Awhile back we reported on Seth Godin’s rant against fundraising events. And I confess The Agitator leaned toward Godin’s point of view, though we waffled a bit. That post generated quite a few comments — pro and con.
So we feel duty bound to bring you attention to this successful fundraising event — for the Humane Society for Southwest Washington. The event attracted more than 700 people and netted $500,000. Yes, the news article says ‘netted’!
That sounds like a decent evening to me. Then the article notes that the previous year’s event raised nearly $1.2 million, but that included a $400k match from local biz owners.
Apparently live and silent auctions played a key role, with more than 300 items up for grabs in the silent auction.
How was this pulled off? “More than 40 sponsors, both individuals and businesses, contributed more than $100,000 to underwrite the event that was put on by a team of 150 volunteers and staff.”
No question about it … events are really hard work. And the questions raised by Godin are appropriate.
But Seth … this sure sounds like a tribe-building event to me.
Tom
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Wasn’t Godin’s point, particularly about fundraising dinners? With a dinner, you can pull that off without any volunteers. In my opinion what was done in this fundraiser that you highlighted, was TOTALLY different. It engaged volunteers. In fact, in engaged a ton of them for the event. In my mind, when you have that many volunteers active in an event, there’s no wonder that it raised the money it did. On top of that, not only volunteers were engaged, but business’ took advantage to get their name out there.