Happy Holidays, everyone! As 2021 winds down, what fundraising advice should you take with you into the new year? In 2022, I want you to focus on the nuts and bolts of your event.
The most important thing you can do for your 2022 event is to use the right tool for the job. Last month I told you to have an event spare tire, a backup plan if something changes at the last minute. But what good is a spare tire if the jack is so complicated nobody knows how to lift the car up?
When it comes to your gala, whether hybrid, virtual, or in-person, you need the right tool for the job. That tool is your giving software platform. A lot of things are new and quirky due to the pandemic and we have tried many different giving platforms these past two years. A complicated giving software can bungle up the back end of an already stressful event, especially if it’s not the right tool for the job.
The wrong tool for the job is software that:
Makes you build the event around the software, not around your message or your organization. This event is about your agency and the people you serve. We want to make you shine. But if we have to build the event to work with the giving software, well, that puts your organization out of the limelight and gets confusing for donors in a hurry.
Makes it hard for people to donate, bid, or participate in the festivities. Virtual galas are already new to a lot of people. Let’s keep them focused on one thing at a time instead of giving them multiple instructions and hoping the audience gets it.
Only fits one aspect of your event: it works great for Live auctions but makes giving directly to your organization in your appeal or Fund-A-Need needlessly difficult or complicated.
creates a whole new learning curve for everyone involved in the back-end production of the event. Don’t get me wrong, we are happy to work with new platforms so long as the software can do what we need it to do in an easy and timely fashion during the gala.
That level of don’ts would make it seem hard to figure out any kind of solution. But in this instance, we recommend using Greater Giving for your fundraising software. They’re the perfect tools! Wait, no. We’re not saying they’re a bunch of tools, we’re saying they’re a reliable service that we highly recommend. Not only do they have a resource library, but they’re also a total one-stop shop for virtual events, including online bidding, auction, and fundraising. *Greater Giving can set you up for a LIVE or VIRTUAL or HYBRID event that fits your needs as an agency and takes into account that hey, you don’t have all the time in the world to learn new software. It’s important for you to build the giving event you want to showcase, not an event that’s beholden to a complicated giving platform.
You can use a spoon to dig, but we all know a shovel will be faster. Unless you’re Andy Dufresne and have all the time in the world, use the right tool for the job!
The bottom line is that your event is about two things: highlighting the great work you do, and raising funds to keep doing it. You need software that will let you do both of those things.
*The great people at Greater Giving didn’t pay us to call them tools, we share the word-play love freely!