5 Effective Ways to Increase Attendance at Your Next Fundraising Event

In order to maximize the impact of your fundraising event, you must carefully consider a marketing plan. However, while many nonprofits pour ample resources into event planning and budgeting, it can be easy to overlook the important task of promotion.

Whether it be a new event or annual gathering, you must always consider ways to increase attendance at your fundraiser. Good event marketing strategies begin with an internal brand message and extend into event promotion — to finally conclude with event follow-up.

If you are wondering how to increase the attendance at your next fundraiser, BetterWorld put together these five effective tips to increase fundraising event attendance.

Proven Marketing Strategies for Promoting Fundraising Events

To best promote your fundraising event, you must employ a diverse marketing strategy based on both traditional and digital avenues. Even more, you should always consider the types of donors you are targeting when developing a marketing plan.

1. Know Your Brand

In order to adequately explain the benefits of your nonprofit to donors, you must have a strong sense of your own brand. By developing accurate brand attributes early on, you present a uniform brand message across all marketing platforms while professionally promoting your cause.

There is perhaps nothing as important for attracting donors to your nonprofit than clearly explaining your values. By identifying with the morals of your organization, donors feel moved to offer financial support. While some nonprofits focus exclusively on environmental causes, others work with schools or children in need.

With your brand values clearly aligned, you should focus on developing a uniform brand strategy. Your nonprofit’s brand strategy should include a mission statement, tone of voice, consumer personas, brand attributes, and more. This important information will inform your entire marketing strategy moving forward.

2. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing tools like social media and email campaigns can have a huge impact on the number of donors who attend fundraisers. Luckily, with the number of easy-to-use online tools available today, you don’t have to be a digital marketing guru to get people’s attention on the internet. Even more, platforms like Facebook have ample free training resources available for users.

In today’s society, people use social media for just about everything - from keeping tabs on the family to shopping for used goods. Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer a variety of marketing tools that work great for event promotion. Organic followings come about with regular postings, while you can also get attention quickly with paid campaigns.

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools used by nonprofits. Especially if you have a list of established donors, contacting them by email is a great way to spread information about specific fundraising events — including dinner, entertainment, and auction items.

3. Promote Specific Fundraisers

Another great way to market your event is to let donors know exactly what types of fundraisers are in store. Whether it be through social media, email campaigns, or paper invites, including specifics about different fundraisers is a great way to build excitement around charity fundraising events.

If you are hosting a live auction, be sure to include pictures and descriptions of key items. For example, if you are auctioning a travel package in a live auction, you should be sure to include the destination of the package, as well as details like hotels, airlines, and additional activities.

Just like auctions, the best way to build excitement around a raffle is to promote different items. Especially if you are including more creative prizes like raffle baskets, showing off your attention to detail is a great way to reinforce people’s confidence in your organization. Moreover, if you do a good job marketing your raffle, you can sell tickets before the event even starts!

4. Target High-Value Donors

While it's always good to get as much exposure as possible for your event, you should spend your marketing dollars wisely to target high-value donors. Because these types of people often have demanding work schedules and social lives, getting their attention is critical.

In the end, a handful of high-value donors can have more impact on your organization than hundreds of people who attend and do not donate to your cause. As such, you should create messaging that targets important people like large contributors, nonprofit members, and repeat donors. Incentivizing high-value donors with such things as good seats is also a great way to attract them to your event.

A good way to keep high-value donors engaged is with personalized messaging via email and written invitations. Another great option is to call repeat donors and personally invite them to charity fundraising events. Taking the time for a personal call will reinforce how much you value their participation.

5. Follow-Up After on Fundraiser Events

Another effective way to market an upcoming event is to use information from a past fundraiser. By following up after an event, you can get a clear picture of what you did right and what went wrong. With this important info in hand, you can set the appropriate adjustments for your next fundraiser.

There are multiple ways to get data about past fundraising events for nonprofits to inform future gatherings. A great option is to send out surveys after a fundraiser to learn about people’s experiences. Good questions to ask include how people felt about specific auction items or raffle prizes. You can also study statistics from attendees to draw correlations between different donor types and the ability to meet financial goals.

Another effective method is following up with people after the fundraiser and inviting them to become members of your nonprofit. If you don’t have the option of membership, it's also a good practice to invite them to future fundraiser events.

Have Questions? Contact BetterWorld

BetterWorld knows well what it takes to market fundraising events for nonprofits. Please contact us to learn more.