Events give your nonprofit a chance to engage donors, raise funds, and have a blast doing it. And let's face it: who doesn't love a good time?
Raising (and giving) money is more enjoyable when you gather supporters, board members, and community partners to have a great time while supporting a mission everyone cares about. But it takes a lot of planning and careful execution to get your event right. That’s why we created this comprehensive guide to nonprofit event management!
Here’s what we’ll cover:
We’re here to tell you that any nonprofit of any size, focused on any mission, can use events to rally supporters, engage donors, and raise funds. Read on if you’re ready to host a can’t-miss event!
Types of Nonprofit Events
It’s hard even to put your arms around nonprofit events, because the word "events” encompasses everything from a bake sale for saving sea turtles to a gala for supporting the American Red Cross.
There are endless options, but it’s easiest to start by choosing the event format and planning activities from there.
In-Person Events
Best for: Building deep relationships through face-to-face interactions and immersive experiences.
In-person events can refer to a massive bucket of activities. The takeaway: Nearly anything can be an event. There’s no limit to what your imagination can create!
Still, if you want specific examples, here are some ideas that are best suited for in-person formats:
- A dance-a-thon in which people gather pledges based on how long they’re able to continue dancing
- A craft or bake sale in which volunteers create handmade or baked goods to sell
- A golf or putt-putt tournament in which you sell tickets to participate
- A local event, such as a play (partner with the theater to get a portion of ticket sales donated)
- A community scavenger hunt or guided tour
Virtual Events
Best for: Engaging donors and raising funds while minimizing costs, reaching a geographically diverse audience, and allowing supporters to move at their own pace.
We’ve learned that there’s nothing—even happy hours—that we can’t take virtual. While going digital might not always work, there are actually times when virtual events are perfect.
Most virtual events fall into one of two categories: peer-to-peer and simulated attendance:
- Peer-to-peer campaigns involve a social media campaign around an event, in which supporters post links to your donation page on social media.
- Simulated attendance events refer to activities that supporters can attend online, such as an online auction or a webinar series, at which you try to create the illusion of a physical event with attendees.
Examples of virtual event activities include:
- Cooking class: Charge a small admission fee and send everyone the same ingredients list. Then, stream a video of a chef walking everyone through a dinner recipe together.
- Talent show: Invite your supporters to record themselves singing, dancing, and performing. Then, sell tickets to a virtual event in which everyone watches these videos together. Make it interesting by encouraging attendees to vote on a winner!
- Trivia night: Using an online trivia platform, ask trivia questions online and collect the responses from your supporters. After the event ends, you can announce your winner. Bonus points if you include questions related to your mission!
- Learning experiences: Offer online learning opportunities, like webinars or online lectures, for a small course admission fee. Try providing these educational resources about various aspects of your organization’s mission to spread awareness of your cause.
- Game night: Gather your attendees to play games online together, like Codenames, Settlers of Catan, and Monopoly. To make it even more interesting, transform the event into a board game tournament so that you have a single champion by the end of the event.
- Concert: Fill supporters’ homes with live music on video streams. Make sure you have the equipment to deliver high-quality sound so the concert sounds great on your supporters’ devices.
- Yoga classes: Ask a yoga instructor to donate their time and lead yoga sessions using virtual conferencing software for supporters who purchase tickets. Alternatively, you can stream free yoga classes on YouTube that everyone completes together.
- Book club: Send everyone the same book and host regular virtual meetings to discuss the latest chapters. A small admission fee will help you raise money while supporters engage in riveting literary discussion.
Hybrid Events
Best for: Blending the benefits of both in-person and virtual events by maximizing reach while preserving a human touch.
By nature, hybrid events include activities that could be hosted as either in-person or virtual events. For example, if you host a hybrid gala, you’re automatically hosting an in-person and virtual gala—you’re just lumping them together into the same campaign.
