Episode 47: Five tips for planning a compelling nonprofit event program

Planning

Jul 15

As the host of a nonprofit event, the program is your opportunity to educate and inspire your audience. Sadly, many event hosts get caught up in the planning of the event, how many auction items, the entertainment, the food, the decor. The program, which is arguably the most important part of the event, gets only a fraction of the attention.

Your event, no matter what type or size, should have a block of at least 10 minutes where you officially welcome your guests, tell them about your organization, and have one call to action.

The key to creating a compelling program is to treat it like a marketing campaign. What does that mean? I'm going to break it down for you as I go through my five tips for planning a compelling program.

Five tips for planning a compelling event program.

Tip #1 - Determine the goal of the program and how you'll measure the success of that goal

What are you trying to accomplish with your program? Along with that decision comes the call to action. What do you want your audience to do either at the event or immediately after?

When your guests talk about your event the next day to their friends and coworkers, what do you want them to say? What is the one message you want your audience to leave with and what will be the call to action?

The most common goal for a nonprofit event and program is to raise money and the call to action is to ask people to donate. But that of course depends on the type and the purpose of the event you're hosting.

If you have too many messages or too many calls to action, it gets confusing for your audience. And the reality is that they likely won't take action on anything.

Tip #2 - Know your audience

I've said this a million times, but it becomes incredibly important when planning a compelling program, the format and the content of your program is going to depend on your audience. You want something that's going to resonate with them and compel them to act.

Tip #3 - Tell a story or stories that illustrates who you are, what you do, and relates back to your goal

Storytelling creates an emotional connection between your organization and your audience.

So if your goal is fundraising, you want to tell a story that demonstrates the need or shows how donations will make a difference.

Storytelling is a powerful tool, but the key is to make sure that your audience sees themselves as an integral part of that story.

Keep in mind that there's going to be a range of people in your audience from long term supporters, who know a great deal about your organization, to people who know nothing at all. You want a story that briefly encapsulates your organization and a story that everyone can understand and can see themselves in it.

In writing or storytelling, the adage is show, don't tell. Don't tell me that you're an organization that goes in after floods and helps clean up. Show me. Show me the aftermath, the devastation. Show volunteers hard at work or show happy homeowners who are now finally getting to go back into their homes after the cleanup is done.

When you're telling your story, weave a variety of emotions into it, but be genuine.

In the early days of my career in nonprofit events, there was a widely held belief, especially for fundraising, that you needed to make your audience cry. There was even a philosophy that the magic formula to raise more money during your program was to make people cry three times. Where that magic number of three times came from, I don't know.

But it is understandable how this school of thought grew. If you can elicit tears from your audience, that's a powerful thing. However, there are a whole host of other emotions to tap into and ways to tell your story that doesn't necessarily include crying.

In fact, the best stories take you on a journey through several emotions.

Don't forget data, facts and statistics, when telling your story. I know that sounds counterintuitive. Facts and stats are boring. And I'm not suggesting that you get up and show a PowerPoint of a bunch of boring facts. But when you weave important facts into your story, it can be very powerful.

When you're coming up with a plan for your program, and the story or stories you're going to tell, you need to strike a balance between emotional storytelling and including some of that important data that could sway people to take whatever action it is that you want them to take. What that balance looks like depends on your target audience.

Tip #4 - Minimize the number of speakers and therefore the number of transitions on stage

Focus on fewer speakers who can deliver more powerful content. The more transitions you have, the more time your program takes plus you lose the momentum from your previous presentation when transitioning to the next speaker.

Tip #5 - Keep it short and script it out

Yes, those are two tips combined into one, but they are very related. Your program should be 45 minutes max, with a sweet spot anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the type of event and on your audience.

Winging it never works for a program. A script helps you think through the flow of the program, including those transitions. It helps you determine how much time you want or need to dedicate to each element of the program and the order in which those elements should take place. You don't necessarily have to script everything out word for word, but you definitely want a general idea Of what's happening, when it's happening, and how long each thing will take.

I talk more in depth in episode 24_Why you need an event script.

In case you didn't notice, in these five tips, I just gave you the who, what, when, where, why, and how of planning a compelling nonprofit event program. We started with the why, because that will help guide all other decisions.

Listener Action Item

Determine the goal of your program, first and foremost. Determine how you will measure the success of your program and what your call to action will be. Those things are going to set the tone for everything else.

After that, if your event is not imminent, start creating a vault of stories that could be used to tell your organization's impact. It's hard to think of stories when you're under pressure to do so. So create a bank or a vault of stories that you can pull from when you need them.

If you're hosting a nonprofit event and you aren't planning a program, I strongly, strongly urge you to rethink that decision. When you host an event, this is your opportunity to educate your audience about who you are, what you do, and why it's important. It's also the ideal time to make an appeal for donations, if it's appropriate to do so or to engage your audience in whatever that next step is that you want them to take.

So create time at your event where you can gather everyone together to hear your message.

Now that sounds like a plan. I'll see you next time.