My friend and mentor, Mike Williams, has worked with countless nonprofit organizations. He is the most rebooked fundraising speaker among Pregnancy Resource Centers in the nation! And he should be! Mike is an incredible guy who LIVES to raise money for God's work for children and families! (Mike is the guy who "discovered" me! That's another story.)
We were recently having breakfast and planning our speaking engagement at the CareNet Conference coming up in September in Colorado, and he brought something to my attention that I had never heard of...and...it's GENIUS!
I am not now convinced that every nonprofit should seriously consider hosting TWO fundraising banquets in one day. Here are the reasons why:
Your business people are far more apt to come to something during the lunch hour or at breakfast. Host one shorter banquet during the workday for them.
Many of your older donors don't want to drive at night. A banquet during the day works very well for them.
People still LOVE the evening banquet to catch up with their friends and truly take time to celebrate what you are doing! You will reach two very different groups of donors that still LOVE giving to your amazing work!
You're already working super hard to pull this off, why not add a second outlet to all the hard work that you are doing? Doing two banquets in one day is NOT ADDING twice the amount of work. It's probably not much more work than you are already going to do.
You may have someone who couldn't make it at night who could come to the one during the day. Why not give people options and make it harder to miss?
I'm not saying that everyone needs to host two banquets in one day. But I am making the case that you ought to seriously consider it.
