Daniel Webber wrote this paper when aresearch analyst at New Philanthropy Capitalspecialising in the area of fundraising. Hecontinues to carry out research into nonprofitbranding and market structure in partnershipwith New Philanthropy Capital.

ABSTRACT

The paper analyses fundraising events, in termsof the motivations for supporting an event, thecosts and income streams and the efficiency ofevents. Events vary from sponsored bike rides tofashion shows to annual balls but all eventsshare one defining attribute, the participant orattendee gains some private benefit, be it asense of personal achievement, an opportunityto show their generosity or simply having fun.The fact that the participants are supporting thecharity may come secondary to the privatebenefit they gain from attending the event.Fundraising events therefore provide a meansfor charities to broaden their donor bases beyondthose whose only motivation to support thecharity is their fundamental belief in theparticular charity’s cause.

INTRODUCTIONFun, exciting, extravagant and often risky:fundraising events open up streams ofincome that other fundraising methodscannot, even though events are one of theleast productive methods for a charity togenerate income. Yet this does not neces-

sarily imply that fundraising events are aninefficient method to raise income.

The purpose of this paper is to discussand analyse some of the major issuesrelating to fundraising events. It begins bydefining fundraising events and explainingwhy people choose to attend events. Thebelief is that anyone attending a fundrais-ing event receives some private benefit(something in return), for example a mealor entertainment, in contrast to morephilanthropic means of supporting acharity such as committed giving plans orsending a donation in the post. It wasfound that by catering for a group ofpeople who wish to gain somethingthemselves, a charity can broaden itsgroup of donors beyond those who purelybelieve in the charity’s mission.

The paper then briefly looks at whatconstitute the main financial costs ofevents before exploring the methodsaimed at raising the greatest amountpossible at an event. By segmenting thoseattending the event by their wealth andmotivations an organiser can ensure thatthe maximum amount of money israised.

Finally, the paper analyses fundraisingevents in the context of a charity’s broaderfundraising strategy and compares eventsto other fundraising techniques. The con-clusion is that set within the correctfundraising strategy, the fundraising eventcan be an efficient method for raising

Understanding charity fundraising events

Daniel WebberNew Philanthropy Capital, 91-93 Southwark Street, London SE1 OHX, UK;Tel: �44 20 7401 8080; Fax: �44 20 7654 7888; e-mail: dwebber@philanthropycapital.org

Received (in revised form): 5th December, 2003

International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing Volume 9 Number 2

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International Journal of Nonprofitand Voluntary Sector Marketing,Vol. 9 No. 2, 2004, pp. 122–134.�Henry Stewart Publications,1479–103X

of those attending care little for thecharity; some potential as a lead-in tocorporate sponsorship

— Maintaining brand name, especiallyfor large household-name charities;celebrity-attended events which getcovered in the national press; eventssuch as concerts and challenges areoften widely publicised whereas ticketsfor dinners and balls are sold throughfriend or business contact networks.

Why do people attend fundraisingevents?At its most basic level a fundraising event,which by definition has the objective ofraising money for a charity, must convincea consumer to part with more money thansuch an event actually costs. In economicterms, a rational consumer would notchoose to attend and pay for a dinnerpriced at £100 if it can be bought in arestaurant for £50 (which includes therestaurateur’s profit).

The total amount spent by a personsupporting a fundraising event can bebroken down into two portions. The firstportion is the amount that covers the costof the event. The motivation to pay thisportion must be private, that is to enjoythe event (or to gain some other privatebenefit). The term ‘private benefit’ is usedto define any tangible benefit received bya supporter. If the event involves a bungeejump for instance, then this portion in-cludes the cost of the bungee jump.The other portion spent by the par-ticipant represents a donation: the netmoney raised by the charity that will goto support the charitable cause. Severalmotivations for this second portion arepossible:

— Philanthropic; the donor believes inthe underlying charitable cause. Aphilanthropic donor supporting acharity through an event can be said

money, despite its relatively low returncompared to other fundraising methods.

The research is based on structuredinterviews with events organisers, heads offundraising and chief executives from 20charities. The charities were chosen tocover the broad array of sectors such ashealth, welfare, education, the arts, in-ternational development and religion andconstituted the full range of sizes rangingfrom those raising under £100,000 a yearto those raising nearly £100m. Interviewswere also conducted with fundraisingconsultants, professional events organisersand event committee volunteers.

