Leveraging The Best Technology To Improve Nonprofit Event Planning

No matter what type or size of organization you work with, nonprofit event planning is a massive undertaking that might seem impossible at first. But we assure you that when you leverage the right tech tools, planning your next event can be a breeze. 

After all, as the great Nelson Mandela once said: "It always seems impossible until it's done."

That's why proper planning and preparation are the most critical aspects of any successful event. After all, when you're dealing with large crowds of people, there's no telling what sort of incidents might occur.

Therefore, organizations must take the time to plan for virtually any contingencies before their event takes place.

Fortunately, you can use many tools, tips, and tricks to ensure your next event is a hit.

Below, we're exploring nonprofit event planning best practices to help give your organization a leg up for its next fundraising event.

Why Proper Nonprofit Event Planning Is Crucial For Nonprofit

When you or your organization coordinate any form of significant, public, or private event, you must consider dozens of external factors.

And while your next non-profit event isn't likely to experience any significant problems, it's still important to be aware of potential issues. After all, many uncertainties come with dealing with crowds.

Therefore, your organization must take the time to plan and prepare for its next upcoming event properly.

The Benefits Of Planning A Fundraising Event For Nonprofits

Aside from your obvious goal of raising money, many beautiful benefits come hand-in-hand with planning a fundraising event in your community. Let's review just a few of the benefits you will experience when your organization puts time and effort into its nonprofit event planning process. 

Increasing Awareness For Your Cause

Often, raising awareness for a social cause, such as sick children or homelessness, is as, if not more important than any funds you might raise. Unfortunately, the current pace of modern society means that marginalized individuals are often left in the shadows without anyone to speak up for them.

Aside from fundraising, raising awareness around a cause at nonprofit events is one of the best ways your organization can make a difference. The platform you have at these events can educate and inform others about an important aspect of society that needs attention.

Connecting With Your Volunteers And Donors

While your event is most likely geared towards a specific cause, such as raising money or increasing awareness, organizations should also think of their next event as a way to give back to those who give to them.

Almost every nonprofit consists of a motivated network of staff and volunteers who give their time, energy, and effort to help the organization achieve its goals.

Whether your event is a picnic day at the park, a training session, or any other type of event surrounding a common cause, it can also be your way of showing your givers that you recognize and appreciate their efforts.

In other words, the nonprofit event planning process should include ideas and strategies that will highlight the hard work and efforts of the volunteers who make it happen. 

Growing Your Brand Recognition

While your primary goal is likely to raise money and awareness for a particular issue, planning a nonprofit event has the dual benefit of helping your organization make a name for itself in your community.

By advertising and inviting community members to your event, your brand will surely gain a bit of notoriety in the community while simultaneously fighting the good fight.

In other words, nonprofit event planning can also be used within the much larger scope of growing your organizations and increasing brand recognition. 

Gaining New Corporate Sponsors Through Nonprofit Event Planning

In addition to the community members who will learn about your organization when you coordinate an event, other local businesses and corporations are also likely to note.

Proper nonprofit event planning is necessary to ensure that your event is flawless and as professional as possible. This will showcase your ability to be organized, transparent, and dedicated to the cause. 

Your current corporate partners might send representatives to the event to track who attended and donated, so hosting a successful event is important. Also, you might have the heads of other local businesses showing up, which could lead to new corporate allies and sponsors from within your community if they're impressed with the event coordination.

6 Effective Ways To Ensure An A+ Nonprofit Event

Now that we've covered the benefits of nonprofit event planning, let's go over what you can do to ensure your event is as flawless as possible.

#1 - Defining SMART Goals For Your Nonprofit Event Planning Process

SMART goals and objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

SMART goals are recommended because they can help set your non-profit event up for success. SMART goals can help your organization better visualize its goals and why you are planning such fundraising events in the first place.

Furthermore, using SMART goals can also help nonprofit organizations measure their progress throughout the event planning process through to the execution.

Golden's volunteer management software is your best friend when creating SMART goals and tracking your progress.

With Golden, your non-profit organization can seamlessly track a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, such as impact footprint produced, volunteer hours contributed, and state-specific or skills-specific tax value of volunteer time, giving you a bird's eye view of how effective your fundraising event efforts are.

#2 - Identifying Your Target Audience

You'll want to have as many people as possible attend your event. However, like in branding and marketing, not every customer or event participant is created equal.

Therefore, during the nonprofit event planning process, you'll want to identify precisely who you're trying to attract to your event.

