Expository Essay: Organizing a Fundraising Event - English 111

This essay provides a comprehensive guide on how to organize a fundraising event, emphasizing the importance of meticulous planning and budgeting. It highlights key steps such as choosing the event type, determining fundraising components like auctions and sponsorships, and creating a detailed budget to ensure expenses are lower than revenues. The essay also stresses the significance of a host committee in selling tickets and securing donations, along with developing a timeline to track tasks. Furthermore, it outlines the typical event flow, from guest arrival to speaker presentations, and concludes with the importance of post-event evaluation. This resource, available on Desklib, helps students understand the process of organizing effective and successful fundraising events.

Running head: HOW A FUNDRAISING EVENT IS ORGANIZED?
How a fundraising event is organized?
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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This essay introduces how fundraising events are organized. Fundraising events are those
events that help an individual, organization or government to raise funds. The fundraising events
enable the individuals, organizations or government to make huge money however; these events
are usually time consuming and exorbitant. The thesis statement mentions the process of
organizing fundraising events in an effective manner.
The initial and the most important part of organizing a fundraising event are proper
planning and budgeting. It is necessary to properly plan every minute detail of the fundraising
event as success of these events are capable of providing massive benefits whereas, failure of
these events can result in loss of time, effort and money. Therefore, the first step of organizing a
fundraising event is writing down a detailed event plan before sending out invitations. It is also
important to choose the type of event one wants to host. There are several types of events one
could host such as informal and formal dinners, receptions, breakfasts and barbeques.
It is necessary to choose the type of event while keeping into consideration the type of the
prospective attendees. The major goal of organizing a fundraising event must be raising funds in
an interesting and creative manner. Another major part of organizing a fundraising event is
determining the fundraising components of the event. These components involve auctions, ticket
sales, corporate sponsorships, registration fees and individual donor gifts. The next crucial step is
preparing a budget. The budget involves the projected costs for successfully organizing the
event. It is necessary to ensure that the expenses incurred are lower that the revenues generated
from the event. It is necessary to take sufficient time in planning the event prior to hosting the
final event. A minimum of six months are usually taken while planning an event. It is necessary
to decide the date on which the final event shall be held. This tenure of six months are used for
publicizing the event and creating a buzz.

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Host committee plays a vital role in organizing fundraising events as it is not possible
for a single person to make all the necessary arrangements. Therefore, it is necessary to recruit
some close friends and known people for serving as the host committee for the event. The host
committee is responsible to sell the tickets or obtain donations for the event. It is also necessary
to set goals for the host committee and ensure that they meet the goals. It is also necessary for the
organizers to stay in proper contact with the host committee members in order to carry out a
successful event. The members of the host committee are responsible for calling the attendees
and sending invitation mails to them. Making phone calls are more effective in convincing
individuals for participating in the fundraising events as the invitation mails usually get ignored
by the recipients. While planning a fundraising event and choosing the type of event to be
hosted, the location of the event is decided in accordance with the number of attendees expected.
The type of food and beverages to be provided to the attendees is also decided. The flow of the
event is also planned. Therefore, organizing a fundraising event involves making arrangements
that shall be best suitable for the kind of audience invited. It is also necessary to determine the
speaker of the event, who shall address the audience. The choice of the speaker determines the
success of an event as people are usually drawn to the events where they know the speaker.
Once the type of event, its location, budget and host committee members are determined,
a timeline is developed. It is necessary to determine what is required to be done and when it is
required to be done. The timeline enables the organizers to keep a proper track of the tasks and
the people, who are responsible for those tasks. Usually, the events involve guests arriving at the
event location and buying or presenting the event tickets for entering inside. The guests enjoy the
food and beverages served to them while the hosts introduce the speaker. The speaker addresses
the guests and welcomes them while they enjoy their beverages and the entertainment offered to

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them. Finally, the guests depart after they enjoy the event. At last, the volunteers and the other
people associated with the event are congratulated for planning a successful fundraising event. A
follow- up meeting is usually organized for evaluating the event components with which the
entire event comes to an end.

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References:
Boenigk, S., & Scherhag, C. (2014). Effects of donor priority strategy on relationship fundraising
outcomes. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 24(3), 307-336.
Bray, I. (2016). Effective fundraising for nonprofits: real-world strategies that work. Nolo.
Venzin, M. (2018). Fundraising Events Bring Added Revenue to Community Colleges
Nationwide. Successful Fundraising, 26(3), 1-1.
Vlasov, S., Andreeva, T., & Ryzhko, A. (2015). Knowledge signaling and fundraising: the role
of conferences participation. In Proceedings of the GSOM Emerging Markets
Conference: Business and Government Perspectives, October, 2015.
Weinstein, S., & Barden, P. (2017). The complete guide to fundraising management. John Wiley
& Sons.