Your event is over and you have a new pool of donors that have been introduced to your organization. How do you turn this group of one-time supporters into long-term advocates and donors? Download Event 360's new white paper to learn how to build your donor pipeline by identifying, engaging, qualifying and cultivating your event donors.

1. 4 steps
to Converting
Event Donors to
Organizational
Donors
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2. Summary sm
With fundraising event participation increasing, it’s time to utilize those events to
bring new donors to the organization. A fundraising event is not an end in and of itself;
it holds the potential to significantly expand an organization’s traditional fundraising
pipelines. A strategic approach can convert event donors into annual fund, major
and planned gift donors.
The typical event participant secures a
Q Should I be converting my event participants instead
of event donors into organizational donors?
minimum of three to four donors for an
organization 1, but organizations often
make the mistake of dismissing this type of
A
Spending significant time engaging event participants is philanthropy as merely tangential. While
vital. However, there is a tremendous untapped opportunity it is often the case that an event donor’s
in event donors who have already demonstrated their motivation to support an organization is
support through a monetary donation. secondary to that of supporting the event
participant, this is by no means a reason to
disregard such individuals. In fact, donor motivations can be changed - from having
an affinity to participant to having an affinity to cause and organization.
Treat event donors the same way you would treat a friend of a friend. The burden is
on you to pursue a deeper relationship and engage them outside of their relationship
with the event participant. If you do not take the first step, chances are the relationship
will never move beyond their support of the event participant.
Q Is there really a difference between
an event donor and an organizational donor?
A
Absolutely! There is a significant difference in the motivation
behind supporting a friend/colleague/loved one versus
supporting a mission that one is personally passionate about.
An event donor is more likely to stop supporting an organization
if their link to the event participant is terminated, while an
organizational donor is not dependent upon a third party.
EVENT DONORS ORGANIZATIONAL DONORS
May have little knowledge of your mission Likely to have first-hand knowledge of your mission
Motivation to support resulting from Personal connection to the organization
a third party
10-12 months of engagement and cultivation Already engaged with your mission;
investment may be required to convert requires cultivation only
May need to cultivate their passion for your Organizational mission in sync with donor passion
cause, then your mission
Gift amount not indicative of capacity or Gift amount likely to be an expression of actual
inclination due to low typical event capacity/inclination
solicitation threshold
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3. “A fundraising
event is not
an end in and
of itself”

4. 1 IDENTIFY sm
Capture all the information that can possibly be captured from event donor checks,
credit card receipts, online giving forms and other related correspondence and
code this information in your database. Online giving forms are perhaps the easiest
to implement – simply add a drop-down field at the end of the transaction process
where the donor can answer a question such as: “Please tell us why you support our
organization.” Similarly, data collection for offline gifts is not as complicated as it
may seem – whether your organization processes event gifts internally or utilizes
an external lockbox facility, start by examining the relevant existing processes and
Avoid using only open workflows and adjust them accordingly.
ended answers. These
are a data collection The minimal up-front effort it may take to capture this extra information will pay
nightmare! Keeping things off. It is best to work closely with your IS/T team to identify the best places to store
consistent will keep you
these invaluable nuggets of data in order to avoid running into data extraction
and your staff sane.
issues down the line; this will likely require the utilization of a few unused fields in
your database.
A new event donor file should be pulled from your database on an ongoing basis
(weekly at most, monthly at least) for wealth screening, data collection and statistical
analysis. Do not wait until after the event is over - regular wealth screenings and
data collection on your new event donors allow for real-time segmentation and
timely research on individuals who surface in the top percentiles of each segment.
Coordinate with your event fundraising team’s efforts to ensure that communications
from your organization are in sync and you are not overlapping efforts.
Using the particular capacity and inclination
characteristics of your organization’s existing
major, annual and planned gift prospect pools,
each event donor can be assigned as a prospect
Q What is wealth screening?
A
to one of these giving populations and a ranking Wealth screening takes your database and
can be applied within each group to be used identifies donors with the best ability and
later in the process in driving outreach priority. propensity to give, setting you on track to focus
Further segmenting your event donors based your efforts on the best prospects for each
on known educational and/or professional solicitation. Prospect research centers such as
background, interests, etc. can be very useful as Wealth Engine can help you with this research.
you begin to engage these individuals.
c apac i ty and i nc li nati o n p r o fi le
Major Gifts Annual Gift Planned Gift
known e duc at i onal and profe s s i onal backgr o u n d
Sample Finance Medicine Entrepreneur
Event Donor known i n ter ests
Segmentation Fine Arts

5. sm
ENGAGE 2
You already know that a fundamental element of successful event fundraising
is ongoing participant engagement: don’t stop communicating to your event
participants just because the event is over! The same applies to your event donors.
