Inside Spring 2026 Events: Looking at the Data

Transcript Recording:

Leya Simmons (00:01)
Hi, how are you? I'm Leya Simmons and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Better Unite. Welcome to today's 501c drop. We're getting started right now, but I want you to feel free if you're in my chat, if you're joining me live on the webinar, to throw your name in there, say hi, tell me where you're from. ⁓ this is going to be a really exciting session, and I do hope that I have some time at the end for questions, for a brief QA.

So go ahead and get familiar with that chat. It's going to figure out where your questions are. All right. ⁓ I see some people joining in. Love it. All right. Welcome everybody. Let me go ahead and stop my share. I am so excited to be bringing this to you today. We have actually been working towards this data mining effort around aggregate event information for quite a while.

I wanted to do this webinar because I I actually mentioned this on LinkedIn the other day. Every spring, my feed and every fall, frankly, my feed fills up with organizations that post about record-breaking numbers and next level fundraising at their galas and golf tournaments and whatever event that they do. And while I love every minute of that, while it makes me so happy to see and read that, I I do think that.

And I actually know that underneath that there is a more complicated, much more nuanced, and honestly a much more useful story that's lying in the true data. So today I am going to share our real data from the first half of 2026. We are talking about 5,450 events and campaigns, nearly 269,000 guests across the country.

Over $124 million in total event revenue that's flowed through the Better Unite platform in one way or another between January 1 of 2026 and June 15th of 2026, also known as yesterday. So I'm not going to name a single organization. I actually can't. I do not have that. I cannot see it. This is aggregate anonymized data. But I am going to talk about some patterns.

And what the events that overperformed in this time frame between January 1 and June 15, what the events that overperformed have in common, and what organizations that are leaving money on the table are doing. And then really, what I want to get to is what you can do about this in this coming fall. The whole goal. So this is the completely candidly.

The benchmark conversation that I wish somebody had been able to give me when I was an event-based fundraising professional in my career. ⁓ I very much wish that I had had these kinds of this kind of information and this toolbox at my disposal. So here you go. Let me first address something, because I'm going to use some language that I want to clarify. So it's relative to what I talked about last week on the 501 C drop. So if you did not

Listening yet last week, last Tuesday, we talked about the your event is just the beginning. So utilizing your event or your event campaign as a launch pad or a catalyst for a cultivation effort that goes far beyond the actual event itself. And I and I kept using the phrase your event is not a campaign, it is a cultivation event. That's actually a phrase that I stand by. I think that's very, very important. That said.

I'm going to use the word event campaign a little bit today. And I want to explain why, because in the Bear Unite software ecosystem, we call any digital effort that has a beginning and an end a campaign. It's most software does this, as a matter of fact. Think of an email marketing campaign or a peer-to-peer campaign, right? So when I'm using the term event campaign, I just mean the digital archive of the effort. So the information that we have.

Pre-during and post-event. I am not at all commenting on the full effort or the follow-up activities that you're engaging in through your moves management and workflows and automations and all of the things that I discussed during last week's session. So please just know that that's what an event campaign today means. When we're looking at data, that's the appropriate term to use. Alright, here's the landscape, I'll say it again quickly.

Across 5,450 Better Unite event campaigns in the first half of this year, the total revenue picture is $124.17 million. That's all sources combined. Donations, sponsorships, ticket sales, raffles, ⁓ funding needs, paddle raises, everything involved, right? ⁓ Items for sale, all of those. Silent auction, live auction, I didn't mention those, everything involved. Now

Okay, first of all, before you compare yourself to that number, please don't. This is in the entire Better Unite platform for a almost full six months, five and a half months. So, but pay attention to the shape of the data underneath it and some of the logic that we are applying that might be slightly flawed. I think that's where the real insight's going to live today. Actually, no, that's where the real insight's going to live today. So let's start there. One of the most important things that I'm gonna say,

Is something that honestly a lot of us miss completely. The standard average donation, incl excluding, excuse me, excluding ticket purchases across all 58,546 guests who gave is $1,138. That sounds like an amazing number. That's right. That's so exciting. But when we look at the trimmed average, when we take just that.