CHARACTERISTICS OFFUNDRAISING EVENTS

How do fundraising events differ?Fundraising events come in all shapes andsizes and are only bounded by the or-ganiser’s imagination. One simple way todistinguish events is by type. Events canalso be differentiated by what they aretrying to achieve and the profile of gueststhe charity wants to attract, as describedbelow:

— Development of donors; extra incomefrom current donor base without can-nibalising previous sources

— Thanking current supporter base; anexcuse to write to a group of currentsupporters

— Social or community-based occasion— Acquisition of new support, especially

young people; prepared to run a lowerproductivity event in the hope that itwill develop future support, attractnew supporters and use the event as anopportunity to explain more aboutwhat the charity does

— Looking after current donors— Networking for attendees; events based

on business networking; the majority

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to have mixed motivations, somephilanthropic, some private1

— Purely private; the event is unique andcontains elements with no meaningfulmonetary value, for instance a glitzyparty, business networking or some-thing specific but non-repeatable suchas dinner with a celebrity

— Prestige; the person wishes to be seenat the event as it provides either a signof wealth or of social grouping2

— Leadership; to encourage others togive; show of generosity

— Relationship with the charity; thedonor has direct personal experience ofa relevant cause, for example losing afriend or family member to cancer

— Warm glow; the donor takes enjoy-ment from giving to charity3

— Associated warm glow; supportingfriends or associates who are organisingthe event

— Peer pressure; friends and committeemembers encourage attendance.

In practice, the author believes that asignificant reason for people to attendfundraising events is for private benefit,either because the event is enjoyable, orfor example, for business networking or tosupport friends. This conjecture is sup-ported by a recent study commissioned byThe Giving Campaign on fostering ahigh-value supporter base.4 The studylooked at the profiles of high-value sup-porters and concluded that many enjoythe prestigious social networks, requireregular contact and involvement in specialevents to reflect their status and have theexpectation of being courted and offeredhospitality — all private benefits.

As with many other forms of fundrais-ing, actually asking people to come to anevent is also an important driver of atten-dance. The support of friends is a corol-lary of a significant aspect of successfulfundraising events such as balls and din-

ners: a well-connected, volunteer-basedorganising committee is essential. That isto say that, in most cases, those attendingevents such as balls and dinners are friendsor contacts of the committee. Events arecompeting for peoples’ time as well astheir money and marketing an event onthe basis that it is in support of charity isby no means sufficient to ensure atten-dance and success.

Awareness as an objectiveMany charities cite raising awareness as anadditional, if not key, objective whenrunning fundraising events; this is borneout by virtually every charity interviewedfor this study. Yet there is no knownresearch conducted in general form or byany charity that can substantiate raisingawareness as increasing future donations.Justifying awareness rests on the assump-tion that either the size or number offuture donations is increased as a result ofthe advertising and publicity of a fundrais-ing event.

An understanding of the people struc-ture involved in fundraising events can behelpful to draw inferences on the aware-ness created by an event as shown inFigures 1 and 2. For the majority ofevents, the awareness an event creates isgenerated by advertising it. Typically, theadvertising generated by the event and thecharity may reach about two to threetimes the total attendance. This excludespress coverage, received by a small num-ber of fortunate charities running events.

The use of information technologyThe most common fundraising campaignfor which charities use the internet, ex-cluding a charity’s annual fund, is toadvertise fundraising events.5 For eventstargeting people under the age of 30,e-mail has become an increasingly com-mon form of communication. E-mail hasthe great advantage over the ordinary mail

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THE COSTS INVOLVED IN AFUNDRAISING EVENTThis section looks briefly at what itemsshould be included in the total costing ofan event. Given that the value of donatedgoods for auctions and raffles is so hard toestimate and many unique items have notrue market value, inclusion of donatedgoods in total costs proves to be too

in that it is a virtually costless method todisseminate information both about speci-fic events and the charity itself. Consis-tent and deliberate e-mail communicationdriving the donor to a detailed charitywebsite, which is much less aggressivethan bulky, expensive hard-copy litera-ture, has become a successful techniquefor many charities.6

Figure 1Challenge eventpyramid

Figure 2Ball/dinner pyramid

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Chair

Committee

Friends and contactsof committee

Friends of friends

AWARENESS

Chair

Committee

Friends and contactsof committee

Friends of friends

AWARENESS

1

15-20

150-200

300-400

1000+???