Regardless, there are a couple of specific event ideas that work extremely well in hybrid formats:
- Galas: Donors often pay high ticket prices for fancy events where they can enjoy dinner, drinks, and dancing. You’ll sell tickets for these events, and the proceeds benefit your nonprofit.
- Auctions: There are two types of auctions: live and silent. In both types, your nonprofit compiles auction items, which attendees compete for by bidding. In the end, the attendee with the highest bid wins, and your nonprofit receives revenue from the amount they pay for the item.
3 Stages of Nonprofit Event Management
1. Nonprofit Event Planning
Create Your Event Plan
Your event plan is the blueprint for your event, and it’s critical to developing a reliable planning process that your organization can follow every time. Have you ever heard the saying, “Measure twice, cut once?” If you’re deliberate about creating a plan and diligent about recording how the event unfolds, you’ll have a map for next year’s event.
Here’s what your event plan should include:
- Tasks with owner, dates, status, and notes
- VIP invitation list, with an extra column to note whether a personal message is needed with each invitation
- Sponsor list, to keep track of sponsors, their level of support, and their logos for promotional materials
- Staffing schedule that lists tasks, time blocks, assignments, and volunteers with contact information
- Common site visit questions and room to note the venue, questions, and responses
- Activities, such as a silent auction, scavenger hunt, or wine raffle
Many organizations entrust this phase of nonprofit event management to their volunteer team. A word of caution: Try not to micro-manage your volunteers or get lost in details that will not help you raise more funds. At the end of the day, everyone's goal is to raise funds for your mission, and the color of tablecloths you use or the brand of wine you raffle off won’t make or break your fundraising success.
Establish a Ticket Pricing Model
Different levels of ticket prices accomplish different things:
- Lower your ticket price if you want a large number of attendees. When you’re looking for sponsors, this might appeal to businesses that want their name in front of many people.
- Raise your ticket price if you’re targeting higher net-worth donors for a more exclusive event. Sponsors looking to reach that demographic might find this a valuable opportunity.
Ticket pricing depends largely on the event’s format, activity, and other factors. For example, tickets to an in-person concert may be priced higher than tickets to a virtual concert, because the in-person event requires your nonprofit to pay for a venue, concessions, and other expenses.
Develop a Sponsorship Packet
A sponsorship packet is really a marketing document. This information is designed to inform businesses of your mission and make event sponsorship irresistible!
When you take the time to create a sponsorship package, it can be quickly duplicated and distributed. Everyone gets the same document with the same terms, and everything remains transparent. You can certainly customize the packet for each business, but the core proposition shouldn’t change.
Here’s a standard list of what you want to include:
- Mission: Insert your mission statement, which explains your nonprofit’s purpose. If it’s not compelling, tweak it, and then use it to introduce your sponsorship packet.
- Event details: Explain what you’re planning. When is it? What time? Where? What format? Use language that demonstrates how this event will involve or help the community.
- Audience: Businesses use sponsorships to promote their investment in the community and nonprofit causes. As such, demographics can be a big selling point if your event expects to reach the target demographics to which sponsors want to appeal.
- Fundraising goal: Explain what the sponsor’s donations will fund. Remember, this is a marketing document, so you want to clearly state why you need the sponsorship (sponsorships raise significantly more money than individual donors) and how their support can help your mission.
- Sponsorship levels: Once you’ve stated your fundraising goal, tie your sponsorship levels to a percentage of the overall goal. Tier the levels so that in promotions, the business with the largest sponsorship gets the most publicity.
- Sponsorship benefits: What’s in it for them? Perhaps it’s signage at the event, a mention on the invitation, or the opportunity to add some branded items to the swag bag. Find whatever is appealing and won’t cost you money.
- Deadline: Don’t give them a long time to decide, because then they’ll take a long time to decide. Get your sponsors wrapped up early so you can keep going with the planning.
- Contact information: Make it really, really easy for them to get in touch with you. Phone, email, and address for the carrier pigeon. (That’s a joke.)
