Special Events: Full Speed Ahead or Reverse Course?

I received this plaint in my inbox last week…

“When and how do you determine at what point you call off a fundraiser?  Our event is scheduled for a month from now, but our board hasn’t secured any sponsors yet and our main fundraiser on the board is caught up in a new venture at work and hasn’t done anything so far…

Can you give me some guidance that I could present to my board tomorrow night? “

Signed,

Miss Yes-I-Know-I-Need-New-Board-Members!

That’s a good question, and one that more nonprofits should be asking themselves these days, I fear.

The answer, quite frankly, comes down to a cost benefit analysis.

As with so many difficult decisions, a chart can  help to weigh a few options.

If you create a spreadsheet where the first column is the original goals for the event – whatever you hoped you would accomplish with the event when you first started out; the second column is likely results in each area; and the third column is minimum results in each area that would make it worth it – you’ve got your projected benefits.

Now, at the bottom of this spreadsheet (or you can do it on a separate tab if you like), list the costs – what it's costing your agency both in real dollars, in staff/board time and attention (don’t skip this critical component), and the opportunity costs of what you aren't able to go after because of focus on this event.

Then think about if there's any possible way to boost the LIKELY projected benefits, and to reduce the costs in these areas.

And then, in a cold, hard calculation, you need to determine whether the benefits are worth the cost.

And finally, if they're not, how you can reverse course with minimum damage – if that's even possible.

So whether you should (cancel) is not always synonymous with whether you could, or whether you'd lose more from canceling than going ahead.

This is a complex conversation, and a difficult process to take your board through.  It helps a lot to have an ally on the board going in to a meeting like this – because special events are so totemic.

Canceling feels like failing, in a very public way – and it’s hard to have the courage to do so.