Middle 80% of donors taking away the top 10% and the bottom 10%, the average donation drops to $248. That's almost a five to one gap. So what does that tell us? It tells us that a relatively small number of very large gifts are pulling our sector's event-based fundraising average donation way, way up.

I want you all to consider that if you're reporting your average gift to your board without really understanding this or paying attention to that nuance, you're telling a story that masks what's actually happening with the majority of your donors, and you're not alone. Every data that we look at, the fundraising effectiveness project, giving USA, all of the reports are telling us that we are losing that middle 80% of donors, those mid-level donors and smaller micro donors that

All the overall our our nationwide average of donations, while it is continuing to move up, it is continuing to our our donor base is continuing to shrink. So fewer and fewer donors giving more and more money. So we're seeing that in the event data as well. This honestly should not surprise any of us. But I do want to talk about for our purposes here the takeaway for your fall planning.

If your average gift looks great, that's great. I'm still very excited for you. It's really a wonderful number. But you should at some point ask yourself: is that number driven by broad generosity across the room? Or is it being driven by a couple of very, very large donations that are really at the end of the day doing all of the heavy lifting? Because there's two very different

fundraising position positions there and they both require very different strategies as we move into the fall. Okay, let's talk paddle raising. I've got a couple of things here in the chat.

So I'm seeing that a couple of you are not seeing a presenter. So I want to make sure that you can see me. So let me just make sure that my presentation is coming through. I keep freezing. I'm so sorry about this. Sometimes it sounds like you can see. Okay, someone says no issues. Thanks, you guys. I'm so sorry. I don't actually see that I'm having any problems here and I've got all the things plugged in.

And so forth. So I hope that you're able to see me. If not, we are sending out a recording and I can see that my recording is happening. So I do promise that everybody is going to get this. So I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna keep going with our paddle raise. Let's talk paddle rays. All right. Your paddle rays, you all know this: fund a need, fan, ⁓ mission moment, direct appeal, mission appeal, whatever you want to call that. Across the platform this spring, paddle raise generated $15.4 million in revenue.

I love that number. That's a huge number. That is a dollar amount that is pure donation, no return for the investment, other than investing into the mission that matters. The average gift among people who participated was $1,465. That sounds great until we get to this next number, which is 3.9%. Out of nearly 269,000 ticketed guests across all of these events, only

About 10,500 people made a paddle raise gift, and that's how we get to 3.9%. That means that over 96% of people during a very emotionally charged moment of the event, the moment that the auctioneer or the MC like built up to, you had your video appeal, your executive director, your client or constituent was able to speak. Most people did not give.

Let me clarify that this is across all events within Better Unite. Those events also include golf tournaments, ski shoots, things like that. Some of those do not have a direct appeal. They don't have a paddle raise. Most of them, however, and this is what we looked at, were giving levels. They did have some form of giving level available to people to use. So

That was the way that we were able to get to this number. So that 96% is likely almost certainly a little bit lower than we think, but I I can't imagine that it's all that much lower. So I I would guess we're in the 90%. This is actually something that we're going to dive into in another report later. So we will find some of this nuance in a later report. But regardless, I did I did feel that it was worth bringing to your attention now. Because I don't think

96%, if that's the number, is a donor problem. I honestly believe at that point that it's a structural problem, that the logic beneath our event is in some way flawed. So what we did see among the top performing events, those that did the top performing events, they did something differently with their paddle raise, and that is actually consistent with our data. They did a couple of things, honestly. First, they set their giving levels very intentionally and specifically.

They did not start at $10,000 with a hope and a prayer and you know, wish that somebody would show up. They did the work, they knew who was in the room, they built their levels based on what they know about the capacity of people there, if not having before the event ever even began, secured one of those higher level ⁓ gifts. Regardless, they did some advanced work. They made sure as well.

