What Became of Hybrid Events?

When the pandemic first struck and virtual events became the go-to method for conducting fundraising auctions, hybrid events seemed to offer so much potential. Hybrid events offered many promises, including the capability to bridge the divide between attendees eager to be back in the room together and crowds that still wanted to remain socially distant.

Two years later, what became of hybrid events? The short answer is they never lived up to their promise. The long answer is slightly more nuanced. Once in-person fundraising became an option, would-be supporters were separated into two distinct camps: those who were ready to be back in person, and those who were not.

Hybrid galas never truly took off

The at-home crowd seldom met financial expectations, let alone donated or spent enough to justify cost.

The people who wanted to be in-person were really ready to get out of the house and leave the virtual world behind. They were eager to gather, eager to party, and eager to support the cause. If they couldn’t get tickets to attend an event in person, there was no way they were going to log on to a virtual gala: they simply wouldn’t attend.

Those who chose to remain socially distant were less likely to purchase tickets for an in-person gala, obviously, but they were also less likely to log on for a virtual event. Multiple times we witnessed organizations work really hard to appease the “at-home crowd,” only to see tickets sales flag for the online event. And on those rare occasions when there were a decent number of online attendees, we seldom saw the level of participation we were hoping for from the online crowd. Simply put: virtual crowds did not donate or spend much within the hybrid model.

Which leads to the final reason hybrid events didn’t succeed: cost. Adding a hybrid component to an in-person event at least doubles the associated AV costs, and more than doubles the workload for event planning staff. And if the virtual crowd isn’t going to show up and spend money, those costs simply are not worth it. We saw a fall ’22 event spend over $15,000 on the virtual component of their hybrid event, only to have 12 people log on to watch the show.

This isn’t to say that there were not successful hybrid events; there were. We participated in hybrid events where the online audience generated over $155,000 in the fund-a-need, adding 33% to the overall take. And another event where the at-home crowd donated more than the in-person crowd. But these events were the exceptions, not the rule.

By the time crowds could gather in-person again, they were all-in or all-out, there was no middle ground.

Virtual Galas are Boring

I’ve been shocked this year by how many times I’ve heard event committees tell me that they are worried about holding a virtual gala because virtual galas “are boring.”

“Really?” I always ask, “what virtual galas have you been watching?” And when they say, “All of them” I understand.

If you don’t care about the organization, virtual galas are boring.

If you have no direct connection to the cause, virtual galas are boring.

If you don’t know any of the names of the people who are bidding or making pledges in the fund-a-need, virtual galas are boring.

And especially if you are watching on your phone while doing other things, virtual galas are boring.

At its core, a virtual gala is the opportunity for a community of supporters to come together and make great things happen for the cause they believe in – just like an in-person gala. Have you ever found yourself at a gala for a cause you didn’t know? Sitting at an empty table, listening to speeches by people you don’t know? Sounds boring, right?

A fundraising gala, virtual or otherwise, is a communal celebration. Most virtual galas have an extremely focused target market. Yes, we are trying to make them entertaining and engaging – but for believers or those who have been invited by a believer to attend.

Which is why whenever I encourage clients to watch any of the events I’ve done, I tell them to turn down the sound and skip through the program. I want them to get an idea of what sort of look and feel works for them, not get bogged down in content. Because if you don’t care about the content, watching anything will get boring.

We were working on a virtual gala for a non-profit this year, and the board insisted that the event be no more than 45-minutes long. They were worried about it being boring. So we trimmed the program down, cut out a bunch of great content, and brought the gala in on-time.

When it was over, the overwhelming feedback from the board was, “Wow, that was great! Why did you make it so short?”

Have some faith in your message and your supporters. Your virtual gala won’t be boring. Your crowd won’t be bored by helping you to change the world. They never are.

Case Study: Manhattan Wine Auction Virtual Gala

The Manhattan Beach Education Foundation normally holds its “Manhattan Wine Auction” in early June. A crowd of 2,000 people spends the afternoon enjoying wines from 70 vintners and food from 50 chefs on six tennis courts, before settling in for a 28-lot line auction. Netting over $1,000,000 annually, the Manhattan Wine Auction is a significant source of income for Manhattan Beach’s public schools.

