Event Management

Beth Helmstetter is an event planner and designer. She specializes in destination weddings. She has an MBA in nonprofit administration and worked in the nonprofit industry for years before turning to the $50 billion wedding industry. Now, she wants to combine the two worlds. And she says there’s great appetite for it. Weddings are an…

You know it’s there, lurking in the shadows of your workload. You try to avoid it, but sooner or later, it must be dealt with. Your organization is relying on you to step in and be the hero. Now is the time to take a stand and conquer your fears. It is time to take…

With his 70th birthday approaching, Chicago resident Chuck Aron was eager for a challenge. An avid runner who has competed in the Chicago Marathon since 2004, Aron wanted to honor his late brother-in-law Paul Bracken, who died in 2001 after a battle with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Bracken would have turned 73 this year, so Aron…

One evening last December, 400 men and women in tuxedos and gowns met at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take a trip to a small village in Ethiopia. Few of them had ever been to the East African country before, and while they were scheduled to depart that evening, nobody had…

Olympic hero Mo Farah has closed his charity after it spent more on "marketing and a glitzy ball than on helping kids in Africa," according to The Sun. It’s a story that has raised many issues, including how much should be spent on fundraising and whether or not charities should continue operating if they aren’t…

The business partner/client relationship does not have the best reputation. From the vendor perspective, this YouTube video pretty much sums up what the worst relationship can look like from the business-partner perspective. This is not fiction...

Fundraising events can be huge moneymakers for many nonprofits. They can also be huge wastes of time. As someone commented on my previous post: Events are great for visibility and exposure, "but they are terrible ways to raise money." Well, many organizations—yours included—are probably 100 percent committed to their events. So, since we are having…

Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising is built on the backs of multitudes of volunteer fundraisers. And the hardest part of P2P fundraising is finding people willing to lend their backs to the effort, also called acquisition. Acquisition is difficult. It’s hard because we often invite the wrong people to our P2P parties, in the wrong ways. At Turnkey, we classify events into two awkwardly named siblings: retail attractive and retail unattractive...

Hard to see, the Dark Side is—especially when you can’t use your lightsaber to light the way. Newmindspace, a Toronto-based nonprofit, has rebranded its popular charity lightsaber battles as the “Cats in Space Tour” after it received a cease-and-desist letter from Lucasfilm’s lawyers for using trademarked terms, the Toronto Star reported...

A paralyzed woman who did the London Marathon in a bionic suit has been barred from a fun run. Organizers of the Vitality London 10K race said Claire Lomas uses motors to walk and has an unfair advantage. They have refused to let her enter—despite the brave 35-year-old raising more than $700,000 for a spinal-injury…