On the other end, that there was an accessible entry point that everybody could participate, $100 or $250. I'm actually loving, and I'm sure many of you have seen this, there's a a paddle drop at the end or something where we go around and collect the paddles and you make it clear to the audience that everybody that drops their paddle in that moment is donating $100, and then maybe there's something that gets raffled out of those $100 donations, i.e., turning in your paddles. ⁓

There's a lot of different ways to get that lower end participation. And that can really boost our numbers up in that 3%, 3.9%, let's call it 4% versus 96%. So they had both the top end and the bottom end covered before they started. Second, they also made mobile giving as frictionless as possible. And this speaks to my point about our golf tournaments, our walk runs, where we have giving levels available to for people to use.

Even if we aren't doing a specified paddle raise during the course of the event, if someone's got to, and God forbid, at your actual gala, someone has to flag down a volunteer or fill out a commitment card like we used to have back when I was doing a lot of fundraising or a pledge card, then we have staff time, we're having to follow up on those. ⁓ they have to figure out a complicated text-to-give phone number. Like you've really lost at that point.

After the auctioneer-led paddle raise, and and granted, many of our auctioneers out there, many of those folks that run paddle raises every night of the week during the spring and the fall, they're going to advise that you don't show some of them, that you don't show giving levels during the paddle raise, right? They want to build up the energy in the room. They want everybody raising a paddle that they possibly can get raising a paddle. So I'm speaking about after that auctioneer or MC-led paddle raise, we want to have.

A very easy to use mobile option for donating through strictly a giving level. There's there's there's no strings attached, there's no ⁓ there's no return on it aside from supporting the mission. And that can be accomplished through a QR code that's on the screen that takes the the donor or their guest directly to their guest experience page as opposed to somewhere where they again have to enter in a credit card. ⁓ that can also

Be a you know a commitment that they're able to make, they can pledge from like just really two taps in their guest experience link, anything that we can do to reduce the friction, reduce the noise during that. Third, and this is the one that takes a lot of courage, or frankly, takes hiring a professional auctioneer as opposed to kind of winging it with a charismatic board member or a local celebrity.

The professionals that I see do a really wonderful paddle raise, they don't rush it. They take their time, they let the moments land, they wait for a beat while people think about what they saw during your mission appeal. The events that try to squeeze a paddle raise into three minutes between live auction and dessert or the end of the evening or the close of the silent auction.

Those are the ones that are like definitely gonna land in that 3.9%, 4% number. So, what we can extrapolate from this, if you have a fall gala on the calendar, your single highest leverage move might be to look at the strategy around your paddle raise. If you can really pay attention to that, then you can move that you know two to three percent up into a higher range.

So I'm like I'm a little bit lost in what I was saying right here. Yeah, if you have a fall again, we might not be finding more sponsor. It might, yeah, exactly. What we want to do, all right. I've I found my notes. I'm having to rely on my notes a great deal today because I'm saying so many numbers. So I apologize for that in advance. But I wanted to make sure that I get this data to you. And let me pause here and say that our benchmark report, the numbers from which all of this came, is going to be sent to you along with the recording. So those of you that are seeing

⁓ any any kind of issues, not only will you get the recording, you're also going to get in, you know, be able to hold in your hands if you decide to print it out the numbers that I'm telling you. So don't worry about furiously scribbling any of those down. So if you redesign your paddle raise, you could raise that 4% up to 8%, right? ⁓ so at $1,465 per participant, every percentage point that you're able to bump that paddle raise up.

Is really going to move the needle on the financial success of your event. Alright, we got through that. Sorry, that was a little rough. Let's talk about the people in your room, your donor mix. I want to talk about who's actually giving in the room. Across our platform this spring, 82,270 people made a gift. Of those, about 20% or roughly 16,500 were returning donors. The other 80%, or nearly 66,000 guests,

were first-time donors. Now I don't know about you, but that number really surprised me. I really thought that it would be returning guests that would have have the lion's share of donations, but that is actually not the case. What we're seeing is those first-time attendees, we should say attendees, are also first-time donors to organizations. So on the surface, first-time donors actually generated more revenue.

