3 Things You Need to Know About Your Non-Profit Event Audience
Choosing the right attendees for your nonprofit event is important. After all, the goals of these events usually revolve around awareness, fundraising, and community involvement. To meet these goals, it’s important to refine your invitation list to strategically target attendees. Here are some things to consider when putting together an attendance list for your nonprofit event.
- What are the goals for your event? Do you have a monetary goal, or is your event more focused on building a volunteer base? Do you need to build an inventory of donated items? These questions and more are just the tip of the iceberg when organizing an event. Make sure everyone on your team has a clear idea of the goal.
- Who is your target audience? Your goal will have a direct effect on your target audience for an event. If you’re organizing a fundraiser, you’re more likely to successfully elicit funds from people who are familiar with your organization. So you’ll want to invite previous donors, current volunteers, people who have donated to similar organizations in the past. If you are trying to raise awareness or increase your volunteer base, you’ll want to look at who volunteers with your competitors, review your list of dormant volunteers (those who have not volunteered in six months but who may have expressed an interest in the past), and friends or family of current volunteers. As you can see, some of these groups overlap, but each goal has a distinct group of attendees who don’t necessarily relate to the other goal.
- Where will you get your list of attendees? You’ve determined a goal, then set your target audience. Now where do you get the contacts for your email list? Some of them may be existing contacts – previous donors, volunteers, etc. But others may be completely new to your list. If you are organizing a fundraiser, do some research on the most affluent zip codes in your area, and put together an email list based on geography. Is your event targeted to a certain demographic, such as school-aged children or the elderly? This is another area in which zip codes can be helpful. You can find information on how many area households have kids or older adults in the house to determine if the relevance of these causes would warrant the targeting of these households.
Now that you know who you’re going to invite, it’s time to put together your event email. This is where rsvpBOOK can help. Our email marketing and social networking tools allow you to connect with existing contact lists and raise awareness of your event across various social media channels. The rsvpBOOK Email Wizard allows you to customize email messages and schedule delivery to ensure that you reach your audience when and how you want. Emails can be tracked for data analysis and to assist in follow-up with registered and declined invitees, making customer relationship management in the future a breeze.
Further publicize your event on your social media networks by linking your registration page to your social media accounts. Just as you can send your emails, you can post your event updates to Facebook. Social media is a helpful vehicle to use to reach new prospects for your organization.
To learn more about planning your next nonprofit event, or to see these tools in action, sign up today for a brief tour. We can’t wait to make your next event the best and most stress-free one yet!