How to Fundraise BEFORE Your Fundraising Event

Hello, courageous fundraisers! In today’s post, we’re going to share a little event fundraising secret our most successful clients are already using. Don’t leave the dollars to chance! The funds raised ‘organically’ during your event will always be the very smallest slice of your income budget-pie. 

An accurate event income budget should add up to your revenue gross goal (we’ll cover the expense side of your budget in a future blog post). In many cases, your event income budget will include the following lines, and we’ve provided some healthy ranges for the percentage that each line should be allocated:

Budget lines to complete BEFORE the event:

• Corporate Partners (secured in advance), aka Event Sponsorships: 50 - 75% of the goal

• Tickets and Table Sales (sold in advance), aka Registration (some events are done with complimentary registration for all, which is why the range goes down to zero for this one): 0 - 25% of the goal*

• Donations Pledged or Secured in advance (some organizations call this the Challenge Pool, others just consider these gifts ‘pre-committed’, but in either case these are direct and clear conversations you’ve had with donors before the date of the event with the result that you know what the donor plans to give. In some cases, you’ve already received these gifts but will be ‘counting’ them towards the event goal): 15 - 30% of the goal

In total, your pre-event fundraising work should bring in 75 - 85% of the gross revenue goal for your event.

Budget lines to complete DURING the event:

• “Organic” Direct Donations at the Event (non-pre-pledged gifts, whether through live mobile giving, pledge cards, or paddle-raise style): 10 - 20% of the goal

• Registrations sold at the door - for most fundraising events, this will be 0 - 1%

• Fundraising Activities & Transactions (if you do them), including auction item sales, raffle ticket sales, wine ring toss, spin-the-wheel, heads or tails, and other games: 0 - 10% of the goal

During the event, you should expect to complete between 15 - 25% of your gross revenue goal.

A Ring Toss game is played during the Transportation Choices Coalition Waves of Change 2023 Fundraising Event held at the Seattle Aquarium. Photo by: Danny Ngan

[Image description: A smiling guest throws a ring at a wine ring toss table, eagerly aiming for a prize. A volunteer stands at the side to facilitate the game.]

AFTER the event:

• Corporate matching gifts to multiply those individual donors whose gifts are matched by their employers: 5% of the goal, or more depending on your audience. We generally suggest you treat this as the ‘gravy’ and build your goals to be completed by the close of the event, so that these matching gifts will provide extra joy on the top!

It’s easy to customize any element of this equation  to your event reality: for instance, if your event is free to attend, remove the tickets/registration line item, and absorb that percentage into the pre-event fundraising. If you don’t do an auction or play other fundraising games, absorb that percentage into your other ‘during the event’ fundraising goal. The key thing for success: keep the pre-event and during-event categories distinct.

Are you still with us? If this feels radically different from how you currently approach your fundraising event budget, we’d love you to consider: WHAT IF you slowly turned up the intensity on your pre-event fundraising? How much more sustainable, joyful, and purposeful could your event be if the event was already known to be a financial success, and more time and energy during the party was devoted to cultivating relationships, telling your organization’s story, and deepening partnerships in your community?

Here’s a fun shorthand way to think about it. Your signature fundraising event doesn’t have to be a night where you ‘put the pressure on’ your donors, but rather a celebration of the community you serve and the community that supports you. Rather than asking your donors to show up once a year and empty their pockets, you can create an event full of connection, where everyone leaves with full hearts.

Happy event planning!

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