$65.8 million versus $30.8 million for returning donors. So you could look at that and think, great, my event is a fantastic acquisition tool, which it absolutely is. Because that's basically double. Every I mean, I honestly believe that events are some of the best top-of-the-funnel efforts that we can undertake in any fundraising strategy.

But the number that you should pay attention to here as well is the average gift per donor. Returning donors averaged $1,861 in donations. First-time donors, however, averaged $1,01. That's an 86% gap. Your returning donors will give almost twice as much as your first-time donors.

And honestly, that makes sense. They know you, they have an experience of you. They've probably attended that actual event before, if not a different event. They they trust you and they've seen the impact. They they retained the information from last year's event and they were moved by your mission, then they thought about it for an entire year. Hopefully, there were cultivation activities in that year that you extended to that donor. They're back and they're ready to give more. But what it could also mean for your strategy.

Is that your event has two jobs. And candidly, you really need to pay attention to both jobs, and they are very, very different jobs. Job one is donor acquisition, right? We're clearly doing a pretty good job at that. We're getting net new donors in the room, we're giving them a great experience. All of you run and execute incredible events. I've watched them, attended them. ⁓

And and we're also doing a good job of capturing those new donor information. That that's what that says to me. If they check in, we're getting the information from the guests, or our sponsors are giving that information to us prior to the event. They feel cared for, they feel seen. This was actually a point that I made in last week's session as well. ⁓ and they they feel valued and hurt. So the organizations that treat, let's see, here we go. Let me tell you what job number two is.

Job number two, however, is cultivation. We also need to make sure that the people that attended last year have all of those donor touch points throughout the year that make them not only want to return and attend the event again, but clearly give an even larger gift than they did the year prior. So they have had the opportunity to feel seen and heard by the organization outside of the event. And that's the very big distinction.

So there's organizations, however, and I and I count myself in this as well from when I was an event-based fundraiser, where you kind of treat your event as where as if the only job was donor acquisition. And it's a really I mean that's not a small thing. It's not an unimportant job. It's, you know, you're getting butts and seats, you're maximizing your crowd at all costs. But if that's the only thing that you're doing, then you're kind of on a treadmill. There, you know.

Organizations that are really only for focusing on that acquisition piece are replacing donors every year instead of growing them. And we talked last week as well about the cost of a new donor donor versus the much lower cost of cultivating and retaining a recurring donor. And we also happen to know as well, again, from all of the data, the fundraising effectiveness project and giving USA, that our sector as a whole.

Has a difficult time with turning first-time donors into recurring donors. So again, no new information here. It's just put into an event context. The practical question that you can ask yourself and your team right now is: of the donors who gave at your spring event, how many of them have heard from you since that event?

Not just the automated receipt, not just the their FMV and tax calculation, and not even just their automated thank you, but they've really heard from you. They've received other information about the organization. Hopefully, as many as you can, as best you can, have received some sort, some form of personal outreach or touch in those intervening months since your event. You're excused if your event was only in June or at the end of May, you've got a little bit more time, but

Really, we want to hopefully see that engagement, that cultivation starting to happen sooner and sooner post-event. ⁓ and and all like let me also say the caveat here, done by more than just one person within the organization. This is an activity reaching out to everybody that was at the event in a personalized way that can absolutely be spread across a board, a committee, a team. Everybody can get involved. Staff, all kinds of staff, everyone can get involved in.

Making sure that everybody that attended your event, and certainly anybody that gave has ⁓ been spoken to and heard from by somebody at the organization, the mission that they just invested in. Okay, so my next little piece is something that it's the 79% problem, is my headline here. But it's some information that frankly is kind of haunting and kind of keeps me up at night. The top 10% of donors.

Coming back to this, the top 10% of donors, about 8,200 people, in our aggregated data generated 79% of all donor revenue. Their average gift size is an impressive $9,278. The other 90%, which is over 74,000 donors, they generated only 21% of revenue. And their average gift size was $274.