Plan Your Marketing Activities
Put some thought into the best way you can publicize the event. Start by considering your marketing goals. What does success look like? Perhaps you hope to sell a certain number of tickets or receive a certain number of registration form submissions.
Here are some questions to answer:
- What information do people need to know? The theme, the date and time, how to register or buy tickets, how to volunteer, the dress code, and the registration deadline are all critical pieces of information.
- Who is your audience? This answer will define the best ways to reach them.
- How can you segment your audience? For example, your emails might have different content if you’re talking to millennials or boomers. Even social media can be segmented. For example, TikTok appeals to a group that might not be looking at Facebook.
- What outreach channels will you use? Phone, email, social media, blast text? Whatever platforms you use, make sure you define how you’ll promote your event.
- Who will be responsible for what marketing activities? There are a lot of duties in marketing an event. Delegate email management, social media, phone calls to top donors, ad creation, and other tasks.
- How will you recognize sponsors? Plan and delegate donor appreciation activities, including sponsorship deliverables, impact sharing, and thank-you messages.
- What changes are needed to your website? Plan an event page that is updated as sponsors join and the event takes shape. Decide who will create it, update it over time, and troubleshoot any issues that arise.
- What’s your marketing timeline? Create a calendar that dictates when you’ll share content, what you’ll share, and which platform you’ll use. For example, you might plan an email reminder to registrants three days before the event and a social media post for the morning of.
As you plan your promotional outreach, go ahead and set some guidelines for event follow-up, as well. You don’t want to let too much time elapse between the end of your event and the next time your nonprofit publishes something on its website, social media accounts, or other channels. Planning event follow-up during this phase ensures your communications team is prepared to reach out instead of scrambling to put together post-event materials.
2. Nonprofit Event Execution
“Event execution” isn’t necessarily limited to strictly day-of activities. When the time comes to put your event plan into action, you can consider yourself in the “execution” stage.
This phase involves moving your event forward with the various people involved in making the event happen:
Recruit Event Sponsors
Start looking for sponsors anywhere from a year to six months before your event. You want to bridge fiscal years and ensure there’s time for an approval process. A large company will allocate charitable donations in the budget, but once that money has been spent, there isn’t another line item until the next budget.
Make a list of the well-known companies in your area. Even if you live in a small town, you have stores or restaurants that would love the publicity and would be happy to support you. If they can’t give a monetary donation, they might sponsor gift cards that go in swag bags.
Remember, when looking for sponsors, consider corporate sponsors, community sponsors, in-kind sponsors, and individual sponsors. All types of supporters can help your event be a smashing success!
Once you have a list of potential sponsors, go to the “Sponsor List” tab in the event plan worksheet or your constituent relationship management (CRM) system with a sponsor tag. Keep a current list of whom you’ve asked, when you’ve heard back, and the sponsorship level. This is also a handy spot to keep their website URL and logo, which you’ll need when creating the invitation and promo materials.
Recruit and Manage Volunteers
Let’s assume you’ve got your nonprofit event all planned. You know the venue, you’ve figured out the logistics, and now, you need a team of volunteers to make it all happen.
Here’s how volunteers factor into nonprofit event management:
- Recruitment: Match the right volunteers to the right roles. Based on their interests, skills or qualifications, and availability, recruit the volunteers who make the most sense for your event.
- Marketing: Develop well-written role descriptions to assign the right volunteers to the right positions. Create marketing materials with direct links to your sign-up form and distribute them through social media, neighborhood communications, or other networks.
- Funding: Apply for government grants designated for volunteer programs within nonprofits. Use your CRM to streamline the grant process and provide evidence for your application.
Promote The Event
The smartest way to promote your event is to segment your donors. Group them by age, geographic location, and other factors so you can personalize your message, your calls to action, and even which auction items to highlight to entice donors to purchase tickets.