For instance, if your primary goal is to raise awareness, you'll want to attract as many people to your event as possible, no matter who they are. However, if your primary goal is to raise money, you'll likely want to gear your event planning process toward attracting donors and corporate sponsors rather than everyday people. 

Fortunately, Golden can help you create a robust outreach process, where you'll be able to attract the correct type of people by sharing your event links via social media or any other communication channel, where your existing and eligible new participants can find the link and sign up instantly - all while giving you live tracking into who invited whom, who participated, and how much they contributed.

#3 - Planning Out The Event Itself

The most important aspect of the nonprofit event planning process is to chalk out the day of the event.

You'll want to work out all the specifics, such as the event date, duration, venue/location, guest list, ticketing, donation process, etc. When you list an opportunity on Golden, we will collect all of this info in a few seconds, whether the event is online, in person, on-your-own time, or another format.

When you use Golden’s  Day of Service portal, you also can invite corporate hosts, assign lead contacts, attach waivers and other documents, or create and outline custom opportunities by setting the date, duration, location, time slots, and more.

#4 - Recruiting Your Volunteers

Like the participants who attend your event, you'll want to attract, invite, and recruit the correct type of volunteer to help you achieve your organizational goals. 

Therefore, one of the most important aspects of the nonprofit event planning process is attracting and recruiting volunteers to your organization. 

Once again, Golden provides you with the right tools to make volunteer recruitment as simple as possible.

With Golden's integrated volunteer management platform, you'll have the power to create custom groups, where you recruit volunteers, add, remove, and manage your group participants, or message volunteers as a group, offering you a seamless way to manage your volunteer recruitment process.

#5 - Marketing And Promoting Fundraising Events

Once you have all the details ironed out, it's time to get busy with marketing and promoting your event.

Golden makes it easy to create opportunities and generate custom links that you can share with potential participants and volunteers via email, Facebook, Twitter, or SMS. These links will collect signups in seconds from eligible participants, whether or not they have had a preexisting relationship with your organization.

But the best part is that you'll also be able to track your promotional efforts in real-time via Deep Influence.

Deep Influence is our award-winning, proprietary tracking technology that allows you to see who signs up through your shared links, how many volunteer hours contributed, and how much money you raise, and all in real-time.

#6 - Creating A Post-Event Plan

Even after your last event participant has gone home, there's still work to be done. For instance, it's a good idea to think of a few volunteer appreciation ideas that you can implement to thank your volunteers for their help.

Golden enables you to do all this and much more when you leverage our volunteer management software. In the end, you'll be leveraging the same technology that you need to effectively manage, plan, execute, track, and follow up on the success of your next fundraising event.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s former COO, gave Golden’s platform the thumbs-up, saying she just loved the idea behind it! Why not give it a try and improve how you plan events?

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Key Takeaways For Better Nonprofit Event Planning

#1 - Learning From Your Past Events

Every time your organization plans and executes an event, it gives you an ideal opportunity to learn.

This is especially true when you use Golden's integrated platform to track your performance metrics, which can be followed, reviewed, and recorded for all your future event planning needs.

Here at Golden, we understand the importance of adequately planning and coordinating your next engagement or fundraising event. 

Therefore, we've made it our primary goal to help nonprofit organizations make the most of every event they undertake.

#2 - Surveying Your Volunteers, Donors, And Corporate Sponsors

Finally, we recommend creating a follow-up plan to ask for feedback from those who've attended your event. Golden provides you automated tools to collect reflections, star ratings, impact contributed, pictures taken, and more!

Doing this can give your organization great insight into its performance and help nurture the ongoing relationships you build with your volunteers, donors, and corporate sponsors.

#3 - Leveraging The Best Volunteer Management Solutions

Previously, nonprofits struggled to plan, promote and execute fundraising events effectively. No dedicated volunteer management solutions or software applications were available to help facilitate the act of volunteerism.

However, today, Golden is easily accessible to virtually any nonprofit organization looking to make the most of its next event. And Golden is designed to provide you with the best-in-class solutions for corporate and community volunteerism, all from the most award winning volunteer management software provider in the world.

Enhancing The Nonprofit Event Planning Process With Golden

In the end, nonprofit event management is something that organizations must take seriously if they want to run their events and meet their goals and objectives effectively.

So whether you work with a local charity, NPO, community service center, or any other volunteer-based organization, Golden is your go-to software for making the most of your next charity event.

Here at Golden, our goal is to work with nonprofits, providing them with the precise tools and features needed to make the event planning process and local volunteerism events as seamless as possible.

After all, as the great Henry Ford once said: "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success."