Episode 70: PWSA Derby Event Recap

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. On today's episode, we have Jeff and Kari Porter, along with Elise Druckenmiller, giving us a recap of their PWSA Derby event.

Jeff: All right, welcome to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. And we are going to recap today our Derby event. And so joining me in the studio today is Kari. Kari Porter, also known as Mommy, or is also in charge.

Kari: I don't know about that.

Jeff: Also in charge of the PWSA Colorado annual Derby fundraiser. And we have Elise. Elise Druckenmiller, who is also our head of sales here at Handbid but also was one of our core volunteers and I say planners and executors for this event.

Elise D: Yep.

Jeff: So lots to talk about today. I would say, let's just cut to the chase. In general, great event.

Kari: I agree.

Elise D: Best event.

Jeff: That's what I've ever been to. We always love hearing our guests say at the end, this is the best one yet. And we've done 17 of them. So that means we're at least moving in the right direction.

Kari: I agree. It doesn't happen overnight, clearly.

Jeff: Last one was not the best. So it's not always successful. That's Country for a Cure. So that was one and done. So we don't have to worry about that. Although we did spend -- we have at least a thousand Country for a Cure cups in the storage facility. We're going to have to have a Country for a Cure party or something like that. Anyway, we're not here talking about that. The Derby Day. So let's talk about the changes we made this year and how we felt like that impacted the overall event. And so we say great event -- revenue-wise, great event, but I think also just guest experience-wise, great event. So let's talk about the major changes we made. What were the big things that we changed?

Kari: Well, the biggest was hiring an event planner.

Jeff: Hiring an event planner. Can you believe we've done an event for 16 years and we planned it ourselves?

Kari: That's true.

Elise D: Well, and it was more day-of that we really -- well, keeping us on track, but also just having people that knew what was going on. Day-of was amazing.

Jeff: Yep. Day before and day-of for sure. Any other significant things that we changed?

Kari: I'd say we increased the signage, yeah.

Jeff: We're on the same page. I agree with that 100%. And not only that -- hey, we haven't even had a recap yet internally.

Kari: That's true.

Jeff: The pre-event communication, I thought, was also a change we made, and I thought that was much better. And there were a lot fewer people confused when they showed up.

Kari: Yeah, I agree.

Jeff: Right. So that was also good. Anything else?

Elise D: I mean, the auction was pretty much the same.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, I think our event planner was blown away that we came up with $20,000 in live auction items three days before the event. But we did. So that was good.

Kari: Yeah, I think in general, there was a little more planning involved. It wasn't kind of as wing-it as we go.

Jeff: I'm going to tell you the one thing that I felt was smoother this year. I don't know if you want to call it a change, but it was just the overall run of show. Things seemed to connect together pretty well.

Kari: Yeah.

Jeff: Compared with the past.

Elise D: Well, I think that's because we put a little more time and effort into planning and executing because we had the time. At the time, we had somebody who asked us a million questions. Our event planner had never done this event before. And so they kept asking questions, and it really did force us to think about things, decide on things, or do things that we might otherwise skip. So that was actually good.

Jeff: But we, for the first time ever, had two bands.

Kari: Yes.

Jeff: Okay. And so we had a band that started -- we had two bands last year. Well, I guess that wasn't Derby.

Kari: It was not Derby.

Jeff: We're not talking about the other event, in quotes. My gosh, I already got that in my memory. You're bringing it up.

Kari: Yes, Steve. I'd go back through therapy again.

Jeff: So, okay, so we had two bands. The first band played from like three to about 4:30-ish, and that's when we closed the betting tables. The software worked great this year. Thanks for all of the help we got on that. We wrote our own betting software, for those of you who are wondering how we're doing betting on the horse race. I thought the software worked great. It spit out some good numbers. Because Elise won a lot of money.

Elise D: For me, and all the little backdoors that I asked the developers to put in there that would actually win me some money -- they didn't put those in, apparently, because I didn't win any money.

Jeff: Okay, so let's kind of dive through some of the things we just talked about. So, increase the signage. In what respect did we increase the signage? And what was the reason why we did that?

Kari: Well, I think we increased it around the venue so people knew where things were. We had a lot of signage on where to go, what's going on. And we should qualify that we're in an outdoor park slash concert venue, so it's big.

Jeff: Right. Yes. Correct.

Elise D: I also think we put more -- we made little coasters with information for donations. I'm not sure we got a ton of donations through those, but I think it just gave that extra reminder.

Jeff: Right. We don't do a traditional paddle raise because this place is so big and it's so loud. They don't work well. The auctioneer can't see everybody. So we put a QR code, a donation QR code, on cardboard coasters and those were put everywhere around the venue on tables. And we had other signage too. We did pull-up banners for the first time.

Kari: Yes.

Elise D: Yeah, they were big and bright and right there. I mean, it drew you in. It caught your attention. It drew you in to the various games and activities that we had, which is where some of our revenue comes from -- all of those things add revenue.