1

15–20

150–200

300–400

1000+???

Number of people

Public response to advertising, known and unknown

to the charity

AWARENESS

1–3

30–50

1000+???

Frie

nds

and

cont

acts

Eventorganisers

Number of people

inconsistent. There is no doubt that with-out the charity events team working onthe event, the event would not happenand staff are therefore a vital input cost toan event and must be included and allo-cated to the total costs. Evidence from theFundratios study shows staff costs typicallyadd 36 per cent to the direct costs of anevent.7 The conclusion is that the fairestrepresentation of the total cost of an eventis the total direct costs plus the allocatedstaff costs. Often, the cost reported bycharities is simply the total direct (tan-gible) costs of the event.

How responsive are event costs tothe size of the event?To enable comparison between events ofdifferent sizes a metric of cost per headcan be used. Few expenditure items areone-offs that do not alter with the size ofthe event. Catering costs increase di-rectly with each additional person attend-ing. Drinks and printed materials are alsoclosely related to the number of thosepresent. The venue, once booked, willcost the same whether it is full or not, butgood planning should enable a venue tobe booked so that it is full relative to thenumber of people.

In contrast to lunches and dinners, anevent such as a concert which has onelarge fixed cost, the entertainment, willreap significant economies of scale andreduce the cost per head by increasing the

size of the audience. Overall though, forthe majority of events there are limitedpossibilities to achieve economies of scale,especially for those involving a significantvariable cost: the food at a dinner, orflights and accommodation for a trek.Replicability is one technique to helpkeep costs down and may even reducecosts year on year as relationships are builtup and event organisation techniques im-proved.

MAXIMISING EVENT INCOMEThere are several streams of income avail-able for a fundraising event, as shown inTable 1. To maximise the gross incomefrom an event, the organisers must be ableto extract the greatest amount of moneythat each supporter is willing to give. Theincome from supporters is a functionof two attributes: wealth and individualmotivation. Therefore to maximise in-come, organisers need to segment theattendees by engaging in price differentia-tion to exploit supporters’ wealth andtheir motivation.

Price differentiationPrice differentiation in its purest sensemeans charging each individual consumerthe maximum amount they are willing topay for a product or service. The price aconsumer is willing to pay can often behigher than the marked price of a product

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Table 1: Streams of income for the main categories of events

Concerts Dinners/ballsLarge challengeor endurance Treks

Ticket sales/entryAuctionRaffles, tombolaAdvertising and sponsorshipDonations from an appeal

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the charity previously, then additionalfundraising methods must take this intoaccount. Therefore, a raffle or tombola,which provides further private benefit toparticipants, would be a sensible methodto choose. An appeal on the other hand,which relies on people actually believingand being interested in what the charitydoes is unlikely to be successful at such anevent. Several methods are available toevent organisers to maximise income at anevent dependent on the wealth andmotivation make-up of the pool ofparticipants.

AppealsAn appeal at an event is one method tosupplement income by engaging thosewho believe in the charity’s cause and arein part philanthropically motivated. Again,depending on how the organisers gauge‘the room’, appeals can be run as a privatedonation: that is, at a dinner for instance,an appeal video or speech followed byguests writing personal cheques or pledgesat their tables. This method caters for themost philanthropically motivated people.The advantage of a private response to anappeal is that it allows for pure pricedifferentiation — each participant cangive exactly the amount they wish to.

Appeals can also be used in a morepublic sense. Two methods are popular.The first uses a club effect, where noindividual is willing to pay for the wholeitem but a whole table at a dinner forinstance may club together to donate onesignificant item.8

The second method makes use of theleadership effect where one person or agroup of people announce they havemade (or will pledge) a significant dona-tion to the charity.9 Other philanthropi-cally motivated people will then followsuit. Such leadership is a vote of con-fidence for the charity and any specificproject the appeal may be for. The leader-

in a shop, or the advertised price of aservice.