The 2019 Manhattan Wine Auction: the stage is set for over 2,000 attendees

As soon as the pandemic struck, we knew there was no way they could hold anything akin to their normal event in 2020. And the money the wine auction raises is extremely important, as executive director of MBEF Hilary Mahan notes, “Although we have a robust donor campaign, the Manhattan Wine Auction is the only fundraising event hosted by our organization each year and raises significant money for our schools.”

We reached out to Hilary and her team in mid-March to encourage them to consider holding a virtual event this year. There were a lot of concerns, not the least of which was attendance and participation. “I was concerned that our stakeholders would not embrace tuning into a livestream show,” says Mahan. “It just didn’t sound as appealing as our traditional in-person event. But our need for funding was still prevalent…and Greg assured me that he would partner with us to make it happen.”

The first step was to partner with an audio visual company who could produce the show and broadcast it to a streaming platform. MBEF chose to work with The Lux productions based on the fact that they were one of the first AV companies in California to create a virtual gala solution for non-profit events. MBEF also brought in event planner Beth Sandefur to help produce the virtual event.

“We collaborated on ways to guarantee an audience, reach virtual attendees prior to and during the event, and maximize the attention span of our audience,” says Mahan.

One of the ways MBEF engaged its attendees was to create six different virtual tasting events to be held immediately prior to the main gala. These varied in price from $75 for a beer tasting with a brewmaster to $400 for a high-end wine tasting with a vintner. “The goal was not to make a lot of money on the virtual tasting,” says David Brennan, Director of Development & Partnerships, “but to get our community members involved at 6pm with the hope they would transition over to our 7pm live stream event.”  

And it worked! MBEF sold over 250 virtual tastings on a per-household basis, which means approximately 500 people participated. And over 1,000 screens tuned into their livestream. Their fund-a-need raised over $550,000 during the stream, and brought in another $100,000 over the course of the next week. “We could not have been happier with the results!” says Mahan. “Our event netted just $25,000 under what our in-person event typically does, raising over $1M for our schools.”

The 2020 Manhattan Wine Auction virtual event was a stellar success, tripling previous years’ fund-a-need totals and raising over $1,000,000

Two of the key factors of MBEF’s success were committing wholeheartedly to the concept of a virtual gala, and getting their stakeholders to buy in to the concept. The number of people who watched the stream is roughly equal to the number of people who normally attend the event in person. MBEF did great work in making the virtual gala fun and accessible and working hard to get their crowd to be there. And they did it all in under eight weeks.

Stellar Fundraising Auctions Virtual Gala Demo

This recording of a 100% Virtual Gala was recorded in conjunction with The Lux Productions and Beth Sandefur Events in support of the fictional “Madill Theater Company”

The Four Phases of Fundraising Auctions in 2020

This webinar covers the four phases of fundraising galas in 2020, from current virtual galas to what galas will look like as social distancing protocols are eased region by region. The 20-minute presentation was followed by 40-minutes of live Q&A.

The Four Stages of Virtual Galas

What does the future hold for virtual galas – and possibly in-person galas – in 2020? It’s the $64,000 question on everyone’s mind right now, and while our crystal ball may not be crystal clear, we have some solid guesstimations. Based on what we’ve seen so far and conversations with our virtual gala partners The Lux Productions and Beth Sandefur Events, we envision four phases of virtual galas.

And though these virtual galas may differ in implementation, they all share one key component: the ability of your at-home crowd to interact with you and your auctioneer in real-time. Fundraising in a virtual environment works best when a crowd has a sense of community and feels a sense of urgency to their participation. Pre-recorded asks and online-only auction lots with no live encouragement raise between 30-50% less than a truly live, interactive virtual gala.

Phase One: 100% Virtual Galas
We are currently in Phase One of virtual galas: completely virtual galas, conducted 100% remotely by people sheltering-in-place. Initially, these productions were very last-minute and produced solely on a single platform, like Zoom. As organizations have more time to plan and start utilizing offerings like The Lux’s virtual studio solution (link), we will see more virtual galas that look like a TV show – but are still 100% virtual with every participant broadcasting from their own home/office.

Phase Two: Soundstage Productions
Once the shelter-in-place orders are shifted so that we can gather a small group (say, ten people) in the same room, we’ll see Phase Two of virtual galas: soundstage productions. Staff and a production team will gather at a soundstage, hotel ballroom, school stage, or some other setting with a/v, cameras, and so forth and put on a gala to broadcast to an at-home audience.

