A little while back, we interviewed Lily Robles from Opus Design, and she had a few thoughts on ways nonprofits can promote their events. Because we have fully entered the gala season, we thought this a propos.
Here is an article too, from the Boston Globe, on the ups and downs of hosting a charity event.
Rachel: So what are a few tips that you can offer to folks who are considering creating promotional materials for their nonprofit event?
Lily: Well, for promotional events, I would suggest that clients speak with their designer and get an understanding of the whole spirit of the event. When you brainstorm with your designer, you can really think about creating an experience for attendees, versus just a save-the-date invitation and putting a logo on it. Coming up with a theme is really nice because then it carries through all the print materials, all the web materials and even some of the follow-up materials that you might provide your attendees, which is a very nice touch.
The second thing I would say is to find ways to measure success. There are things you can do like, for example, you are going to hand out a little booklet or some piece of collateral. You can instead send out a URL and ask people to download it as a PDF. What happens there is you’re able to track the individuals who are interested in that content and you’re saving a lot of paper. So sometimes those types of things are kind of interesting to take a look at.
The third thing I would say that I think folks often underestimate is the value of taking visuals – either still photos or video – at these events. Once the event is over, it’s too late. So having people take photos, even engaging your attendees to maybe take photos and share them on a common server such as Flickr, is a nice way to create a community around the event. And then video, of course, can be re-purposed for use on the web or blogs. You can share it with some attendees for them to share as well.