Tips For Successful Fundraising Events: The Giving Carnival for March 2008

Welcome to the March 2008 issue of the Giving Carnival. The Giving Carnival provides you with the best blog posts on the topic of Giving.

The theme for March 2008 is: Tips For Successful Fundraising Events.

Check out each of the blog posts listed below. Apply one or more of the tips to make your next fundraising event more successful.

A Tale of Two Special Events

by Joanne Fritz

During the worst special event I ever attended, I excused myself and hung out in the restroom until I thought the guest speaker was probably done with her awful speech.

She was a well-known actress who thought we would all be as interested in her life story as she was, including many lurid details. Her speech seemed to go on forever, making me think the event planners had either not given her a time limit, or that she had ignored it. more>>

Leadership Tips for Successful Fundraising Events

by Christopher Scott

I really like Roger Carr’s topic for this month’s Giving Carnival. I’ve always believed that principles are important, but small tips are just as important when you add them all together. So I’ve put together Six Leadership Tips for Successful Fundraising Events.

Six Tips for Leaders of Successful Fundraising Events

1) Start Early - I started working on the outline for this article a little more than three weeks before it was due to Roger. I easily could have wrote it the night before the deadline, more>>

Successful Fundraising Event? "Share Why You Care"

by Michael Gibbons

Charity Navigator evaluates over 5,300 of "America's largest charities." [that does not include the thousands more local and grassroot organizations let alone bake sales, car washes & candy sales] and you wonder why it's hard to fundraise, hard to set your cause apart!? The point: Almost all of these are worthy causes with good caring people committed to making them successful. The Problem: So many good causes and smart people make it very hard for charities to differentiate and for donors to decide who to support -- in fact some people opt out all together understandably overwhelmed.

So what to do? How do you make YOUR fundraising event successful,  more>>

Tips on Fundraising Events

by Marc A. Pitman

I’m not an “events” person but they do seem a necessary evil in our field.

And to be fair, they do have lots of other benefits: visibility, engaging volunteers, etc.

So when I saw that this month’s Giving Carnival topic was “Tips For Successful Fundraising Events,” I knew I had to chime in.

The best tip I ever got about events (other than don’t do them if at all possible!) was: give the event three years before deciding to continue it or not. more>>

Designing Your Event

by Brenda

You’ll be most successful if you’re always thinking of your main goal as you design your event. Are you trying to thank and recognize, educate and make a case for support or raise money? Again, clearly define your goal and design the event from there.

Let’s say you decide that your major donors should see the facility first hand and understand how their support made it possible. What are some creative ways to reach your audience? more>>

Fundraising, Grant Writing, Mission-Success, Community Building; It's All the Same

by Arlene Spencer

Think back to the last donation that you gave. Some issue or cause concerned you. When you decided which organization, specifically, to give the donation to, what factors did you consider in choosing which organization would receive it? What motivated you to eventually give to the specific organization that you did?

To help you raise more money for your non profit in an ethical, professional, legal, and effective method, consider the following logic. more>>