Cultivating relationships with donors and attendees must remain a priority for the continued long-term health of a chapter. It’s easy to want to lean too heavily on automated processes to solicit attendees, as well as ordering merchandise to fill your banquet’s merchandise needs. Perhaps your chapter needs to put more emphasis on building relationships with donors and attendees. Below, we explore some ideas and tactics shared by RMEF staff and volunteers to do so.
Make it a Priority:
Establish committee and individual goals that make building relationships with donors and attendees a priority. Have specific goals that can be revisited within each chapter meeting and be a regular part of your chapter’s recurring agenda. Below is a list of potential goals your committee can set to help build and improve donor and attendee relations.
- Set a deadline to contact all donors who contributed to the previous year’s event. (Example: four weeks prior to the banquet date).
- Set a goal for the number of new donors to solicit. This can be set as a committee goal or individually. For example, create a goal to add 20 new donors as a committee or set a goal for each committee member to successfully solicit two new donors.
- Set an underwriting goal. This can be a specified dollar amount or even a percentage of your merchandise order total. If you spent $10,000 on merchandise and firearms and had $4,000 in cash donations last year, set a goal to increase that total to $5,000 this year.
- Hand deliver or mail thank you cards to each donor after the banquet.
- Look at past year’s table buyers and hand deliver this year’s table flyer to those businesses and individuals.
- Within two to three weeks of your banquet, look at past year’s attendees and see who is yet to sign up. Divide up a list of those folks to committee members and begin calling each attendee. You can let them know you noticed they were yet to sign up and wanted to make sure they received an invitation. Be prepared to take their order over the phone when making these calls.
Assign Responsibility
Many chapters have volunteers assigned to specific donors who solicit them annually. When a donor speaks with the same committee member each year, that volunteer becomes the face of RMEF to that donor. Having the right volunteer assigned to each donor is also important. If a volunteer frequents a specific business in their personal or professional life, they may be the best person to approach that donor about a donation. It is important to support the donors that support RMEF so that the business owner or manager doesn’t see only the volunteer when they come in once a year asking for a donation.
Face-to-Face Interaction
Authentic, in-person interaction has a much higher rate of success for securing donations and/or making ticket sales. In-person interactions give the volunteer an opportunity to understand the donor’s perspective better, so they understand the donor’s motives to give. This also allows the volunteer to gauge the donor’s level of support for future donation requests.
In-Event Donor and Attendee Interaction
Donors
Each donation comes with an expectation that it will be put to good use and the donor receives credit for the donation. Make sure donors are recognized within the event program and through the use of tent cards and other means of recognition. Larger donations are often used in the live auction or as stand-alone raffle, so make sure your emcee is giving credit to the donor when a donated or underwritten item is mentioned. If you have a slideshow for your live auction, make sure the donor is featured on the slide for each auction item. Some chapters even add the logo of their donors to these slideshows.
Event Attendees
Thanking your event attendees must be a priority on banquet night. A simple, “Thank you for attending!” at check-in or checkout, can go a long way with RMEF attendees. When a raffle salesperson makes a sale, thank them for their support and wish them luck in the raffle.
One tactic some chapters use is to have a committee member walk the banquet floor during dinner, asking attendees if they enjoyed their meal. That person can also thank them for attending and ask about their evening. Something this small adds a personal touch and shows attendees that we care about their banquet experience.
Event Emcee
A quality emcee ensures the crowd feels appreciated and that donors are recognized for their contributions. Forgetting to mention a donor on a live auction or raffle item may hurt the relationship with that donor. A good emcee ensures those little details are not missed.
Post Event Follow-Up
Following up with donors gives the donor closure on their donation and marks yet another opportunity to show the donor gratitude. Reporting the results of what their item generated, as well as the overall success of the event, lets them know they contributed to the event’s success. By doing so, you must also emphasize the impact on the mission and how every donation and event contributes to the success of RMEF. This follow-up can be done in person or by mailing them a thank you card.