This is like, if you've ever heard of Pareto's Law, it's Paretto's Law on Steroids. For those of you that don't know, Pareto's Law was created by an Italian economist, and it says that 80% of the outcomes are going to come from 20% of the effort. Or from 80% of outcomes will come technically from 20% of causes. It's not unique in any way, again, to Better United's data. This is consistent with what we see all the way across our sector. But to me, I do think seeing it quantified this clearly.

Is important because it makes this risk, this is a sector-wide risk that we're seeing and facing really, really visible. The risk is that if your event depend the event income or revenue depends on 10%, only 10% of your donors for nearly 80% of your money, you are one underperforming high capacity table, one missed sponsorship, one corporate sponsor leaving.

Or a couple that moves away, away from a decently catastrophic event, incident. Please know that I'm not saying this to scare you. I actually wrote that down. I am saying this because the solution is not to somehow make that 90% all 90% of those people give more. The average $274 donor might be giving everything that they can in that moment, but they also might not be. The solution

However, is to invest in the relationship with those top 10% donors outside of the event, all of the cultivation activities, so that the event is now just one touch point in a full year planned out, intentional cultivation campaign that you are working with every single person that lives in that top 10%. And again, okay, so I that

My last session was called Your Event is Just the Beginning. If you didn't see it, this is like, I don't know, what number five times of me referen referencing it. So go back, take a listen. It's or if you're watching us or listening to us on Spotify or watching us on YouTube, where there's also in the webinar section at betterunite.com, you can find that. I keep referencing it. It was a great talk about how you can address some of that cultivation problem that our sector really does have within events. Okay.

Back to this report and this data. The second thing that this tells you is, you know, you probably already know who that 10%, who those 10% of people are at your own event, at your own and within your organization. But do you know, this is my challenge to you, who's on the cusp? Who's right at the edge of being inside that 10%? Who's between 10 and 20% in your donors? Who gave $500 last year but could potentially give $2,000.

This year, if they had the right cultivation effort apply. That cohort is your opportunity for growth. That is where your development team, your board, really your development team and your board, sometimes your committee, that's where their time should be going between now and your fall event. The organizations in our data that overperform are also not the ones with the biggest crowds.

Not by a long shot. My friend Samantha Swain with Swayne Strategies does the Fundraising Elevator podcast, another podcast you should go listen to. She talks all the time about making about seeing big returns from smaller events. She really leans into the power of those events. Organizations that overperform are the ones that do the intentional work with that middle layer. The people that are not yet in the top 10, but could be.

Alright, so I've said some scary news. Now let me get to my favorite section because I actually think this challenges some long-held belief within event fundraising or some beliefs in this. Let's look at where that $124 million actually came from. The largest source of event revenue is direct donations at 40.1%. That accounted for almost $50 million. Not auctions, not tickets, not sponsorships, direct donations.

People just giving money because they were asked to do so and then they did it. The second one is 20.3% and that's sponsorships. So sponsorships accounted for 20.3% of the $124 million. That was $25 million of the $124. $24, $124 million. Those are the corporate partners, your sponsors that you rely on every year, the table sponsors, presenting sponsors, all of those things.

That you build decks for and you work on months and months in advance of your event. That translates, it's a very valuable use of time because it translates into one in every $5 coming in, coming from a sponsor. Ticket sales are third at 14.3%. Paddle raise is fourth at 11.2%. Now, if we go to the bottom of the list, it gets interesting. Your live auction is 7.7%.