Given the somewhat tenuous relationship event donors have with your organization,
extending the same engagement practices as you would to your participants is critical
to building long-term relationships. In fact, proactive engagement is even more
critical since these donors are likely to know much less about your organization - a
perfect opportunity for you to educate them about your mission and demonstrate
good stewardship of their investment.
Recognizing the difference between event donors and existing organizational
donors, a unique engagement strategy must be executed for the former. To use an
8-10 is just a guideline.
analogy, if your event participants, annual fund, major and planned gift donors What’s more important
were your family, they would be your brothers and sisters; event donors would be than quantity is the
your cousins from Paris. The latter are related to you, but somewhat more distant, quality of the
and requiring a nuanced communication style. communication.
Show the donor that
Within this unique engagement strategy it is important that communications are you want to get to know
tailored to reflect the event and participant that the donor supported. 2 A series of them. You’re NOT making
eight to ten communications should be sent, each referencing the fundraising an ask, you’re setting the
stage for the ask.
progress of the individual supported as well as the success of the event itself. The
message should also connect the mission of the event - raising funds - with the
mission of the larger organization. When possible, the message should also reflect
the way the donor was introduced to the organization. The communications should
include a pre-defined mix of media and content, letters, emails, phone calls,
postcards, etc. and should contain both quantitative and qualitative educational
information about the impact of the event on your organization. Keep in mind that
the purpose of the communications is purely for the sake of drawing the event
donor’s interest further into the organization and priming for cultivation; this is not
the time for solicitation.
Sample Engagement Plan for Event Donors
who fall into Major Gift cultivation strategy
30 w ks 3 w ks
En gagem en t L etter #3 I nt roduc t i on Le t t e r
27 w ks 6 w ks
P h on e c a l l # 2 with fo l low-u p n ote Hand-wri t t e n not e wi t h re le va n t i n s ert
24 w ks 9 w ks
Em ail u pdate #2 E mai l updat e
21 w ks 12 w ks
H a nd -w r itte n n ote with rel evan t in sert Phone c all wi t h follow- up note
18 w ks 15 w ks
En gagem en t L etter #2 Postc ard updat e re : t he e ve nt
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6. sm
Unique content should be developed for each communication, primarily driven by
the giving segment that the event donor has been assigned to in the identification
stage. Event donors that are segmented into your major gift cultivation strategy might
receive content that is written in a more sophisticated fashion, hand-written notes
and information that is more personalized than annual fund pieces, while planned
gift prospect communications might contain words and images that would appeal
to this age constituency. Within each segment, consider further segmenting and
tailoring the content to speak to prospects’ known educational and/or professional
background, interests, etc.
It may become necessary to
address and assuage event
participant concerns about your
Q Will event donors stop supporting events and
participants if they start supporting my Annual Fund?
A
organization engaging “their” Not if you engage your event donors in the right way and
supporters. Should this occur, connect them to your mission. According to research
engage your participants in your compiled by True Sense, a direct marketing firm, donors who
post-event cultivation strategy are subsequently engaged by an organization’s annual fund
and utilize their knowledge and who respond to annual fund solicitations, end up being
of their donors to help you stronger organizational supporters overall.
identify and properly engage
their donors in your mission. Your event participants have done a lot for your
organization, continue to engage them in your efforts and use their passion for
your work to craft stronger messages to their donors. Also, reiterate that a donor is
implicitly opting in to receive communications from your organization by making
a gift to your organization (unless the donor specifies otherwise when making the
gift). At the time that an event gift is made, organizations may wish to proactively
ask event donors to opt out (or opt in) to future communications.
By the time the event is over, these donors are already well into the engagement
cycle. You haven’t asked them for a gift yet, but they are more educated about your
organization, what you do and how their donation to your event is making an impact
on the world.
Qualify & Cultivate 3
A number of people will begin to respond to
Q This is a great strategy, but how do I
get the rest of my non-event staff on board?
your engagement strategy, self-identifying as
prospects. While cultivation should commence
immediately for these individuals, a qualification
A
Training, education and leadership. With any strategy should be deployed for the remaining
new strategies and tactics, you want to get your people, beginning with those individuals who
colleagues’ and your leadership’s support from the scored in the highest data modeling percentiles.
beginning. Engage them by making them part of the Each possible prospect should be assigned
process from the start and using all your available to a major, annual or planned gift officer
tools to demonstrate the positive outcomes of responsible for making personal contact and
engaging event donors. qualifying each individual within 4-6 weeks.
