Raise more money for your cause at your upcoming fundraising event with these 5 revenue enhancers. These revenue enhancers require almost no extra resources but are fun ways to raise more money for your non-profit. Pre-Event Fundraising Opportunities Over the past few years, non-profits have experienced a lot of success by maximizing their pre-event fundraising opportunities. In particular, underwriting and sponsorship. These allow non-profits to have a set amount of money committed before the event even takes place. We’ve discussed various underwriting and sponsorship opportunities in the past – our stance can be summed up as seeking underwriting for everything at your event, nailed down or not. However, we have 2 more tips to help you to sell your pre-event fundraising opportunities. The first pre-event fundraising tip is to set your table or seat price higher. We see a lot of non-profits who are only charging $650 per table, and when we ask them their costs, they are $500 per table. Pre-event fundraising opportunities start with your table prices. If you want to fill your room with people who have the capacity to give, your table prices indicate the quality of the event you are throwing. Setting your table prices high enough to make a 200% profit on your costs will ensure you have the right people in the room. The second pre-event fundraising tip is to quantify the impact of the amount you are asking for. If you are asking for $50,000, tell the donor what that money represents to your cause. For example, if it costs $1,000 to send a kid to camp, tell your donors that when they buy a $5,000 table, they send 5 kids to camp. Now, that may be rounding up because that’s the gross figures, but it helps your donors to get emotionally invested in the underwriting opportunity. It makes their giving less transactional and more relational. Here are 18 underwriting opportunities for your next pre-event fundraising. Raffles & Drawings These are the highest return for the opportunity on offer for your event. They gamify fundraising and allow you to double (or more) the money you would usually raise on donated items or auction items. Raffle tickets are often $100 or more – you don’t want to cheapen the raffle or the event by selling tickets for less than $100, so selling 100 tickets means raising $10,000. This is great if your highest auction items usually go for $5,000. Don’t be afraid to have multiple raffles and drawings, either. People have different appetites, so having raffles with different prizes allows you to raise more money for your non-profit. You could have one raffle with a Rolex as the prize, one raffle with an experience prize, and one with wine lots. This would enable you to give multiple options or even multiple price points. By setting a finite number of tickets, say 100 tickets for your Golden Ticket Raffle, you can get up on the mic and celebrate selling that number of tickets. You can also celebrate how many kids you were able to send to camp based on the tickets you have sold. That creates a winning atmosphere because now everyone is on the winning team. It injects fun into the atmosphere, even for those who didn’t win. You can use donated items or consignment items for your raffles. Here are some examples of Golden Ticket Raffle items and the recommended ticket prices for each. Live Auctions & Silent Auctions Raising money through live and silent auctions requires strategy – you can’t just put every donated item up for auction and expect to raise significant funds for your non-profit. You need to:
We provide non-profits with experience items for silent auctions and raffles, and we have noticed that international travel raises more money than any other auction items. Use your international trip auction items when advertising your event because it will draw in the kind of people you want. Read more tips on how to turbocharge your silent auction. Games Games allow people who might not have the capacity to bid thousands of dollars to participate and donate money. In that way, your non-profit organization can be an equal opportunity receiver. Everyone can get involved in games, and games raise the energy in the room when your event is experiencing a lull. Don’t underestimate the potential of games to raise more money for your non-profit. We have attended fundraising events where they raised $11,000 playing Last Champion when the prize was a Yeti cooler, a 6-pack of beer, and some beer koozies. They are quick, fun revenue enhancers. Learn more about quick revenue enhancers for fundraising events here. Fund-a-Need Non-profits that raise serious money with their fund-a-need start planning their fund-a-need at the same time they are scoping out sponsorship and underwriting opportunities. They are bringing in people who can donate and match donations ahead of the event to keep the atmosphere up. Look for your biggest fans, especially the ones who like public recognition for their donations, and encourage them to challenge people to match their donations or kick off the donations.
This applies to people and businesses who are already sponsoring or underwriting your event. Don’t be afraid to go back to them and tell them that you are doing a fund-a-need (or paddle raise) to send 50 kids to camp and how many kids they would like to send to camp. We recommend approaching it with this kind of wording. “I know that you could fund the whole thing; I’m not asking you to do that. But would you be willing to make a significant gift that we could use to challenge the room to raise money and hit this need?” Jason and Trevor from HGAFundraising give more tips on how to raise more money in Episode 121 of our webinar for non-profits. Plus, they answer your questions on how to contact donors in the over-50 demographic. Watch on YouTube Listen on Apple Listen on Spotify |
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