The silent auction, 3%. Items for sale, 2.5%. That actually makes sense to me. Raffle was 0.8%. And frankly, I I almost left this one out of my talk. It would be in the benchmark report, but I I like frankly kind of wanted to leave it out because I don't I don't feel that, well, first of all, we know very few events actually do raffles, not everybody does. And I think they are a very

Good way and an exciting way to gamify the event and build the energy that might not show a return in the raffle subsection, but certainly can raise the energy that gets your paddle raise to that much, much bigger donation amount. So, what I want to talk about is the silent auction. 3% of total revenue, just three. If you think

About the operational lift that goes into a silent auction. And I know that everybody on this call or most people on this call have been a part of one, a part of planning one, a part of the execution of one, a part of the ⁓ acquisition of all of the items, the touch points with your in-kind donors, the effort that's required to reach out, set minimum bids, write descriptions, organize displays, managing checkout, having a checkout, which is

Rather a no-no in my book. And then post-event, chasing down winning bidders, delivery of all of the items, ⁓ everybody that d didn't pay, the dispute that occurred, all of that occurs for 3% of your revenue. And that, honestly, the effort I just described is if you're using a good silent auction software that's going to allow you to use a mobile bidding platform as opposed to

Dealing with clipboards and paper bid sheets and the disputes that happen because somebody couldn't read a number and everything else. So much more manual labor. I am, I am, please hear me. I'm not saying that silent auctions are worthless. Many organizations they are expected. Sometimes the event is honestly built around a form of a silent auction. That's exciting, that's something that's wonderful and great and should not be discounted. ⁓ and and honestly, many times they bring

their own type of gamification to the event. The folks that maybe would never participate in your paddle raise will kind of go shopping in your silent auction. And there's value there, right? They open the possibility, that's another one. They open the possibility of your event extending outside of the room itself, right? Your silent auction can be launched prior to the event. We get credit cards on file.

You can send it out to people that aren't actually at the event, particularly for schools. This is a great way to engage aunts and uncles and grandparents with your event itself, with the fundraising. And a lot of the time, those silent auctions, the digital experience, have giving levels that are visible in some way as well. So somebody that is not attending the event but wants to donate or give, there was just the the silent auction provided an excuse for them to get in there for you to reach out and put them in there too.

So I mean, that's great, but if you are relying on your silent auction or thinking that the level of effort that you're putting in is going to return more than 3% of the revenue of your event, then you've likely got it wrong. The events that outperformed this spring are the ones that got the revenue mix right. They invested their energy in the things that drive that gross revenue number.

Strong sponsorship packages, a well-structured paddle raise raise performed, and frankly, yes, it is a performance. That paddle raise event itself being done by a professional. And finding also, as I mentioned at the beginning, a frictionless way for people to make direct donations before, during, and after the event, not just during the formal ask. So a question that you can take to your planning committee, because I do know that committees

Often get very excited about paddle rays and about silent auctions and all of the things that go in there. Go to the committee and talk about if you could reclaim the 30 to 40 hours that your team spends on the silent auction. And honestly, I would argue sometimes far north of that number. And they redirected that energy into cultivating new sponsors or cultivating the attendees that you know are going to be there.

Or really optimizing your paddle raise, or taking the you know, time that you would spend calculating the dollars that you're spending on salary to do that. And maybe that revenue goes, or sorry, not that revenue, but the those dollars actually go to hiring a professional MC or auctioneer. What would that be worth? So just really taking an honest look at it before you just launch into the silent auction again because you always have done it. All right.

Based on everything we've just walked through, I would like to provide for you five concrete things that you can do between now and your next event. You know how I love to give practical takeaways when we provide this kind of data or we talk about these issues. ⁓ these kind of this kind of thing was always valuable to me when I sat where you sit. ⁓ and of course.

Honestly, as well, these numbers speak for themselves. And I mentioned you're getting this benchmark report. If you're listening to us on Spotify or you're watching it on YouTube or you're seeing the recording later, the link to the benchmark report will be in the notes. So go there, grab that, download it. Make the sense of it that you want to make. My interpretation is simply one. I'm just hoping to provide some context to you all. But I do want to make sure that you have some practical takeaways that our team has.

really take in when we look at these numbers. And let me just say out loud, if you're listening and don't have access to any of those things, if you email our nonprofit specialist dean at dean at betterunite.com, D E D E A N at betterunite.com, he's just gonna send you that report. All right, here's our takeaways. Number one, know your real average gift, not the inflated one. Pull the trimmed average. It's it's just an important number to have in note.

