Rethinking the Dinner Gala! [NY Times]

By Phyllis Korkki

The three-course dinners. The auctions and raffles. The speeches from sponsors. The requests for donations. These are the ingredients of many a charity event, and they have stood the test of time.

But nonprofit groups that are planning events this season — especially recurring ones — may want to consider whether it is time to shake things up. The last thing a fund-raiser needs is a guest who is bored, or annoyed, or doesn’t show up at all.

“How are they coming back year after year if you haven’t made this night special?” said Ginger Berman, president of Events With Ginger & Company, based in Westfield, N.J. She has helped plan five “chef’s table” events in New York for Autism Speaks, a research and advocacy organization.

At the event, a collection of chefs (more than 90 at last month’s gathering) donate their time and food to cook tableside meals for groups of 10. Although the basic structure of the Autism Speaks events has remained the same since they began in 2007, organizers add variety by inviting different chefs to participate and switching up the entertainment each year, Ms. Berman said. Past events have featured celebrities like Harry Connick Jr., while this year the chief entertainment was a young singer with autism, Talina Toscano.

Adding new elements and extra pizazz to events can be challenging if the organizers are nonprofit employees who have other job duties as well. But Ms. Berman, along with Cassie Brown of TCG Events, based in Charlotte, N.C., says a little creativity can go a long way.

At the same time, they warn, event planners should never lose sight of expenses and logistics.

Ms. Brown has attended her share of dinners and auctions, and some can become formulaic, she says. When clients want a formal dinner to serve as the center of a function, she often tries to talk them out of it, she said. Even if food is served buffet-style, people still end up sitting with the same few other guests for almost the whole night, she said.

One reason to attend these events is to socialize, and they can be excellent networking opportunities, so food and drink setups should encourage mingling and can be preferable, she said.

An “interactive dessert experience” she recently organized was more social than a dinner, she said: Guests stood at narrow tables as pastry chefs prepared large elaborate desserts that could be shared.

A danger of fund-raisers is that they can turn into “talking head shows,” Ms. Brown said. Understandably, nonprofits want to honor the people who have contributed to their success. Unfortunately, some speakers go on longer than planned. Then, very often, comes “the ask” — the request for donations. That may not go down so well if the prelude to it has been mismanaged — attendees may even slip out early, Ms. Brown said.

She suggests several ways to avoid these pitfalls.

• Invest in a short, professionally made video that includes major sponsors, and play it on a big screen during the event. Reducing speeches makes time management much easier.
• Do not wait to feed the guests. Front-loading with speeches and entertainment can leave attendees hungry and less receptive to donating money.
• Make your request for donations at the beginning or the middle of an event, rather than at the end. Once guests have fulfilled the purpose of the evening, they can enjoy themselves.
• Consider a nontraditional room setup, such as moving the stage to the center of the site. Sometimes when a stage is in the front, guests in the back can feel far removed, Ms. Brown said.

Nonprofits are in a tricky situation. They need to create a meaningful and entertaining experience while keeping within a strict budget. Often, participants like celebrity chefs and entertainers are happy to donate their time, but costs can still add up. Revenue goals for a charity event should exceed expenses at least fourfold, said Ms. Berman.

How a nonprofit organization manages an auction can be critical to an event’s success. More event planners are harnessing technology, enabling guests to bid online before an event, or via their smartphones and tablets during the event, Ms. Brown said. That way, guests need not continually return to the table where an item is offered to see if they have been outbid.

Kalin Kassabov of New York, who attends up to five charity events a month, has found that silent auctions combined with invitation-only events can be especially successful, if the organizers tailor auction items to the guests. He recently attended a function where nearly every item in the silent auction received a bid “because everybody was invited and personally screened,” he said.

Mr. Kassabov has a message for guests who R.S.V.P. to invitations from charities: follow through. He recalled an event where the nonprofit rented a nightclub with impressive platters of food, special drinks and a theme, but the turnout was poor. “I hate to see the effort of the charity kind of being wasted by people not showing up,” he said.

Read the original article in The New York Times.