GOOD NEWS: Summer Fun
Good News: An enewsletter for donors and nonprofits
on strategic planning, governance, fundraising, and executive leadership.
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby”
Summer Fun
For many, summer is a season of life and parties. Especially for communities emerging from cold, dark winters and wet springs, summer is a time for nonprofits to hold events for fundraising and friend-raising purposes. But what kind of events are worth offering and how do we think about their success?
The nature and value of events was in question well before March 2020. More than three years since Covid-19’s emergence, it is even more clear that a close examination of whether and how nonprofits should hold galas, auctions, golf tournaments, rides, walks, runs, conferences, round tables, workshops, and other gatherings is needed. A few thoughts:
1. Know Your Event’s Why
Board members and donors can be keen to request an event. Just because someone asks for an event isn’t a good enough reason to spend down limited personnel time and financial resources. Understand why an event may happen. To cultivate and steward donors? Celebrate staff and mission? Bring new people to the organization? Raise money or awareness? Educate? Connect? Ideally all of the above are considerations in the decision to move forward. Micro decisions about venue, costs, timing, guest lists, invitations, program, … all hinge on knowing your event’s why.
2. Understand Your Audience
Who may attend your event and what are their needs? Are people inclined to Zoom, hybrid or gather in person? Is there an ask at the event? If so, who makes it and how? Do you charge admission or not? What time and place works best for your guests? If there's food, what is the menu? Dress code? All of these considerations are nuanced but they deserve attention, especially if staff needs for convenience begin to supersede attendee needs.
3. Define Success In Advance
Sometimes events are successful just because an invitation is sent. Or maybe success is defined by the amount of money raised (net, not gross!). It can be hard to assess how much money is generated on a given date because donors make gifts on their own schedules, even months or years after being inspired by an event. Sometimes it's a win when one person attends or even acknowledges an event is happening by sending their regrets about not attending. Whatever your measures of success, agree in advance and don’t allow Monday Morning Quarterbacking with revisionist history.
4. Thoughtful Follow Up Is Nearly Everything
Most importantly, a successful event isn’t complete until a follow up plan is agreed to in advance and implemented. Everyone attending should receive follow up notes thanking them for their attendance, a reminder of what made the event successful, a request for feedback, and an invitation to connect again. The more personalized and connected to someone who matters to them is the follow up, the better. Those who received the invitation but could not attend should also receive follow up communications with a summary of what they missed. Most events fall far short because once the event concludes, staff and volunteers move on to the next event without optimizing the previous one.
It is a challenge to incorporate all of these considerations but well worth taking the time to do it. Don't just throw parties and bounce from event to event. Gather people with intention and leverage your connections with diligent, personalized follow through.
Stuff Steve Is Watching, Listening To, and Reading
Jon Stewart on Diversity Initiatives (6 minute watch)
"And by the way, all of these diversity initiatives and CRT (critical race theory) and all those other things are only there because we refuse to fix the real problem. The diversity and equity initiatives are a salve. They're to pacify and mollify because we won't actually do the real thing. We won't actually dismantle the vestiges of all the systemic racism and classism and all the systemic gender issues. We won't actually dismantle that. But what we will do is you can have an office in the building, and every few months we're going to have to sit and listen to you talk for like an hour. And so we're good, right?"
Watch Here
The One and Only Cornel West (8 minute listen)
"On the streets we had the largest manifestation of protests in the history of the empire. What impact does that have on the neoliberal rulers in the establishment Democratic Party? Just small, little, symbolic, decorative changes - 'put on a little Kente cloth and bring in some more black and brown people in the name of diversity, and inclusion, and equity.'"
Listen Here
The Moral Case Against Equity Language (10 minute read)
"The project of the guides is utopian, but they're a symptom of deep pessimism. They belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real."
Read More Here
New Website for TTG
Thank you, German and Disla Media!