In terms of a fundraising event con-sumers are supporting a charity. The moremoney they spend at an event, the moremoney the charity will receive to achieveits aims. Attendees decide at an event howmuch (financial) support they wish to giveto the charity.

A major determinant of how much aperson is willing to pay for a ticket for anevent and how much they are willing tosupplement this expenditure (through adonation, or purchase of a raffle ticket orauction item) is dependent on his or herwealth. Apart from shows and concertswhich charge higher prices for betterseats, ticket prices for most fundraisingevents (treks, fashion shows, balls, dinners)tend to be fixed at one price.

If ticket price alone is left as the onlyincome stream, an event will fail to maxi-mise income. Given that everyone attend-ing has paid for a ticket this is theminimum amount they are willing tospend. But as wealth differs, this willcertainly not be the maximum that certainparticipants are willing to spend. What istherefore necessary at an event is to haveadditional ways to extract extra incomefrom the higher-value guests. Before dis-cussing how that can be done, attendeesmust also be segmented by their motiva-tions. This may be done in several ways.

Motivational differentiationThe alternative individual motivationsthat explain why people support andattend a fundraising event have alreadybeen discussed. To raise the maximumincome from an event, fundraising tech-niques must be based on the motivationsof those attending. If, for example, themajority of people attend the event purelyfor their own private benefit — afun and unique event — and haveno philanthropic history of supporting

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ship effect, however, needs to be care-fully understood. An announced donation(leadership donation) will lead to in-creased donations if the group the leaderis trying to encourage to donate (thepotential followers) are philanthropicallymotivated. Notably, if the potential fol-lowers are privately motivated, for in-stance enjoy signalling their wealth, thena large announced donation may cause thedonations from the followers to fall, astheir donation will seem less impressivegiven the large leadership donation.

AuctionsAuctions can serve a unique purpose at anevent as they have a very public nature.Though small auction items may be soldin a silent auction, the method for sellinglarge items is always through the familiaropen-cry (English) auction. By publiclytaking part in an open-cry auction, aparticipant can send a signal of wealth orsocial status by bidding for an expensiveauction item. A participant need only bidfor an item to send a signal — the itemdoes not have to be purchased.10 Auctionscan raise, at top fundraising events, six-figure sums. If organisers of the event wishto price discriminate towards the top fewper cent of wealthy individuals in theroom who wish to signal publicly (if theywish to keep quiet, a large donation canbe made in response to an appeal), anauction is the preferred method.

The items that achieve the greatestreturn in an auction are those thatare unique with no observable marketmonetary value. A large bid with theproceeds going to charity, is easier tojustify for a unique item than one ofwhich the bidder knows the value andwhich can be bought outside of theauction.

Overall, the key to maximising grossevent income is for the organisers tounderstand the willingness of those at-

tending to spend money, and the underly-ing motivations of these people, and thento offer relevant methods of fundraising tocater for these differences. A commonconstraint cited by charity event organisersis that those attending dislike being bom-barded by too many forms of fundraisingon the night. Hence organisers must makea decision about the most appropriatemethods to adopt.

When a significant auction or appeal isrun at an event, the income raised oftenfollows the ‘Pareto rule’. That is that 80per cent of the income raised comesfrom 20 per cent of those present.11 Thisamounts to focusing a fundraising strategyon a small number of wealthy donors. Forticket-only events with no supplemen-tary fundraising, this income breakdownclearly does not pertain.

ARE FUNDRAISING EVENTS ANEFFICIENT FUNDRAISING METHOD?

How productive is a fundraisingevent?The preceding analysis of the costs ofan event and the income generated canbe put together so as to determine itsproductivity. The productivity (or thereturn) of an event is simple to calculateusing the following formula:

Productivity �total gross incometotal direct costs �

allocated staff costs

The higher the ratio of gross income tocosts, the higher the productivity of theevent. With a measure for productivity itis possible to evaluate whether a fundrais-ing event can be deemed to be effi-cient. Productivity in this context will beused to describe the short-term returnon a fundraising investment or the di-rect return from one event. Longer-term

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required, especially since few charitiesinterviewed were able to offer detailedanalysis of the events they ran.

