1. Prioritize and Focus

The first thing you need to ask when organizing a run, walk, or ride, is: “What is our primary purpose for doing this?” Is your top priority raising money or awareness, bringing in new supporters, or something else? Of course, you can accomplish more than one thing with your event, but unless you decide on your number one priority, you won’t be able to properly focus your efforts. If your priority is raising awareness, you should focus on creating shareable marketing materials and asking participants to get the word out. If your priority is raising money, you should focus on providing fundraising materials and useful templates and coaching to participants. Whatever top priority you identify, be sure to focus your calls to action around it. Don’t overwhelm participants by asking them to do multiple things at once.

2. Specify Your Audience

In general, the more people you engage in your event, the more money you’ll raise. But be smart about recruitment. Don’t make the mistake of defining your audience too broadly or trying to educate an entire city. Start with people who are most connected to your cause as your core base, and let them help you expand and reach new audiences. The more focused you are at first, the more people you’ll eventually engage, since engaging your core audience deeply will result in powerful peer marketing. Plus, the more specific and targeted you are with your outreach, the more you’ll get out of your social media and marketing efforts.

3. Ask Away

They say, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” You need to explicitly ask people to participate in your run, walk, or ride, and you need to invite them to fundraise on your behalf. This sounds basic, but many organizations fail to be specific and forthright in their requests. Shuck says the fundamentals of a good event ask are threefold: talk about the need you’re addressing, specify the impact their support will make, and finally, make a direct, explicit ask. Remember, if it doesn’t end in a question mark, it’s not an ask. For example, ask: “Will you support our cause?” instead of saying: “I hope you can help us.” This sounds simple, but a question mark increases response rates.

The majority of giving for runs, walks, and rides happens online nowadays, so your donation page is your main platform for making your ask. Pay close attention to the language you use on the form, and make sure the donation levels or “gift string” you suggest don’t sell you short. See Chapter 15 for more about donation forms and how to calculate suggested giving levels.

You will have two primary opportunities to ask people: when you ask them to sign up and when you ask them to recruit friends and raise money.

4. Separate Logistics and Fundraising

There are two kinds of events: good events and bad events. Your goal, obviously, is to hold a great event that leaves your participants with fond memories, not nightmares. Make sure you take care of the basics, pay attention to the details, and carefully think through all logistics: securing permits, having good food and entertainment, staying on schedule, ensuring adequate facilities like restrooms, being handicap accessible, and so on. Ensure you have a dedicated person responsible for event logistics who is separate from the person in charge of raising money, recruiting participants, and supporting their fundraising efforts. Don’t make the mistake of having the same person in charge of both the logistic and fundraising aspects. These are equally important parts of your event, and both need someone with the right experience and skillset focused and dedicated to ensuring its success.

5. Provide Good Service

Good stewardship is essential to successful fundraising, and the same is true for successful events. Think through all the problems people may have, leading up to and at the event, and prepare resources and answers for them in advance whenever possible. Where do people go if they have questions the day of? If I am injured on the course, is there someone there to support me? Who do I call about fundraising questions before the event? What happens if I don’t know how to use the donation platform? What if I need to cancel my participation for some reason? Taking good care of your supporters goes a long way in ensuring a great experience and leaving these key allies with a positive impression of your organization. Remember, fundraising is about building long-term relationships, and cultivating and stewarding donors is a crucial part of that process. And this applies beyond simply putting out fires; take the time to recognize your VIPs and top performers publicly and personally, like the ones who raise the most money or recruit the largest team. These are the folks you want to drag on stage and thank them in front of a huge audience, and the ones your executive director needs to write hand-written letters to after the event.

6. Capture Everything

Your event participants, and the supporters they recruit, are valuable fundraising prospects. They are likely supporting you because of a close personal connection, but now that they’ve given, you have a chance to turn them into long-term donors. To do this, you’ll need to communicate in a clear, compelling way, demonstrate appreciation for and the impact of their gift, and steward them over time. But that’s next to impossible if you don’t secure their contact information in a database or CRM (see Chapter 6 for details).

Thankfully, as outlined in Chapter 12, many of the leading event registration platforms integrate seamlessly with your CRM, facilitating this data collection and analysis. But however you’re collecting information, be sure to capture people’s email and mailing addresses, how much they raised and/or donated, and any other useful data points around their engagement. Did they share marketing materials or hold an event of their own to raise money or spread awareness? If so, add those notes in! Use tools like surveys to gather more detailed information and feedback from participants.

Not only do you want to capture information from your participants, but you should also collect event insights. Host a post-event debriefing meeting with all staff and volunteers involved and talk through what was successful and what needs improvement next year. Review your fundraising and attendance results and discuss whether they met your goals or fell behind. What factors contributed to this? It’s important to learn from both your successes and disappointments and to honestly evaluate your efforts and the resources you dedicated to them.

7. Use Technology

In the previous tip, we listed some examples of the types of technology used to capture event data: survey tools, databases, CRMs, and event registration platforms. We’ve moved on from the days when nonprofits had huge wads of cash in shoeboxes at events.

There are numerous event management and peer-to-peer fundraising platforms available that make things like signing up attendees, accepting registration fees and donations, sending customized communications, and providing participants with fundraising and communication templates infinitely easier, more efficient, and more effective.

There are options for every type of event and organization. Some are lightweight and affordable; these are best for nonprofits doing small-scale events, and others are better suited for organizations running large or regular events. Some platforms only provide the basics, while others will guide you through your fundraising efforts and offer more sophisticated tools for engaging and interacting with participants. Take the time to find the right tool for you, and see the Resource Review below for a list of options and resources for evaluating platforms.

Event Management Solutions and Software

1. Eventbrite (www.eventbrite.com)
   1. Eventbrite will help you post and customize your event page, collect registration fees online and at your event via mobile devices, get the word out, and track your progress in real time. This is an affordable solution with dynamic offerings for nonprofits, and it integrates seamlessly with your CRM.
2. Classy (www.classy.org)
   1. Formerly StayClassy, this is an online and mobile fundraising platform that is great for runs, walks, and rides. They also have a very useful blog and offer free webinars for nonprofit leaders.
3. Convio TeamRaiser (www.blackbaud.com/TeamRaiser)
   1. This online event fundraising software is dynamic and well suited for large organizations or organizations that do regular walks, runs, and rides.
4. Cvent (www.cvent.com)
   1. Cvent provides online solutions for events and surveys. They provide mobile support and have custom solutions for nonprofits.