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How Special are Special Events??? 

Being someone who does a lot of grant writing and fundraising I know there is a place for special events in a Development plan but I am not a big advocate of them.  I have done them and been a part of everything from golf tournaments, to walk-a-thons, to races, to large-scale basketball tournaments. 

 I guess I have always thought there were easier and more efficient ways of raising funds.  Each organization however needs to judge that for themselves and what is a “successful” event to one organization may be a terrible flop for another.  For instance one event I used to run was bringing in $60k a year to the organization when the budget for the organization was $600k.  That is a pretty important event and made up 10% of our total income.  As the organization grew the overall budget grew to $1.2 million dollars and the event was still raising about $60k so that event wasn’t having the impact it was once having.  That was good in one sense because we were less dependent upon it but it was bad in another sense because we had put a lot of time into it.  We really had to gauge and measure our ROI (Rate On Investment) to see if it was worth the time and effort.

Here are 5 critical issues to consider regarding a special event:

• Staff Time… is this the best use of their time?
• Residual affect …does the benefit to the organization go beyond the event?  Acquire new donors? Lots of good PR? Build relationships?
• Should you possibly consider outsourcing the event?  Hire an outside company to run the event for you to limit staff time and resources?
• Is the event growing?  If it is stagnate maybe you should consider dropping the event because it may have run its cycle and start a new event.  I don’t recommend you do this at the same time but the let the events overlap. 
• Is the event an excuse not to do sustained regular fundraising?  Meaning are you doing an annual appeal, major donor solicitation, grants, etc.. as well as special events?  Special events need to be a part of the plan not the PLAN.  This happens a lot at Christian schools when it comes to fundraisers/events.

End of Year Considerations

• Stock gifts…now is a good time of year to make your donors aware of this option.
• Foundations…foundations that operate on a quarterly basis will be looking for proposals in January and now is a good time to start preparing for those. 

Request For Proposal…be sure to go to www.fko.org about a recent grant opportunity.  Click on the Dare to Dream grant program.  Deadline for this is the end of January. 

Timothy M. Boling

Timothy Boling

CEO

Christiangrants.com

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Issue:  December 2003

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