The guide to successful fundraising events (virtual or otherwise!)

Fundraising events can play a meaningful role in your political fundraising strategy — but they also have the capacity to consume a lot of time and money, while yielding disappointing results. This article offers some advice for maximizing the dollars you raise from your fundraisers, while minimizing the cost.

Events are about your network’s networks

Throughout the campaign you’ll reach out to everyone in your existing network to ask them for donations. A fundraising event is most powerful when it’s not about bringing together your existing network, but rather is an opportunity for your supporters to tap into their networks so that you can actually expand your reach.

That’s why it’s so important to build a really strong host committee for every event that understands their job is not just to lend their name to the invitation. Rather you need them to make personal appeals to people in their network that they think would be interested in hearing from your campaign, and potentially contributing. This can be an invaluable way to grow the campaigns’ donor universe to reach people that you might not otherwise have ever found on your own.

Job #1: Support your hosts

The most important work of the fundraiser is being done by your hosts — helping you expand your potential donor universe by tapping into their own networks. But that means the campaign’s most important job is to support your hosts in accomplishing that. Here are some ways you can do that:

Part of a Sample Host Logistics Memo

• Make the goals and asks clear. Before committing, hosts should know what your goals are for the event. You may want each host to pledge to give or raise a specific amount of money as part of their commitment to host. Even if you’re not, they should know how much you have budgeted to raise for the overall event. And, of course, everyone needs to understand their main role is to push their contacts (not the campaign’s) to the event.
• Provide them with all the outreach materials they need. As early as possible, provide them with the invitation and sample outreach language they can use to reaching out to potential attendees. Every time you reach out to the host committee, give them some new sample language they can use in emails, calls, and texts to their networks.
• Provide an overview document. Right when they commit, be ready to provide them with an overview document that describes how you’ll handle logistics, the RSVP process, costs associated with the event, the run of show (see below), etc. You should also set up a logistics call where you answer any questions in this document, and make sure everyone is on the same page about which logistics details will be owned by hosts versus the campaign (i.e., if we need a valet service, who will select and book that service?)
• Manage the timeline for them. Stay in touch with your host committee at strategic intervals to provide an update on the progress of the event (i.e., how many RSVPs to-date, how many dollars raised, etc.) and to remind them when it’s time to make another round of outreach.
• Respect their networks. By inviting them to your event, hosts are entrusting the campaign to give their networks a positive experience. From providing clear arrival instructions to sending thoughtful thank-yous, you should aim to welcome these people into your campaign in a way that leaves them- and your hosts- feeling very good about the operation.

One way of thinking about this: making personal appeals to their friends, family, and colleagues is the most valuable contribution your hosts can make to the event and it’s not something your campaign can do for them. So, the campaign should do whatever it can to take everything else off their plate, so they can focus on doing just that.

Have a replicable plan

Events can be incredibly time consuming to execute successfully. One major way you can combat this is by creating a plan for your fundraising events that is designed to be easily replicated. This will allow you to refine and streamline your process so that it takes the minimum effort necessary to produce each event. This is especially important if you expect to have many fundraising events throughout the campaign, as is often required if a meaningful portion of your budget is going to be raised this way.

Here are some common elements to a fundraising event, and ways you can build them so they are ready to be used and reused:

Sample Invite

• Invitations and other event graphics: invest in designing a template you love and have the ability to easily edit to update key details for each event. You don’t want to wait on or pay to have every new invitation produced.
• RSVP forms and trackers: keep it simple for guests, hosts, and yourself by using easy tools (e.g., Google Forms and Google Sheets) to both intake and track all RSVPs — all of which can be easily copied for each new event
• Host logistics overview: have a standard overview of all the logistical information your host(s) need for a strong event
• Sample outreach language: whether it’s language your hosts can use for invites, the emails your campaign uses to solicit guests and/or hosts, refine this language and reuse it

Sample run of show

Most fundraising events are held in the evenings, Monday through Thursday, so people can join on their way home from work. To maximize the campaign’s time, it’s important to have a tight plan for how the event will run — and, like everything, to replicate this whenever possible!

Here’s one sample event that begins at 5:00pm:

• 4pm: campaign staff/volunteers arrive to help set up
• 4:45pm: candidate arrives
• 5pm: guests arrive
• 5:40pm: host introduces candidate
• 5:45pm: candidate speaks
• 6pm: candidate Q&A with attendees
• 6:30pm: host closes and makes final ask (see below)
• 7pm: event concludes

As you can see, the above sample gives the candidate plenty of time to have individual conversations with guests before and after the main program, and keeps the event moving at a good pace. (Pro-tip: put a start and end time on invitations to help ensure guests arrive promptly.)

The make or break: a strong close, and follow-up

There are two elements of a fundraising event that can have an outsized impact on their financial success: the program close, and the follow-up afterwards.

The Program Close

As illustrated in the above example run of show, your program should not end with the candidate. Rather, once the candidate has concluded their speech and taking questions from the group, a designated “closer” (preferably the primary event host) should make a final appeal to the group to contribute. It is not unreasonable to estimate that you can improve your event’s financial success by as much as 20% based upon the successful execution of this closing solicitation from the host.

So what makes for a successful closing ask? The host should take just a few minutes to do the following: (1) acknowledge the significance of this race, their personal commitment to seeing the candidate win, and the financial resources it will take to be successful, (2) thank everyone for whatever they contributed already, and (3) explicitly ask people to consider making another contribution (or their first, if they haven’t already) before leaving the event.

If the host doesn’t feel comfortable making such an explicit ask of the group, consider finding some other strong supporter who will be attending the event to step in and fill this role. It’s that important.

The Post-Event Follow Up

You should expect that as much as a third of all the money you raise from an event, will actually come after the event has concluded. However, that will only happen with prompt and proper follow up. Here are some things to consider:

• Move quickly. The momentum of an event (especially the involvement of your host committee) will fade fast. Take advantage of the excitement that was created during the event, and be ready to execute all follow-up within 24 hours, if possible.
• Empower your hosts to help with follow up. Immediately following the event, thank your hosts and provide them with a report that shows who attended, and who gave. Make explicit asks of them to help you follow-up with anyone of their invitees who attended but haven’t yet given.
• Call through high-capacity attendees. In addition to any emails you send to guests, thanking them for attending, do a round of calls through attendees with the largest giving potential to further build that relationship (and make an ask, if appropriate).

You should also be sure to touch base in some form or fashion with everyone who RSVPd for the event. Here are some ways to think about grouping that outreach, and the possible type of follow-up for each:

• Attended and haven’t given: thank them for attending, and ask them to donate
• Attended and gave ahead of time: thank them for giving and attending, and encourage them to give more
• Attended and gave at the event: thank them for attending, ask them for introductions to anyone who should be invited to future events (this could lead to them identifying themselves as a potential host in the future, too)
• No-show and gave ahead of time: thank them for giving, invite them to a future event
• No-show and didn’t give: let them know you’re sorry you didn’t get to meet yet, and invite them to a future event

Growing your network

As described above, fundraising events can be wonderful ways to thoughtfully grow your network. To realize the full potential of this, remember to treat all your new contacts like welcome, new members of the team. Have a plan for onboarding them into your email program in a way that doesn’t assume they already know everything about what your campaign has been up to for the months before they showed up to your event. And incorporate them into your call time to ensure you’re building a one-to-one relationship with them that’s independent of the host that invited them to their event. If you treat them right, it won’t be long before these guests are hosting events of their own!