Education for Event Planners = Everyone Wins!
A quick look at our successful Non-profit Events Mini CON 2025. Video by: Tideway Creative
At Synchronicity, we love digging into design, strategy, planning and production to build our clients awesome events. However, our *greater intention* is that nonprofit organizations (yes, all of them) are able to lift their events up to the next level.
With the strong headwinds that the nonprofit sector is facing, we’ve been trying harder than ever to give away all our secrets. It’s so important to create places and spaces where fundraising event planners can gather, network, and share their winning strategies, so everyone can win.
Read on for some big, recent highlights from Synchronicity’s education efforts.
The Mini-CON: Engaging Your Board Of Directors in Your Fundraising Event
In January 2025, we helped to produce, host, and lead the first annual Nonprofit Events Mini-CON (which Synchronicity Events produced in collaboration with GFS Events, Kind + Company Events, and EP Events LLC). Awesome support from our events industry partners, including Block 41, Tuxedos and Tennis Shoes, Live Oak Audio Visual, our emcee Sasha Summer Cousineau, Creature Coffee, Greater Giving, Alabastro Photo, Tideway Creative and more allowed us to welcome over 80 nonprofit fundraising event planners for a half-day of incredible conversations, educational sessions, networking and mutual encouragement.
Big thanks to the special guest for my education session, Anita Hale of Operation Nightwatch. Anita and I led a discussion titled “Board Members: Your New Event MVPs” - sharing savvy approaches and shortcuts to get your Board of Directors effectively engaged to help create a successful fundraising event.
Anita Hale and Alex Martin join forces on stage. Photo by: Alabastro Photography
AFP Advancement Northwest: A Non-Toxic Approach to Event Planning
At the AFP Advancement Northwest Conference at McCaw Hall in June, we brought an educational session - "Thrive (While Producing Your Annual Fundraising Event)!" A topic near and dear to our event-producing hearts. Alex Martin, along with superstar special guests Ashley Haugen and Anica Enriquez from El Centro de la Raza, shared our best tips to create an event process that’s people-centric and sustainable, removing bad habits that lead to burnout and toxicity.
Alex with El Centro de la Raza’s Ashley and Anica took the stage and combined forces at the AFP Advancement Northwest Conference.
Northwest Event Show
Three years running (2023, ‘24 and ‘25), we’ve been a part of a great educational effort at the Northwest Event Show, appearing in panel discussions about (what else?) nonprofit fundraising events. It’s always so fun to field questions from the attendees at NWES, who are a broad mix of nonprofiteers, event planners, and event industry professionals of all stripes. The next iteration of Northwest Event Show is coming up and you can catch Alex Martin in the panel on Thursday, March 27, 2025!
Sasha Summer Cousineau (far left) hosted the panel of four amazing owners of non-profit event planning companies.
Genius at Work - Ongoing!
As you may know, we host a monthly Meetup on Zoom for nonprofit fundraising event planners. We call it "Genius at Work", and it’s been running strong for over two years now.
This is an open, welcoming meeting where fundraising event planners find their people! Genius at Work is a positive, open space for folks to gather on Zoom, discuss curiosities, explore new ideas, destroy harmful practices, support and encourage each other, and help all our events rise up to the next level.
Non profit event planners get together to learn best practices, share challenges, and workshop ideas on Zoom.
Lately we’ve been seeing tons of NEW people in these Meetups. The magic really starts to flow when we explore event strategies from nonprofits across all parts of the ‘nonprofit-sphere’, working on issues, event styles, and in communities that are deliciously diverse. At Genius at Work, the assumptions about “what works” and “what matters” in events may sound surprising. We can all cross-pollinate and learn from each other.
If you’re interested in joining a future Genius at Work meetup, or hiring our event strategy experts for an educational session or a consulting meeting, please email us at hello@synchronicity-events.com.
It's a volatile world right now, and we can only grow our skills, our effectiveness, and our resilience in community ... let's keep growing and thriving together.
