The first step for a successful event is to define a compelling cause, assemble your campaign committee and establish a budget and goals.

 

Define A Compelling Cause

Your cause needs to be carefully thought out in order to motivate your community to both participate and to encourage their friends and family to donate.  Make it inspiring. It’s your opportunity to publicize awareness and spur community involvement. Your event cause statement will be incorporated into marketing materials, your website and your content assets for your fundraiser.

In summary, your cause statement needs to answer the questions: Why should people participate and Why should people give?

 

Assemble Your Campaign Committee

A successful event is not executed by one person alone. There are people in your organization and in your community who can assist you. Think about who would have a stake in this process -- include staff members, board members, and/or volunteers.

 

Decide who would be best to be responsible for each role in managing the campaign? Brainstorm names and place them in suitable roles (see list of roles below). Roles labeled with stars are essential to your campaign; the others are optional, but still nice to have represented. The same person can fill more than one role.

 

CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR (optional): Ultimately responsible for the entire campaign.

EVENT COORDINATOR (optional): Responsible for executing the actual event, if this is not a virtual event.

CHEERLEADER or COMMUNITY LEADER (optional): Someone who will drum up excitement in your community.

BOARD REPRESENTATIVE: A board member who will motivate the other board members to participant and fundraise.

COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Staff or volunteer to manage and execute all promotions using all social media tools at their disposal to recruit team and individual participants, publicize to potential event sponsors and keep the buzz going about the event.

VOLUNTEER MANAGER: Staff or volunteer to recruit and manage all volunteers the day of the event.

 

 

Establish a Budget: What Will Your Campaign Cost?

Costs can vary substantially between event to event and organization to

organization due to the venue for the event.

The Wizathon platform includes a branded event website, integrated online event registration, unlimited participant personal fundraising pages and has no upfront costs. The credit card and Wizathon platform processing costs are based on a small percentage of the amount raised. The processing costs can actually be offset by setting up mandatory fees for registration and/or giving the option for participants and sponsors to cover the processing fees during checkout.

In order to reach enough participants (fundraisers) and potential donors, you’ll need to promote your campaign. Costs may include:

To help recruit and train your top fundraisers or team captains, often, organizations will host a small kickoff “event”. This can be held at your offices or a local coffee shop. Costs may include:

In order to encourage fundraisers, many organizations offer prizes to top

fundraisers, top teams, fundraisers with the most sponsors, etc..  Costs would include the cost of the incentive prizes

Establish Goals and Project Revenue

The revenue generated from the event from participation fees, event sponsors and participant sponsors will cover the event costs and your fundraising goal.

The fundraising goals established should be based on realistic achievable goals. These numbers could be estimated using past year historical event numbers. If this is the first year for the event, you may need to be more conservative with your projection and spending.

Once you define your cause, choose your committee, and establish your budget & goals, you will want to decide on your event date, location and event logistics.