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7. Cultivation Tip: A set of criteria, created with your development department, should be established
and used to qualify event donors as legitimate prospects for the pre-identified
It’s Not pool (e.g. Major Gifts), someone that should be transferred to another pool (e.g.
Annual Fund instead of Major Gifts), or an event donor that should be disqualified
Just for
completely.
Once qualification has occurred, cultivation can begin. Whereas the engagement
Donors!
phase focused on educating the event donor while deliberately excluding any type
of solicitation, the cultivation stage is focused on personalizing their experience
and providing a subtle call to action. To this end, communications should now
elicit an emotional response and take on a sense of urgency while continuing to
You may know very little weave in the name of the event and the participant that the event donor initially
about the mysteries supported, tying these into a new opportunity to make an additional impact beyond
of your organizational the event. The purpose of cultivation is, after all, getting to know these individuals
donors’ motivations beyond their initial transaction, obtaining their trust, and making the case for why
they should support your organization over another.
to support your
organization. However, A critical part of any cultivation phase is actually meeting the potential donor in
you possess at least person, giving your organization a human face and reinforcing a personal level
one valuable piece of of attention and connection. This becomes an even more important reality when
working with event donors due to the distance between them and your organization.
information about every
Consider hosting on-site cultivation events for each giving segment, tailoring
event donor’s motivation:
the content of each event to the audience you are inviting. Inspiring speakers
an event participant and organizational leadership should be a part of each event, as well as existing
asked them to do so! organizational donors who were once strictly event donors. Consider inviting
Leverage this information event participants to the cultivation event as well, acting as ambassadors to the
by cultivating your event organization.
participants. Steward
your event participants
as you would your
most well-connected
trustees; they are there
to open doors for you
and may be willing to
help secure long-term
relationships with your
event donors. Give your
participants recognition
for their assistance and
find meaningful ways
to reward them for
helping you to develop
relationships.
The qualification and cultivation phase should continue until you feel that the prospect
is ready to be solicited. The ultimate goal is to make repeated personal contact and, in
doing so, match your event donors’ philanthropic passions with your mission.
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8. sm
CONVERT 4
The event donor has been introduced to your organization, you have signaled a
clear interest in furthering the relationship by planting the seeds of engagement and
you have cultivated the relationship. Now comes the moment of truth: will the event
donor convert and, if so, will the conversion take place as you had planned and
built your goals around? The only way to find out is to ask! If appropriate, consider
involving the event participant who introduced the prospect to your organization.
As with all charitable gift solicitation, listening to your prospect is the best way
to know when they are ready to make the conversion from event donor to
organizational donor. Making a solicitation that will result in the conversion from
event to organizational donor requires the same level of segmented, customized
communication that occurred earlier on in the process. For example, an event donor
that was earlier identified as an Annual Fund prospect could be asked to continue
their support by joining your organization’s monthly giving society, using language
that complements the event they initially supported, e.g. a walkathon supporter can
be asked to “go the extra mile” by joining your monthly giving program.
CONCLUSION
By identifying, engaging, qualifying, cultivating and converting event donors, an
organization fully leverages its event participants’ networks to build new
donor pipelines.
Doing so will likely require an investment in education and training in order to shift
the current culture of fundraising staff and event participants.
A long-term commitment
Q How is post-event engagement of donors
currently being practiced in the market?
from leadership as well as
a blend of best fundraising
A
We talked to one major organization that piloted a
major event donor cultivation effort that generated
positive results. practices must come together
The amount of resources required to implement in order to successfully launch
a pilot conversion strategy for your organization
pales in comparison to the potential return on
a conversion program,
investment if even a small number of incremental the financial impact of which will only be
new major, planned and annual gifts are secured as realized in the years (not months) following its
a result of the conversion effort. implementation.
1
http://www.event360.com/assets/files/jointheracerwr2010.pdf
2
http://nten.peachnewmedia.com/streaming/interface-v7.php?topic=23423&band=1&stream=1&id=&semid=7328&provider=341&custid=71112&static=1
This white paper was produced by Event 360, in collaboration with Troy A. Finn, Assistant Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Development at Columbia University Medical Center.
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9. We’re donating 5% of our
time each week to help
organizations achieve
their missions.
office hours
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Email us at fundraising@event360.com to set up your one-hour pro bono
consulting session with Jeff Shuck or one of our other fundraising consultants.
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