to the plan

– Familiar with the silent auction and pledging technology being utilized

Make your ask tangible

If the majority of your guests are middle aged couples, ask them to donate the amount they would typically spend on a meal in a nice restaurant, this strategy has been proven over and over again to increase participation.

In addition, If 90% of your guests have donated, announce this fact and thank your donors for their participation, this announcement is likely to influence the remaining 10% to donate too.

Display a goal and challenge guests to reach it

Make the goal realistic and encourage each table to work together as a team, this will provoke those who haven’t parted with any money to get involved. You can motivate tables to work together by launching a competition “the table who pledge the most as a team will win a bottle of champagne”.

Would you like further details on the advice above? Watch the webinar recording below or contact us, we’d love to hear from you!

Ben Crook

Chief Operating Officer

Ben is at the forefront of every project in Givergy, listing and actioning constant improvements across the business. With over a decade of experience in the charity and events sector he brings a deep understanding of what the fundraising industry needs to operate effectively and efficiently.