Join us for our upcoming workshop: Getting Back to Live and In-Person

Live events are coming back! Are you ready? Many of us have not held a live event in a while, so let’s get together to talk about what has changed and what still works in the world of fundraising auctions and non-profit event production.

Presented by industry experts from Greater Giving, Beth Sandefur Events, The Lux Productions, and Stellar Fundraising Auctions. This workshop will feature in-depth discussions on how the culture of in-person events has evolved, the ways auction software has changed, best practices for registration in the time of covid, leaving your silent auction online, making your fund-a-need successful, live auction lots that work, conducting a hybrid event, breakout Q&A sessions, and more.

Registration includes lunch and a cooking demonstration by Orion Sylvester of Orion’s Kitchen. Seminar is limited to 50 attendees, so register now!

Free Webinar: When Online Meets In-Person: Hybrid Events Defined

Register Now!

Register now for our free educational webinar, When Online Meets In-Person: Hybrid Events Defined

Thursday, January 14, 2021 | 11AM PST

Happy New Year from Stellar Fundraising Auctions!

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.

It's (Still) Time to Go Virtual

If you’ve been holding out hope that you will be doing your spring 2021 event in person, I’m here to encourage you to embrace virtual. Even with multiple vaccines on the horizon, there is little hope that we will be holding full-scale, in-person fundraising events in the Bay Area in March, April or May of 2021.*

It’s hard to believe it has been over eight months since we last did an in-person fundraising auction. And it’s even more challenging to think that it will be another seven to eight months before we are able to start doing in-person fundraising again.

This should not stop you from raising money next spring. Virtual fundraising events are successful and continue to engage, entertain, and raise significant amounts of money. In the past eight months we have had multiple events raise over $500,000 onstream, and a handful have cracked the million-dollar mark.

Equally importantly, we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees who appreciated the opportunity to engage with and support their favorite organizations. Virtual galas are not the same as being in person, obviously, but they offer creative and unique ways to tell your story and engage your crowd.

Whether you’ve done an event virtually or not, you can benefit from the wealth of experience that 2020 has forced upon all of us in the fundraising auction industry. We have spent the last eight months working with numerous event planners, audio-visual companies, and non-profit organizations to figure out what works (and what doesn’t) in a virtual gala.

Virtual galas aren’t magic – they still take lots of advanced planning and hard work. And there is still time to plan and implement a successful virtual gala this coming spring.

I miss seeing people in person, and I miss gathering as a community to raise funds for important causes. But if there is one lesson I’ve learned in 2020, it is to make the most of what the world is currently giving you. And this coming spring, virtual is going to be all the rage again.

 *As of this writing the majority of the Bay Area was “Purple” and the 49ers were preparing to play their “home games” in Arizona because the county of Santa Clara had placed contact sports on the “no” list.

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.

Now is NOT the Time to NOT Be Fundraising

Many organizations are having a difficult time fundraising right now. Or rather, they are having a hard time justifying to themselves that they should be fundraising right now. They feel that since they are not a direct service organization feeding the needy, or providing PPE to front line workers, or helping maintain a roof over people’s heads, they don’t deserve to ask for money.

It is an understandable sentiment, but one that may prove to be extremely self-harmful. If you are an organization that is dependent upon annual fundraising efforts for survival, 2020 may be the most important year to be asking your donors to support you.

We know from experience that if you do not ask supporters for donations one year, it is harder to get them to engage the following year. People who are used to being asked to support you on an annual basis won’t simply stockpile that cash on your behalf. They look elsewhere to donate and give another organization the opportunity to build a meaningful relationship.

Now, more than ever, is the time to be reaching out to your supporters and engaging them to support you.

This tendency is being heavily multiplied right now since we also know that in an economic downturn, donors don’t stop giving, they simply reduce the number of organizations to which they give. They pull back and fortify the organizations they perceive to need them most.

During 2008, for example, if a donor usually donated $10,000 across five organizations, the trend we saw was to reduce the number of events they attended and possibly increase the donation per event. So a donor would attend three events and donate $10,000 to each, or two events and donate $15,000 to each. They didn’t stop giving, but they became more selective in their giving. Organizations who were able to clearly and effectively communicate the immediacy and relevance of their need were able to convince these retracting donors to fortify them, and not another organization.

Which brings us to right now: you may feel like now is not the time to be asking for money. You may feel like the right thing to do is to encourage people to support our front-line health care workers, a food bank, or another organization that is directly addressing our current crisis. It is a valid and understandable feeling, and those organizations deserve support. But so does yours.

I am a firm proponent of honest, engaging fundraising. So indulge me three questions:

• Has your need become greater since the outbreak of the Coronavirus?

• Do your clients need you?

• Are you dependent upon fundraising to survive?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you have an honest, engaging reason to reach out to your donor base and ask them to support you. If you answered “yes” to all of those questions, you should undoubtedly be fundraising this year.

My final thought: people want to give money to more than just one set of causes. Yes, people want to support direct service organizations; but they still want to support the arts, and their kids’ school, and…well…you.