We actually saw some examples of this in the first weekend of the outbreak, before social distancing protocols put an end to gatherings of any size. As soon as we are permitted to have a small group of people in the same room again, we’ll start utilizing this type of production again.

Phase Three: Micro-Galas
When we are able to slightly larger crowd, perhaps 50 people, we’ll start having micro-galas. The protocols are yet to be determined, but it is easy to imagine 60-inch round banquet tables being converted from ten-tops to six-tops. An organization could then hold a micro-gala with eight tables of six attendees per table – bringing their largest supporters into the room, and broadcasting the proceedings to an at-home audience.

Phase Four: Full-Blown Galas
Once all social distancing protocols are lifted, there will probably still be some donors who do not feel comfortable mingling in a crowd of 500 people. Plan on it. Plan on keeping a virtual component to your gala, so you can enable attendees who choose to stay at home to participate in a way that still makes them feel part of your community, and expand your reach beyond the ballroom doors.  

There could be variations on any of these themes. Tom at The Lux envisions Satellite Galas, where small crowds of 50 in ballrooms across a city, county or even state are linked together. Either way, a virtual gala needs to have two components: the broadcast of “the show” and an interactive “bidding and pledging” component for the live auction and fund-a-need.

As for when this will all come to pass, estimating that is way beyond our crystal ball’s capabilities. We simply recommend that every organization planning a gala for the foreseeable future plan on a virtual component.

The Virtual Gala Pivot

The CDC recommendations released on Sunday, March 15th effectively cancel all in-person fundraising auctions until mid-May. For the many galas who were holding out hope that the social distancing efforts recently implemented would be lifted in time for your event, this recommendation feels like the final straw in a crazy, unprecedented series of events.

But it doesn’t mean that you can’t still engage your supporters and raise much needed funds. Now is the time to pivot to a Virtual Gala. A Virtual Gala can maximize everything that you and your team have worked so hard to build: the auction lots your committee has solicited, the messaging your team has worked to hone, the focus and attention of your supporters, and the goodwill for your cause.

A Virtual Gala might not be for every crowd, event, or organization, but we have always been advocates for honest and engaging fundraising. If your organization needs the funds from your gala immediately and cannot postpone until next year or roll the dice on when social distancing recommendations will be removed, you can achieve solid results online. We have already seen multiple events across the Pacific Northwest hold successful Virtual Galas, in some instances surpassing the goals they had set for their in-person gala.

A Virtual Gala enables you to utilize the reality of the moment to engage your supporters, tell them your story, and enable them to support you. A Virtual Gala will never replace the sense of community and camaraderie created by an in-person event, but it will help you raise enough money to make your cancellation less painful, and keep your organization top of mind with your supporters. It will also provide your supporters with a way to feel competent again, to feel like they are making a difference in the face of uncertainty.

There are two approaches to a Virtual Gala: live, and pre-recorded. In a Live Virtual Gala you put on an extremely scaled-down version of your gala in an event setting like a live-stream ready event space, your school’s theater, a hotel conference room, or your offices and simulcast it to your supporters. You have your program, speakers, testimonial, live auction, and fund-a-need happen real-time, online. Guests at home participate on two screens: one (hopefully large) screen to view the livestream, and a smartphone to bid and make pledges. Two schools in Portland had Live Virtual Galas this past Saturday night, including the Caitlin Gabel School.  

A Pre-recorded Virtual Gala is similar, but instead of happening in real-time, the speeches, testimonial, fund-a-need pitch, etc. are all pre-recorded and uploaded to YouTube or some other video on demand site. Upaya, in Seattle, was forced to have a Pre-recorded Virtual Gala and was able to exceed their original live-event goals with it. Their blog post offers excellent insight into the ways a Virtual Gala can make the most of the moment and rally your crowd to your cause.

We are working with numerous clients to implement both live and pre-recorded Virtual Gala solutions. We have secured a set-price of under $4,000 from an event space that is livestream ready with multiple cameras, a professional sound system, video switcher, and high-bandwidth internet.

If your gala was scheduled to happen between now and June 1st, let’s chat about ways we can make the most of the current situation and help you raise some needed funds. We are ready to do whatever it takes to work with you to find successful fundraising solutions. If that means wearing a tux to your offices to record video introductions for auction lots, we’ll be there; just let us know the color scheme, so we don’t clash.