If you're on BetterUnite, it's actually on your dashboard. You go to the event analysis report. As a matter of fact, every metric that I've actually talked about so far, and everything you're going to see in the benchmark report, those are in your BetterUnite account if you're a user, a BetterUnite user in the event analysis report, you'll have that for all of these metrics for each one of your events on a per-event basis. And so if you haven't looked at that report recently, go pull it after this webinar. It's a new section that we've added.

If you're on another platform, then just take your donor list, cut the top 10%, the bottom 10%, and recalculate it. That middle number, that middle number is the one that tells you how your broad base is performing, the generosity of everybody in the room. That's a number that, whether or not you report it to your board, know it, understand it, and take action on it. Number two, redesign your paddle rays before you touch anything else. This is the highest ROI.

Anything that I think we can do today. Look at the participation rate from your last event. If it's under 5%, there's likely some structural changes that you need to make. I don't know if it's like adjusting your giving levels based on the capacity that you saw at last year's event, talking to some of your higher level donors in advance, creating a match. Matches can be very, very inspiring and they certainly get the energy of an auctioneer or an MC up.

⁓ what else did I have here? You can look at the timing of your paddle raise. Where did you place it? We have another wonderful webinar that's ⁓ in our on our a session that happened earlier this spring, both on the podcast and the webinar listing with Matt Newsom called the ⁓ run of show that raises more dough. I can remember that one because I loved it. And he talks about where to place the paddle rays within your run of show. So take you know, take a look at that. Give it a give a try to something new if your number's.

At or below 5%. Remember that what we saw in the aggregated data was that paddle raise was responsible for about 11% of all that number. So getting close to that is where we want to be. And it's honestly probably one of those big affixes that can really, really you'll really see a really big return for that one. Number three, build a returning donor strategy and an acquisition strategy. I think a lot of events default to just paying attention to.

Donor acquisition, we really have two jobs and we need to pay equal attention to both and not short shrift one. Pull a list of everybody who gave at your last event and then segment them into first-time donors and returning donors. The returning donors should be getting personal outreach between now and your fall event. The first-time donors should also be getting at least three meaningful touches, not asks.

Just informational touches before they get another invitation. Number four, audit your revenue mix and take out what isn't working. If the silent auction generated less than 5% of your total revenue last time, have an honest conversation with your committee, your board, your event planner, whomever it is, about whether the effort is worth the return. And then see about if or or at least

Practice the exercise of what would happen if we took the energy, time, hours, effort that the silent auction all told, all the way through delivery of every item, that that takes, and we directed that energy into sponsorships, paddle raise, direct donation opportunities. What could we accomplish? Just take a look. And then number five, identify your top almost 10% donors. So we talked about.

Got your 10% donors that are honestly supporting 96%, I believe was that it? I forgot the number already. But top 10% of your donors is they're at the $9,000, almost $10,000 per donor. And then everyone else is averaging about $240. We really want to see who we could nudge up into our top 10%. The people that are in your 10% to 20% mix, look at those donors just below the top tier.

The ones that gave $500 or $1,000, but they might have capacity and enough connection to your mission to increase their gift and double it, often triple it in that even very first year. And when you look at those donors, think about them and then build a very specific and very intentional cultivation campaign effort, whatever it is that you call it, for at a minimum five or ten of those people between now and your fall event.

That would that's my challenge to you. I really think that that's where your growth and some really wonderful return is. All right, that's the data. I see I've got a couple of questions here. So I'm gonna just close really quickly with a quick overview of what we've talked about, or really it's more of, I'm gonna be honest, it's more of a little bit about what Better Unite is and how I think we can help you. ⁓

It this is what's happened with 5,450 events and nearly 269,000 guests. It's such a big number. The good news is that every single thing I talked about here is fixable, and none of it requires a bigger budget. None of it requires a bigger team. What it does require is looking at your own data and seeing the logic that's underneath that data, or the trends, I guess I should say, that's underneath that data.

