Special Events and Campaign Fundraising

Special events can be a fantastic way to raise money for a campaign, but they can also be a labor-intensive time drain, and as a result can have a negative return on the team's time-investment.  So, how can you tell if it is "worth" the time-investment?

First, examine if there is a need to use one to bring in money.  If you are meeting your Fundraising Plan's schedule, then I would suggest you not add a Special Event to the plans.  However, if along the way, you are falling behind the planned income, then a Special Event might be just the thing to help build momentum.  Second, if you have a team of volunteers who can conduct the event, without draining the campaign staff, then a Special Event could be a good idea. However, if you do not have the enough volunteers, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! 

In this entry, we will discuss the use of a pledge-driven golf outing - not your typical type of golf tournament.  With this format, you can raise much more then the typical type of golf outing, without quite as much time spent - I know, how is this possible.  I will give you the shell of the Champion Events Group program, but can't give away all of the secrets here - for that, you will need to hire us to do the event for you - but I will put enough information here to help you decide if it is a good fit for your campaign.

The program is built on a 10-12 week timeline, but can be accomplished in as few as 5-6, if there is a energetic and committed team. The "host team" needs five key individuals:

1. Event Captain: The person who is in charge of the team. This individual must have the ability to "own" the results and effectively manage the rest of the volunteers.
2. Player Captain: This person is in charge of recruiting fund-raising golfers to participate in the event, and managing their fund-raising efforts.
3. Finance Captain: Obviously, this person is the one who will handle the flow of money.
4. Hospitality Captain: This person is responsible to ensure that all the details of the day are executed flawlessly.
5. Media Captain: This person will make sure that the media has all the information needed to cover the event correctly - from start times to the results of the fundraising.

So, what is different about a Champion event vs. the traditional golf tournament? There is actually a long list of differences, but the biggest is that a Champion event is a FUNDRAISING event first, and a typical golf tournament is a tournament, that might raise some money.  At a Champion event, the focus is on finding a smaller group of committed individuals to participate.  These individuals will each work to raise funds through there personal network using the most powerful fundraising principle: people give to people!  Furthermore, by utilizing the Champion experience and program, each golfer will raise approximately $1,500, and the goal is to find 40 golfer who will participate. When you start doing the math on those numbers, you can quickly see that there is a reason to look seriously at this program - but just like an infomercial would say...WAIT-THERE'S MORE (always wanted to say that).   The "add-on" is, because people give to people based on relationships, the donors really don't care what the fundraising friend is doing, so we add anyone who wants to participate, whether they golf or not, and those who are not golfers will conduct a short walk-a-thon to justify the donations.  As a result, now there can be many more participants in the fundraising program, which means there is far more money that can be raised.

So, in summary, we are talking about an event that gives a candidate the ability to gain exposure, have media coverage, explaining again to many why they should vote for him/her, AND raise money!  If this sounds like something that you would like to learn more about, click here and watch the videos on the website, then call me @ 256-682-7426 with any questions. 

I hope all is going well for each conservative candidate, and am excited to be able to help several who are true conservatives get elected and ...get our change back!

Sincerely,
Steve Boyett