Great Ideas for Planning Your Next Charity Event

Planning and organizing a charity event is one of the most effective fundraising strategies. They help highlight your cause, promote dialogue between attendees, and allow you to establish a fundraising channel that is fun and engaging for everyone involved.

In this article, we’ll walk you through a step by step process to help you plan and organize your next charity event. We’ll also share some fun and easy fundraising ideas that are sure to get people to raise money for your cause.

Let’s get started.

How to Plan Your Next Charity Event

Planning a charity event is a great way to encourage participants and attendees to raise funds for your cause. Here are five simple steps that’ll help you plan and organize successful charity events.

Step 1: Determine the Event Format

The first thing you need to do is determine a fundraising goal. Apart from collecting donations, you should also be on raising awareness for your charity and encouraging attendee participation during the event. For this reason, you’ll have to develop an event format that drives registrations.

Brainstorm some of the different ways you can achieve your fundraising goal. For example, you might consider selling tickets to your charity event, conducting an auction, crowdfunding, or selling custom merchandise.

It’s also a good idea to develop a better understanding of your target audience i.e. your prospective attendees. Once you’ve done that, you can ask yourself what sort of activities would they be most likely to participate in. Would they be more interested in a charity marathon, listening to a guest speaker, or participating in a scavenger hunt?

Step 2: Set an Event Budget

Once you have the event format down, you’ll have a general idea about what sorts of activities you’d like to organize and which venues would be most suitable. The next step is to set an event budget. For this, you’ll have to estimate the expected crowd size and get a quote from vendors.

Get in touch with venue managers and vendors to get an estimate of much everything will cost. It’s a good idea to set aside a contingency amount to cover any unforeseen expenses. Track all of your expenses frequently to keep them in line with your projections.

Step 3: Raise Awareness

By now, you should have a good idea about the type of charity event you’re organizing and your event budget. The next step is to get the word out about your event.

Here are some quick ideas to help you get started:

• Reach out to your mailing list. To get the ball rolling, you might reach out to your email list and subscribers that fit the target demographic. Send them a personalized message that informs them about your charity event and encourages them to participate.
• SEO your blog posts. You might publish a few blog posts on your event website about the cause and the charity you’re supporting. Optimizing these posts and pages for search engines will help you drive relevant, organic traffic to your event website.
• Build hype. Consider including an element of mystery in your event messaging to generate buzz and intrigue people to learn more about the upcoming charity event.

Here is a great checklist  to keep you on track as you tackle marketing and publicizing your event. Click here to print this checklist.

[infographic provided by Revel Global Events]

Step 4: Recruit Sponsors

Recruiting sponsors can help you reduce event expenses and raise awareness. In addition to this, they may be able to offer your goods or services to attract more attendees to your event or to help your cause.

To recruit sponsors, start by getting in touch with local businesses in your community. Businesses that support your cause can be ideal sponsors for your charity event.

Consider preparing sponsorship packets that contain necessary information about your cause, the demographics of the event, and how they can partner with you. You can create sponsorship packages that offer different levels of incentives depending upon the business’s contribution to your charity event. For example, you might add the company’s logo in your email promotions or to your swag bags.

Step 5: Sell Tickets/Set Up a System to Accept Donations

Before you start promoting your charity event, you need to implement a system for selling tickets or collecting donations. Event Smart makes it easy to create different types of tickets and sell them directly through your event website. For example, you might create a general admission ticket, a VIP pass, and a reserved seating ticket type.

The great thing about Event Smart is that it automatically sends attendees tickets after they register. On the day of the event, you can use a barcode scanner or a smartphone to check-in attendees.

5 Fundraising Ideas for Your Next Charity Event

#1: Fun Run/Walk & Marathon

Many charities organize fun runs, walks, and marathons to raise funds for their cause. These kind of races are incredibly popular charity event activities because they bring in more donations as compared to other events and have the potential to attract event sponsors.

#2: Golf Event

Golf events are a great way of bringing together your community for a good cause. They also provide a fun way of raising donations for your charity. If you think that your supporters would love to drive a couple balls off the tee, you can contact your local golf course to get a cost estimate and available dates for your charity event.

#3: Guest Speakers

You can get in touch with local celebrities or influencers who support your cause and ask them to speak at your charity event. This is a great way of organizing an event if you’re on a tight budget. You can use email, social media, flyers, or even word of mouth marketing to promote your event and encourage people to support your cause.

#4: Scavenger Hunt

You can organize a scavenger hunt and charge teams an entrance fee to participate. Simply give each team a list of items they need to find and what time they need to report back to the starting location. Scavenger hunts are easy to organize and incredibly fun for participants and judges.

#5: Trivia Night

Organizing a trivia night event is another fun way of encouraging supporters to donate to a great cause. You can get your local bistro to organize a trivia night as your charity event. Divide your attendees in groups and charge registration fees from each group participating in the event. This introduces the element of competition among your attendees and motivates them to raise more money for your cause.

Conclusion

Charity events are a great way to raise awareness for your cause and receive donations from supporters. With careful planning, you’ll be able to organize a fun (and successful) event in order to raise funds for a charity that needs them.

Let’s recap the main steps you need to follow:

• Determine an event format. Determine how much money you hope to raise and which demographics you will target. This will help you determine the right format for your event.
• Set an event budget. Identify the size and scope of your charity event and estimate the costs by contacting vendors and venue managers.
• Raise awareness. Promote your charity event by reaching out to your subscribers and past attendees, blogging about the event on your website, and building hype.
• Recruit sponsors. Sponsors can help reduce your expenses, promote your events, and bring in generous donations.
• Sell tickets. Implement a system to create, sell, and deliver tickets to your charity event attendees.

What are some fundraising ideas you’ve organized at charity events? Let us know by commenting below.