Are you planning on giving awards at your next fundraising event? Read on for tips on how to meaningfully incorporate awards into your event. Just like it’s important to have a plan for how to meaningfully involve honorary chairs, dignitaries and sponsors at your event - it’s important to craft a strategy for how to incorporate award honorees at your event. Long before you consider who will receive an award, be strategic on if you need to have awards at your event. Many groups create several awards at their event because they have hopes that the honoree will invite their own guests and fill tables of willing donors to attend the event. This is not always the case and not an effective way to ensure you have the right people at your event. If you have awards, do it because it supports and reinforces your organization's story - not because you have hopes that it will bring donors to your event. Awards cannot replace strong donor development work.
Another consideration is if your annual fundraising event is the right place to have a meaningful awards ceremony or reception for the valued honoree. Many fundraising events have several components that have to occur to set the stage for effective fundraising. Awards, while meaningful, can take up precious time in the run of show that could be used more effectively to tell the organization's story. What often happens is that awards either get the short end of the stick or they take up too much space. When the first happens it can feel bad for the honoree and the people who care about them. When the latter happens it makes the event confusing for those who are in attendance who may not know a lot about the work of the organization and who do not know about or care all that much about the honorees. Remember that for many people attending the event they are guests of people who care deeply about your work but for many it’s the first time they are learning about your organization. If awards do make sense to have at your event here are some ideas to make the most of this opportunity. If you have a VIP reception before the event you can use the reception to highlight your awardees. This smaller, more intimate group of community supporters will provide a meaningful opportunity to showcase the work and value of the awardees and give everyone a chance to say what they need to say without it impacting the run of show. It’s still important to script this portion of the event and ensure awardees and those introducing them are given guidance on parameters for what is needed and how much time they are allotted. If you must have awards during your program it’s best to save them until after your fundraising efforts. All that is needed before you ask for money is 1-2 speakers and/or videos that tell a compelling story of your organization’s work. A brief welcome followed by an overview of who you are, what you do, why it matters, why it matters now, and what we can do together to make a difference on this issue (this can also be a video). If you have a live auction this can come after that. After the live auction you can go right into your paddleraise where you highlight one story that showcases your work and demonstrates impact followed by a direct ask and then the collection. You might be wondering if there are any circumstances in which awards could come before fundraising. In some rare cases if the awardee has a story that enhances the story you are communicating or in some way compliments your organization’s story then it’s possible it can. This is where good scripting comes in as well as strategy in terms of the “how” you do the awards. It also matters how many awards you are planning for. This is an area that your auctioneer can help you with during the consultation process. What you want to avoid is providing awards to people and then giving them no guidance and free open time to provide remarks. This is a recipe for a run of show that gets off track and leaves your audience confused and disengaged. So what can you do to make sure that any awards you offer at your event have the intended impact of both honoring your awardee and positively impacting your run of show and storytelling? The best way I have seen is through video. It allows you to tell the story of the awardee, weave it into your work, control the timing, as well as keep it interesting. Remember most folks do not have public speaking experience and videos allow everyone to shine if done well. After the video plays you can have the awardees come up to the stage and receive their award, have a photo op, and get the applause they deserve. Because they spoke in the video - they do not need to speak again and you can move on to the next portion of your program. If you cannot do a video you can follow the same formula of having one person come up to share the story of the awardee and script it to align with your organization story - how does this person enhance your work/cause - what difference are they making and why does it matter. Write in a way that moves your donors to feel something. And then you can have them come up for a photo op. Keep videos succinct with minimal talking heads and plenty of b-roll to keep it engaging. Tip: Do not spend time in the program announcing the awardees full bio. Place all bios in the program and a brief bio in the powerpoint. I don’t recommend having awardees speak at the event unless you are willing to script them and give them a time limit and have them share their remarks in advance with the willingness to have it edited. Many organizations are not comfortable with those parameters and often discover that if they don’t do these recommendations that the awardees will speak for significant amounts of time and often not on track with the messaging of the event. Keep in mind events with alcohol consumption make live remarks even more risky. Awards should add value to your program if you offer them at all - and if not you should reflect and regroup on other ways to honor your community members - including separate awards ceremonies outside of your annual fundraising event.
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AuthorMichael Faith Benefit Auctioneer and fundraising professional Archives
August 2023
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