5 Ways to Sustain Fundraising Event Momentum Throughout the Year

With the fall event season coming into full swing, it’s likely that many of your fundraising campaigns are already under way. Whether your organization is hosting a gala, an intimate cocktail reception or a large community event, you know these events are the best chance to increase awareness, strengthen relationships and inspire involvement for the coming year.

Of course, events with your donors, volunteers and the community at large often only happen a few times a year. The big question is how to harness those face-to-face interactions to continue to build the relationships you develop and keep your constituencies engaged throughout the year.

One way nonprofits do this is by changing how they communicate with their constituents. It’s no longer OK to talk at your constituents with a one-way conversation. Instead, constituents expect two-way dialogues that let them in on who you are and build relationships. The great news is that there are plenty of tools that make this type of engagement marketing easy, affordable and effective.

Why is engaging your audience important? Quite simply, it prioritizes cultivating stronger, more rewarding relationships with a core subset of your audience. By focusing on establishing genuine connections with your most passionate donors, partners and volunteers, you can create a community of the most vocal advocates for your organization, resulting in good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations for your organization.

This helps increase on-going donations and volunteer commitments as well as raise greater awareness of your organization throughout the year. It also enables you to interact with a more responsive audience of interested parties on a more frequent basis.

Ideally, you can use the upcoming fall event season to set the foundation. Following are five no- or low-cost ways to start building an engaged audience that will help you inspire others throughout the year. Since these ideas are based on elevating your traditional marketing approaches, you can put these actions in place today to keep your organization top of mind among donors, volunteers and the community at large before, during and after your event — and throughout the year.