Do you run events in order to fundraise for your organisation?

Jade McKenzie recently ran an astoundingly successful movie night fundraiser through Eventarc for her non-profit organisation.  When we say astounding, we mean 400 tickets sold in under a week!  We thought all our customers might benefit from understanding how Jade was able to pull this off, so we asked her for some tips.

Can you tell us a little about the Warwick Foundation?

The Warwick Foundation is Australia’s first and only organisation that supports young adults aged 18 – 40 years old on their cancer journey. Our main program is called ‘Mates In My Shoes’ where we link the newly diagnosed with survivors to form a support network. I encourage you to go to our website and read our members stories.

What are your main fundraising strategies?

Our fundraising mainly comes through events. We hold a minimum of three official events per year and we aim to do events that are fun, uplifting and that people want to come back to.

How you raise funds profitably via events?

Running events is definitely profitable if you do it right. The key is to keep the overheads low whilst charging attendees a fair price for the benefits they receive.

You mainly raise money through the entry fee but you also raise funds through the little add ons such as raffles, silent auctions, food and drink stalls, collection tins etc. There are many cost effective ways to encourage people to give up their loose change which definitely adds up!

You recently ran a movie night fundraiser which was very successful. How did you get such a great outcome?

To get such a great outcome I had to identify what my target market was going to be, what movie they would want to see and how I could make this event feel exclusive. I must have picked the right movie because our two screenings sold out in about a week!

If you want to run a movie night for your own organisation or hold any sort of fundraising event, you need to choose something that people in your database can identify with and will want to come to.

From there, you decide what benefits you would like to offer them to encourage them to pick your event over another organisations. In this case we had gift bags worth more than the ticket price, champagne and canapés and the opportunity to win raffle and spot prizes worth up to $1,100. Pretty good for the price of a movie ticket!

Why did you choose to use online registration, and how was the experience?

I had always manually processed movie night payments in the past and I knew that there had to be a better solution. I looked at a number of services, both Australian and International, and found that Eventarc was the one that suited my needs perfectly.

Using Eventarc was a great user experience. The fact that you can tailor it to suit your needs means that you have the freedom to run your event the way you want to. The reporting function was something that I used many a time and never failed to impress me.

When I had some technical queries it took less than an hour (sometimes less than 5 minutes!) for someone to get back to me!

This was definitely something I haven’t experienced with many of my service providers in the past.

You would be silly not to use Eventarc for your next event.

What advice would you give others considering running a fundraising event?

Do your database research! Your database is made up of many different types of people and they will want to go to different things. Identify your biggest markets and work with it. Make sure that you have a variety of events so people will attend at least one event a year which will help cement that relationship between them and your cause.

What events have you got coming up that people should keep an eye out for?

Our third annual gala is on Friday 8th October at the Peninsula, Docklands and this is definitely one to keep an eye out for! With our famous celebrity shoe auction, our silent auction, a three course dinner and music from one of the hottest bands in Melbourne you definitely won’t want to miss out!

Anything else we should know that you would like to share?

Just that I am in love with Eventarc!