Being willing or open to the idea of making a couple of structural changes, you know, kind of letting go of the things that no longer serve you and things that don't feel productive anymore, ⁓ and that those things that aren't really moving the needle. So if you're already a Better Unite customer, everything I said just you'll see per your event, per event in your account is going to exist in the event analysis report.

For each one of your events. Go pull it up and compare your numbers to the benchmark when you get it. And if you want help building your strategy or understanding those numbers, reach out to your account manager. We would love to talk to you about that. For those of you on this call who are not yet on Better Unite, let me give you 30 seconds and tell you why we built this company. I spent, as I've alluded to several times, over a decade as a frontline fundraiser.

Development director, executive director, I was always involved in fundraising events in multiple capacities, sometimes a special event coordinator as well. I've managed the auctions, I've chased down donors, I've begged sponsors to give me their information about their guests. I've been there. The thing that frustrated me more than anything was that the tools that I was using and that I was paying for at the time didn't really help me answer the questions that mattered. They told me how much we had raised. They were very

good at tracking the transactional component of my events, but they didn't really give me any clue or any hint as to why what had happened just happened or what I should do next. And so that's how and why I became a founder of Better Unite. It's BetterUnite is events and auctions, yes, obviously, but it's also peer-to-peer fundraising. We have a full enterprise level CRM tool.

A donor management tool, email marketing, membership management, volunteer management, moves management, and it's all in a single platform and it's built by people like me, people who have worked with nonprofits, people who have done this work. Your event data flows directly into your donor records. And if you are a much larger organization and you already have a legacy CRM system or you're using a HIBAA compliant, a virtuous, a black bot, a Salesforce, a Tessatura.

Any of those, we integrate with them as deeply as we can so that your data, all of your data from your event, flows directly into your record of truth, your source of truth, your CRM. So because that is where that data has to live. It needs to live. And every time we do any sort of export and import, we run the risk of losing some of that really crucial and really important data. ⁓ If anything,

I showed you makes you think, hey, I wish I could see that for my own events. Then email us, let us know. We'd love to show you around. I'm going show you a slide here in a moment. You can scan a QR code for a demo. ⁓ But you can also email support at betterunite.com and get that set up as well, or just go to betterunite.com and click request to demo. Okay, there's my pitch. I have ⁓ I would love to answer some questions here, but I actually see that.

Most of my questions were about the problems that a couple of you had from the beginning. So I will just mention again that all of you will receive the benchmark report that I've referenced. And I can't wait to hear honestly your thoughts about it, anything that you take away from it for your own events, you can email me.

Leya at betterunite.com, Leya Spelledweird, L E Y A at BetterUnite.com. You can also email our support team, support at betterunite.com as well. As well. And next week, if you would like to join us for another 501c drop, next Tuesday, June 23rd at 130 Central here again. I'm going to be joined by Steve Latham, who's with GivingIQ. He's going to talk about demystifying non-cash gifts. That means crypto. That means

Stock donations, that means donor advised funds. We have an integration with GivingIQ through Better Unite, and we will discuss how to approach that. I don't know about you, but those are always a little bit, those words when I was fundraising were always a little bit scary to me. I never knew what to do next. GivingIQ has made it easy to handle book all three: crypto, DAF, donor-advised funds.

And I really look forward to hearing from Steve. He's always a wealth of information. So if you'd like to join me, scan that QR code there to register. You'll have an opportunity to get that also in the show notes that we send you with the recording. And finally, as promised, here's your slide. If you'd like to get a demo of BetterUnite, please scan that QR code or email us at support at betterunite.com.

That is all for me today. I so appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join me. I really very much look forward to hearing from you if you've got questions, if you found this information valuable, if you'd like to know more about anything that we discussed today, please reach out. In the meantime, have an incredible rest of your Tuesday afternoon and let's all go do some good. Bye-bye.