11 Ways You Are Losing Money at Your Charity Event
The money you raise for your charity is valuable, so why would you not want to increase the overall success of your event by making the process more efficient? (Not to mention, rake in more cash at the same time).
Whether this is the first charity event you’re planning or the hundredth, you may be unaware of the hidden potential in maximizing your fundraising efforts.
Here are 11 (of many) common ways event managers tend to lose money (as well as the one quick fix that can solve all your problems!)
Spending too much time making spreadsheets.
One of the major components of working on a charity event, golf tournament or otherwise, is making sure everything is organized for the day of the event. Let’s use golf tournaments as an example: if you are playing at a course, you will need to provide them with detailed information about the tee positions, registrants/golfers and anything additional they may want included. By making these spreadsheets yourself, you have less time to outbound to prospective sponsors and ultimately raise more money. That brings us to #2…
Not spending enough time selling sponsors.
There are many reasons that you wouldn’t be spending enough time selling sponsorship packages when you really should be, and most of these relate to lack of efficiency. Essentially, all the time you spend doing other things (that could be made simpler with that one quick fix) is time that you are not spending marketing your event.
Not getting enough money for your sponsorship packages.
Sponsors are willing to spend more money if they are getting tons of value (and to companies that means increased visibility of their brand). Without a website that you can share to your networks, the sponsor logo placement is limited to the day of the event and possibly mailed flyers. Imagine having a high-quality website where the sponsor logos can take up prominent residence—and how much value that adds to the sponsorship package!
Not accepting credit card payments.
Again, this is another example of limiting your registrants. Really, who doesn’t prefer to pay by credit card these days? Unmatched convenience, automatic invoices and confirmation emails are just a couple of the high points for registrants, but just think of the benefits to you, the event manager.
Spending money mailing.
Those costs add up. What if you didn’t need to mail anything? Like, at all? That would be pretty convenient, wouldn’t it?
Wasting time at committee meetings.
This is not to say there isn’t some value in having a committee for your event—there are some great bonding opportunities there! However, if you implement an efficient enough tool, you can cut back a lot of hours on deliberation and spend more time (you guessed it!) promoting your event and selling actual sponsorships.
Taking inbound calls from registrants rather than actively out-bounding sponsors.
You CAN in fact eliminate most registrant issues with an easier-to-use system that includes help files and customer service.
Manually hunting for sponsor logos.
Imagine if your sponsors could just automatically include their logo in their registration. That would make marketing so much easier. Now, take that a step further, and imagine that as soon as sponsors upload their logo all it will take on your part is the click of a button to have their image displayed prominently on a customized event site.
Not offering unique registration items.
Offering a variety of registration items is huge—it gives people multiple options of packages that they may be interested in, which ultimately means more registrations and more money. This requires some brainstorming, figuring out exactly what you plan to offer for each registrant/sponsor, and having the flexibility to change things as the needs shift.
Being boxed into your flyer.
Going off on that same note, keep in mind that mail-out flyers are stagnant. Once it’s sent, it’s sent. No opportunity to tweak items as you see fit—and this includes increasing the price even if the value happens to increase.
Not having a vehicle to market your fundraising events.
There is so much efficiency in having all your event information in one place. By creating an online presence through a website, you will have a hub for all event details: information about your charity, times, location & event contacts, sponsorship packages available for purchase, a place for people to donate to the cause and to top it all off, a way for people to pay for their purchases right onsite.
Not to mention the fact that websites are easily share-able and can increase the visibility of your charity tournament. By creating an event website with BirdEase, all your problems regarding efficiency will be solved.