To begin to analyse the efficiency offundraising events, it is necessary to un-derstand where they fit into the widercontext of fundraising. Many differentmethods of fundraising are used and allhave different productivities.

Fundraising matrixTo understand the interaction betweenmotivation for supporting a charity orevent and the potential size of donationthe author has designed a matrix (Figure3). The first dimension of the matrixcaptures the motivation to support a causeand is simplified to being either whollyphilanthropic or having some privatebenefit. Obviously a mix of these motiva-tions is common and the division is rarelyso neat, but for simplicity the motivationsare separated out to create a stylised toolfor analysis.

productivity, possibly taking account ofawareness, can be measured using lifetimevalue measures and cumulative returns tofundraising.

How does the cost of an event relateto its productivity?Analysis of data provided by charitiesinterviewed for this study suggests a nega-tive relationship between cost per headand productivity. That is, the more moneythat is spent per person at an event, theless productive the event becomes. Thisrelationship suggests there may be un-necessary excessive expenditure for themore lavish events. It may also suggestthat people attending lower-cost eventsare more generous than those at higher-cost events, as the money they hand overto the charity has a larger philanthropicportion. Detailed data on events are dif-ficult to collect though and the aboverelationship should only be treated asindicative. Further research in this area is

Figure 3Fundraising matrix

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Low-cost events

Local eventsPremier events

Direct marketing

Committed giving

Face-to-face

Legacies

Major gift

Fundraising

Small Large

Giv

er m

otiv

atio

n

Priv

ate

ben

efit

Phi

lant

hrop

ic

1

2

3

4

Potential spend or donation (£)

Low productivity

High productivity

Low productivity

Medium productivity

The second dimension of the matrixattempts to capture the amount of moneythe potential donor is willing to give(albeit indirectly) in support of the cause.Small is used to describe supporters whomay give up to a few hundred pounds tocharity, by whatever means, in the courseof a year. Large represents those givingsignificant financial support to a charity.

Recent research has been carried outanalysing the productivity of differentincome streams of charities. The majormethods for raising money from in-dividuals are listed in Table 2. Withinthe sample of charities considered byFundratios, these income streams make upover 85 per cent of the total voluntaryincome to charities (corporate, trusts andother sources account for the remaining15 per cent). Fundratios is currently themost detailed UK source of disaggregatedvoluntary income data. As Table 2 shows,by far the most productive method offundraising is legacies. Legacies are typi-cally large donations made on the basis ofa philanthropic motivation; the donor bydefinition can gain no private benefit frommaking the donation. Notably, the onlymethod that is less productive than eventsis direct marketing.

The fundraising matrix shown in Figure3 allocates the different methods offundraising briefly discussed above relativeto the wealth of a potential supporter andthe motivations of a supporter.

Box 1This shows low-level financial supportfrom someone interested in their ownprivate benefit. The fact that these peopleare supporting a charity often comessecondary to any private enjoyment theygain. A potential supporter of this typewill not respond to a direct mail shot or aface-to-face street fundraiser as they arenot particularly interested in the charity.Something else is needed to get them topart with money, which in this case is anevent. At this level of support, the eventis likely to be local and small, or a largeconcert since the cost per head of puttingon these events is relatively low.

Box 2This shows low-level financial supportfrom someone who believes in what thecharity is trying to do (philanthropi-cally motivated). This type of supporterresponds well to cheap methods offundraising such as direct marketing,

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Table 2: Productivity of different fundraising methods

Fundraising method Income raised per pound spent

LegaciesCommitted givingMembershipsLocal fundraisingFundraising eventsDirect marketing

Not from individualsTrustsCorporate and trusts

43.33.72.72.32.22.0

9.94.7

Source: Fundratios

produce a lower return than most otherfundraising methods.

The efficiency of a fundraising eventTo evaluate the efficiency of a fundraisingevent the author adopts the commonlyused economic measure of allocativeefficiency.12 Allocative efficiency in thecontext of fundraising simply asks that theresources available to a charity are spent soas to raise the maximum amount of incomefrom a given amount of expenditure.

Fundraising events can be said to beefficient means of fundraising if the moneyspent on the event could not have beenspent on an alternative fundraising methodthat would have raised more money.