Then, apply the marketing plan you developed earlier to each of these segments. Leverage the following channels:
- Your website: Place a lightbox (AKA a popup that dims the background content) highlighting the event over your normal homepage. You can also look into Google Ad Grants for free advertising to drive more traffic to your website’s event page.
- Email: Use email automation to enroll your donors in a series of emails about the event. They can start with a save-the-date and follow up through registration and even day-of reminders. End with a thank-you email that contains a post-event survey.
- Text messaging: Text messages have a 98% open rate (compared to a 20% open rate for emails), making them a powerful way to spread the word about your event. Send a quick message and a link that takes supporters right to your website's donation page.
- Social media: Share event details and tease great guests, auction items, or delicious food. Remember to lean into each platform's unique strengths (e.g., X is better for short-form text while TikTok is video-oriented).
An often-overlooked (but highly effective) channel is word of mouth! Talk about your event to everyone you see. Mention it at the grocery store, ask your board members to tell all their friends, and let excitement build naturally.
Ask Your Board To Help
While you may think of nonprofit event management as a direct responsibility of the fundraising team, it’s perfectly okay to put your board to work!
There are lots of ways your board can help out, and often their involvement is unique to your nonprofit, but you may ask them to:
- Buy tickets
- Secure sponsorships
- Acquire in-kind donations
- Procure major gifts
Ultimately, your board’s dedication to your nonprofit, community connections, and personal networks can spell success for your event.
3. Nonprofit Event Follow-Up
Are you done after you’ve swept up the confetti, literally or figuratively? Not quite. A nonprofit event is exhausting, time-consuming, and worth every second of work. So yes, you deserve a rest, but just run through this quick checklist to ensure you’re wrapping this whole thing up with a bow:
- Promptly thank all volunteers and donors. We’re talking an hour or two after the event—don’t let the day end without volunteers and donors knowing how much you appreciate them!
- Follow up with a phone call. A personal phone call to those who showed the most support shows that you see them and value their effort.
- Finish any outstanding activities from the event. For example, deliver auction items to their highest bidders or trophies to the first-place runner in your 5K race.
- Analyze your fundraising results and share them with participants. Highlight the data that demonstrates their impact, and follow up later to share what you accomplished with that fundraising revenue!
- Gather feedback. A brief survey or poll tells you what attendees and volunteers thought of the event. Plus, this information can help you make improvements to your next one.
- Broadcast the fundraising event’s results. Share your best pictures from the event, impactful data, and even quotes from attendees! Show those supporters who didn’t attend why they can’t miss your next event.
- Recap the event. Blog posts or long-form emails can intrigue people who missed the event and remind those who attended how much fun it was.
- Start your stewardship. Getting supporters to attend your event is one thing. Inspiring them to stick around and continue giving their support is another effort entirely. Use your connection with event attendees to plan how you’ll keep them committed over time.
How Does Software Help With Nonprofit Event Management?
The right event software (or CRM with event management tools) can automate manual tasks, streamline communications, and generally facilitate most parts of the nonprofit event management process. Here’s how:
- Ticketing and registration: Create customized registration forms and automatically collect participant information from one platform. Also, leverage a tool with native payment processing capabilities to securely accept payments.
- Integrated fundraising tools: Whether you’re hosting a virtual auction, in-person fun run, or any other type of event, your CRM will offer the tools needed to collect donations from any activity.
- Communications: Design, automate, and improve communications with marketing tools rooted in the donor data that guides your outreach.
- Real-time reporting: Gather post-event insights with comprehensive reports on attendance, fundraising performance, engagement metrics, and more.
- Volunteer management: Schedule shifts, send reminders, and track volunteer hours from the same platform that manages the rest of your event activities.
Final Thoughts
Nonprofit event management is both a challenge and an opportunity for nonprofits. With so many moving parts, it can easily overwhelm even the most experienced of fundraising teams.
With strategic planning and the right technology, any size organization can master nonprofit event management—even with limited resources! Thoughtful preparation and the right tools go a long way in streamlining operations, boosting engagement, and driving greater impact.