Hybrid Events: How to Boost Donor Engagement Online
One of the biggest pivots during the pandemic was moving many events to a virtual model, whether that was for nonprofit fundraisers, team meetings and celebrations, or even family gatherings. While many in-person events have returned, many event planners and leaders are taking what they learned from virtual events and creating a hybrid event instead.
Hybrid events can boost your donor engagement, bring more people to your event, and provide a more cost-effective way to connect with your partners. Keep reading for tips on how to host a successful hybrid nonprofit event.
A Digital Silent Auction Can Help Connect with Donors in Person and Online
One of the easiest things to make work in a hybrid event is a digital silent auction. Moving your silent auction online is easier for your donors whether they physically attend your event or not.
Focus on Making It Easy for Donors
An online silent auction done right can help you raise even more funds from your silent auction items, and it can help your donors feel more connected and excited about contributing. With tools like iBid, guests can bid from their phones or from the comfort of their own home on all the most exciting silent auction items — helping increase the number of bids your items get and helping your guests feel more connected and engaged in the process.
Find the Right Online Silent Auction Software
Paper bid sheets and manual payment collection are things of the past. With the amount of software auction options out there, there is no reason not to use a secure, automated solution like iBid to help your auction go more smoothly, increase bidding, and save you time and stress. Find one that allows you to personalize the experience for your guests and brand it for your organization.
Tools like iBid allow guests to check in on their phones, reducing long lines and guest frustration. The software also allows full customization of the look of your mobile bidding page to match your colors and logo, even upload sponsor images. When your event is over, guests receive a text with a link to their digital receipt and can easily checkout through proof of receipt and payment on a touch screen device.
Feature a Variety of Appealing Auction Items
Your guests are going to get most excited to bid on items they couldn’t get anywhere else. While you’ll want to make sure you have packages at a variety of price points, these special events or opportunities are some of the most successful items to raise funds and generate buzz. Contact local business and venues for behind-the-scenes opportunities, tours, and exclusive options that will wow your guests and showcase how your virtual auction keeps all the excitement of an in-person silent auction.
Supporting local through your silent auction can make all the difference in connecting your donors to your cause and their community. Guests will feel like they are doing twice as much good — supporting your cause and patronizing a local business during the pandemic. Entertainment destinations, local artists, and small businesses are all great things to feature in your online silent auction. Let your guests bid on packages from well-known local brands and small hole-in-the-wall places. You can even recruit founders of the more iconic places to help talk about the auction beforehand and share the opportunity with their audiences.
Keep Your Program Short
You don’t want your guests dreading the program. Cut any unnecessary portions of the event, keep it brief, and vary the programming. If anything, you want to leave your attendees wanting to do this again — not counting the seconds until they can log off.
Focus on the Impact You’ve Made
Telling meaningful stories of the impact your organization has made is a great way to make your hybrid fundraising event interesting and memorable. Consider having someone give a testimonial of the difference the nonprofit made as your main event, and keep the program as brief as you can while still telling an impactful story.
Have a Backup Plan
Hybrid events are a great way to reach people both near and far, but they do come with some risk. If you have technical issues during the middle of your hybrid nonprofit event, it can be a source of stress and can ruin guests experience. In the case of technical issues, have a backup plan — whether that’s livestreaming the event using the data connection on a team member’s phone or postponing briefly and extending bidding time, think through a way to troubleshoot if technical glitches do happen.
Swag Giveaways: Give Guests Something to Walk Away With
High-quality, useful swag goes a long way to helping event attendees remember your event and appreciate the cause they care about. Don’t hand out cheap or useless items, but try springing for slightly more costly but meaningful gifts. You can talk to a partner about being a giveaway sponsor and getting their logo on the giveaway, or you can provide a giveaway of your own. Things like quality water bottles, branded sunglasses, beach accessories, and other outdoor items are often popular and will get used in the future. You can even ship these to virtual participants’ homes before or after the event, too.
Spread the Word about Your Event
Beyond the typical ways you promote an event like an email list or mailing, here are a few more ways to make sure to spread the word about your hybrid fundraising event.
Engage Your Partners
Maybe it is a vendor you work with, a long-term partner, or even your office neighbors — whoever it is, it never hurts to ask your corporate partners to promote your event and send out a note about it. Make sure you give them easy, pre-created collateral to share to make it seamless and simple.
Keep Sponsorships Valuable
When you’re talking through sponsorship details with a potential partner, make sure to talk about the hybrid elements of the event. Talk about whether their company be recognized on slides or presentations shown to both in-person and virtual attendees at your hybrid fundraising event. It can also help to explain how they can partner on your giveaway and how many of their employees can attend virtually with their sponsorship. A hybrid model should enhance the benefits of their sponsorship, so make sure that’s clear in the various details and perks you offer for each sponsorship level.
Benefits of Hybrid Events
Keep Your Guests Safe
With the unpredictability of COVID and current guidelines or gathering restrictions, hybrid events give you the flexibility of letting guests participate according to their comfort level. Guests can stay home if they’d prefer, while others who may want to gather in person safely can still do so. If circumstances change and you need to pivot, hybrid events are also easier to move to a fully virtual format.
Avoid Having to Change Plans
Hybrid nonprofit events have built in contingency plans should you need to reevaluate, and the fact that you always had a hybrid option means that any changes you need to make will be less drastic and less frustrating to your guests. It’s a great way to hedge your bets in an unpredictable and fluid situation — while still connecting meaningfully with your audience.
Save Time and Money
Virtual events save money. While a hybrid event means you’ll still have to pay for some of the in-person elements, your hybrid nonprofit event can reach more donors with less cost while still making a meaningful connecting with them. You can spend less on the in-person elements as some people will choose the virtual option for your hybrid event.
Reach a Bigger Audience
Hybrid nonprofit events don’t only save you money to reach a large audience — hybrid events also help you reach a bigger audience, including people who would not have attended or engaged if the event was only virtual or only in-person. Some people may have difficulty traveling to attend due to time or convenience concerns. For others, another virtual event may sound exhausting and unappealing. Either way, hybrid events allow you to better cater to your donors’ individual needs while also reaching a broader group of people — which in turn can help you grow your donor base and raise more money for the cause.
Hybrid Nonprofit Events Are a Great Way to Reach Donors Efficiently
Regardless of the event, adding a hybrid option and integrating virtual components into your event is an effective, easy way to reach your donors and grow your audience. Your donors and staff will thank you for the innovative and compelling event, and you’ll be able to pull a fundraising and donor engagement event off at a larger scale. Take some time to think through how you can reach people both in-person and virtually to make your hybrid nonprofit event a success and see the growth a well-put-together hybrid nonprofit event can bring.
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