It must be realised that this does notmean that all resources have to bespent on fundraising events, just that themonies that are spent on an eventcould not otherwise be more produc-tively used. As can be seen by thefundraising matrix, fundraising events maybe efficient where the more produc-tive methods targeting philanthropicallymotivated givers (the lower half of thematrix) have been exhausted. Thereforeeven though the evidence from Fundratiossuggests fundraising events are among theleast productive forms of fundraising,events within the right context can be anefficient fundraising technique.

This hypothesis was supported by thesample of charities and consultants whowere interviewed and whose events wereanalysed. The charities that used events toraise large proportions of their incomewere those who operated either in nicheareas, whose brand had little presence orwho were in the start-up stage. They couldnot compete with the large household-name charities within their sector, so woulduse events to attract a group of supporterswho gain something from going to theevent aside from any purely philanthropicmotivations towards the charity.

committed giving and face-to-face con-tact, that are overall more productive thanfundraising events.

Box 3This shows high-level financial supportfrom someone who is interested in theirown private benefit. As with Box 1, thisperson may be choosing to support thecharity only as a secondary motivation. Atthis level, the quality of event will be highand the cost per head high to convince aparticipant that it is worth paying a largesum to attend. As suggested above, it ispossible that these events are of lowerproductivity than those in Box 1.

Box 4This shows high-level financial supportfrom someone who believes in what thecharity is trying to do (philanthropicallymotivated). This is the ideal type ofsupporter who is both able and preparedto give significant amounts to the charityas they believe in the cause and what thecharity is trying to achieve. Limited ex-pensive marketing or extravagant eventsare necessary to convince these supportersto part with their money. These majorsupporters only require some personalattention from the charity. Furthermore,these people are probably the most likelyto leave a significant legacy. Given thatpersonal contact is generally all that isneeded to ensure these people continue togive the charity their considerable sup-port, they are the least expensive group toservice and therefore have the highestfundraising productivity.

Putting all the boxes together producesa stylised fundraising matrix. The ad-vantage of putting on an event is that itopens up a vast group of potential sup-porters for a charity, especially for thosecharities whose missions are very nichefocused. The downside of events is thatthey are risky to put on and on average

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For the large household-name charity,events are commonly used to attract peoplewho like to be seen to be involved incharitable activities, enjoy events and haveno strong philanthropic link with the cause.Events are the easiest method of attract-ing the support of this group. Charitiesinvolved in health and disability oftenhave a more philanthropically motivatedsupporter base because of many of theirsupporters’ direct involvement with thecause.

A unique group of fundraising charitiesis religious charities. Religious charitieshave a defined group of constituents —for example a Jewish charity canpredominantly only raise funds fromJewish people or a Sikh charity fromSikhs. Secondly, the religious charities arethe most mature sector and in eachreligious community the major potentialsupporters are generally known andtapped. Fundraising events for religiouscharities become a focal point for theyear, a community event, and an excuseto write to supporters. The motivationfor support is again more philanthropi-cally motivated than most other events.This is reflected by the fact that manyreligious charity fundraising events relyon a private individual level appeal on thenight as the only method of fundrais-ing.

One criticism of the running offundraising events, which was heardconsistently from both charities andconsultants, was lack of donor develop-ment. Many charities fail to develop thepeople who attend events into moreproductive donors and do not take theopportunity at the event to engage themfurther with the charity.

Donor developmentDonor development seeks to achieve twogoals. The first is, over the mediumterm, to raise more money from a sup-

porter, often measured in terms of lifetimevalue.13 The second is to raise moneyfrom a supporter more productively thanthrough fundraising events.

The typical lifetime for a monthlycommitted giver is eight years.14 Onaverage for fundraising events, the lifetimeof a supporter is much shorter. Peoplegenerally participate in adventure andendurance events as a one-off for thechallenge and excitement. For events suchas balls, lunches and dinners, the list ofthose attending contains the friends andcontacts of the volunteer lay-personcommittee organising the event. Theexpected lifetime of these donors isusually the time the contact who invitedthem remains on the committee. Thedeterminants change for those attendingan event through business contacts orthrough religious connections.

Donor productivity can be increasedby transforming a low productivity,privately motivated donor into amore philanthropically motivated, higherproductivity donor. Using the fundraisingmatrix, this amounts to shifting lowproductivity, privately motivated sup-porters (the top two boxes) to higherproductivity, philanthropically motivatedsupporters (the bottom two boxes). Onetechnique that can be used to make thistransition is for the charity to engage andinterest the donor in the cause it ispursuing. This may either be done at theevent, though this is often difficult, or bya donor development team after theevent.

The awareness generated by an event isoften mentioned as another method todevelop donors or acquire new donors.For the large household-name charities,extravagant fundraising events providepublicity in the national press. Thisattracts the attention of (potential) sup-porters from all backgrounds and mayinduce increased future donations. The

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a niche, it will be able to target moreproductive methods of fundraising suchas trusts and companies who may notwish to get involved in the early, riskystages of growth. Once a charity hasbecome more established, awareness fromfundraising events increases in relevanceand importance. This is especially true ifthe charity wishes to maintain its celebrityappeal or position as a ‘fashionable’ charityto support.

Finally, when philanthropic donor basesand techniques have either been tappedor possibly exhausted, fundraising eventsagain provide the charity with the oppor-tunity to branch out and raise money froma broader group of people other thanthose supporters who truly believe in thecharity’s cause.

CONCLUSIONSAll fundraising events provide an attendeewith some private benefit, that is some-thing tangible in return, distinct frommore philanthropic methods of giving. Assuch, fundraising events can fit into afundraising strategy to target a broadergroup of people outside the charity’s corephilanthropically motivated base. If othermore productive measures of fundraisinghave been exhausted or are inappropriatethen fundraising events can be an efficientway to raise money. Furthermore, eventsmay be run to raise awareness for thecause, often without the objective ofmaximising funds raised. Awareness is dif-ficult to measure and not well understoodand would make for interesting furtheranalysis in relation to fundraising events.

Overall, the evidence from the charitiessampled and from other work done onfundraising productivity is that thoughfundraising events are one of the leastproductive methods for raising money,they can be an efficient part of manycharities’ fundraising strategies by attract-

size and scope of this effect is very hard tomeasure. Few charities will run an eventthat breaks even but serves solely to ‘raiseawareness’. Raising awareness is now seenat most as a by-product of a fundraisingevent whose primary aim by definition isto raise as much money as possible. Asdiscussed earlier, further research on theunderstanding of awareness as an objectivewould be welcomed.

Acquiring donors is by its nature muchmore expensive than the retention anddevelopment of donors.15 Fundraisingevents can serve as useful tools for donoracquisition. Once this person is at theevent it is possible to interest them furtherand attempt to develop them as a futuredonor. Trekking events, for example, areknown to help create strong bonds withthe charity.

A special group targeted for acquisitionand development, and the only groupof supporters for whom charities aregenerally prepared to run breakevenevents, are those that attract youngsupporters, particularly those in theirtwenties. Young people often have lowdisposable income, but may turn intomuch larger, more productive supporterswhen they are older. The expectedlifetime value profile is low in the earlyyears and high in the later years but againthere is no known published evidence thatthis is the case.

Fundraising events within the lifecycle of a charityIn the early stages of a charity’s life,fundraising events can play a significantrole. A charity will have a smallphilanthropically motivated donor baseand a weak brand. A fundraising eventinstantly allows the charity to target thosewho may not be interested in its cause butwill enable it to raise income to further itscause.

As the charity grows and begins to fill

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ing support from those who are littleconcerned with the specific charitablecause.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the severalcharities, professionals and volunteersinterviewed, several anonymous referees,Martin Brookes (New Philanthropy Capital),Luke Fitzherbert (Directory of SocialChange), Howard Lake (Fundraising.co.uk),Mike Moffat (Fundratios), Adrian Sargeant(Bristol Business School) and Andrew Watt(Institute of Fundraising).

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(2) Glazer, A. and Konrad, K. (1996) ‘Asignalling explanation for charity’,American Economic Review, Vol. 86,No. 4, pp. 1019–1028; Harburgh, W.(1998) ‘What do donations buy? Amodel of philanthropy based on prestigeand warm glow’, Journal of PublicEconomics, Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 269–284.

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Understanding charity fundraising events

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