Jeff: Yeah. And the signage, the arrival experience, I thought, was better because we had signs everywhere outside on where to go, where to park. Even though we sent out a detailed map in advance -- and we've done that in the past -- I just thought the pre-event communication this year was like a checklist. Here's the things you've got to do. Click here to get the map. That kind of stuff. That was all there. And then once you arrived, we didn't have anybody who was confused on where's the handicap parking, where's the VIP parking, where's the regular parking. Everybody seemed to kind of get there. And they were smiling when they walked in the door because they actually knew where their entrance was too.

Kari: Yep. And our venue really assisted with that too.

Jeff: And then check-in. So we know what makes a good check-in experience. No lines. A good guest list. So we had a good guest list and that seemed to help. And I don't know -- you guys have to tell me how check-in went, because for the first time, I think in 16 years, I wasn't called up front to answer any questions. And that was awesome.

Elise D: Well, I'll admit I wasn't either, and that's usually my thing. But we did the ticketing through Handbid. And even the day-of, some people I reached out to -- they gave me their names, I updated them for them. But several people went in there on their own, updated them even the morning of, changed some names.

Jeff: You mean sponsors and ticket buyers will actually update their own information?

Elise D: Yep, they did.

Jeff: That is crazy.

Kari: Isn't that crazy?

Jeff: I would hate to burden my sponsor with the responsibility of putting in their own names into the system.

Elise D: Yep. But how nice was that?

Jeff: It was very nice. It made for a wonderful first impression for our guests. Very good.

Elise D: And then as soon as they walked in the door, what did they face? Two giant pull-up banners with information on where to go and what the run of show was.

Jeff: The other thing we did, which I liked, was inside of the Handbid app, you have event details. And what people tend to do is they put in there all of this pre-event stuff. Well, that stuff's pretty worthless once the event starts. So we nuked all of that out of there and put the run of show in the event details. And people really appreciated that so they could see what the agenda was for the evening.

Kari: Yeah.

Jeff: Okay. And then in terms of the logistics of the event, anything else that you felt worked well? We're going to dive into what didn't work well here in a second.

Elise D: I mean, let's talk auction or live auction. I think we moved -- compared to previous years at this venue, we moved some things around and I think where we placed the auction was good. I think we definitely made some improvements based on the previous years at the venue with moving certain vendors and food tents and things like that. I think we have a couple takeaways. I think it was an improvement, but I think we know now there are a few more things we can do.

Jeff: Right. I loved where the auction was.

Kari: I agree.

Jeff: We actually, for those of you that don't know, had the auction at the entrance in the past. And we had it in some other spots too. But the problem with the entrance in this event is that you walk in this really long walkway from the entrance and it's rare that you would go back there. And so we felt like, okay, it's great for that first impression. People can kind of walk through the area. But then once they get deep into this venue and they're hanging out at their fire pit table and watching -- listening to the music and whatever -- they're not coming back. So we moved it right into the heart of where everything is. And that worked out really well. We're going to talk about when it didn't work out in a second. But outside of that, we just saw great participation. Looking at our stats here, we had 1,500 bids from 120 bidders. We had a lot more people at the event, but we had 120 active bidders, and that's pretty impressive.

Kari: 60 -- you want to know how many people used an iPhone?

Jeff: A lot. Yeah, 62% of the people showing up had an iPhone. Okay, so that was quite a bit. But in terms of bids by device -- we've always said this, and obviously these people have been around Handbid for a while, since Handbid's very first event it ever did was a Kentucky Derby event for PWSA -- but out of those 1,500 bids, over a thousand of them were off of our iPhone app.

Kari: Wow.

Jeff: So our iPhone and Android apps both specifically did right around 13 bids per bidder. Those that bid on the web averaged 3.3 bids per bidder. And so when you ask us why we have an app, it's exactly why we have an app -- because it drives more user engagement. And we've seen it at this event. And these are people that, obviously, a lot of them are used to the app. But either way, they know that there's a website out there as well. They know that they could use that instead, and they don't. So that was good to see.

Jeff: I want to back up for a second because one of the other things that I think we skipped, and I think is also important to mention, is we do a peer-to-peer fundraiser the month prior to this event. And we use that as incentives for some of our families to get basically entrance tickets and things to the event. But ultimately, it's just a way for us to raise additional funds from people who aren't going to come. So while we can say to a PWS family, raise $500 or $1,000 and we'll let you come to the event for free, more than that -- I've got a lot of connections around the country, all of us do, that would be willing to donate to a cause, but they're not going to buy a ticket to an event. They're not going to attend. And so this is the opportunity to connect those. And we had a $30,000 goal. And I think the board felt that was a little hefty because we only had, I think, our lowest number of fundraisers ever.

Kari: 10 maybe.

Jeff: Yeah, we only had 10 people participate. And we raised $33,000 bucks.

Kari: Yep, that's great.

Jeff: So we were really, really happy about that. Again, that's $33,000 extra dollars. Call it your paddle raise that we weren't typically going to get. So that was awesome.

Kari: Yep, I agree.

Jeff: Okay. So beyond that, the event starts. We had a great guest experience. The auction obviously did really well. The live auction, I thought, was good. I mean, for putting together some last-minute packages -- and this, I don't know what you're all -- whoever's listening to this podcast, I don't know what your life is like, but things just start to kind of come together like the Wednesday before. And all of a sudden, we got people texting and saying, I got a John Elway football. I got this cooler. I got two Broncos tickets. And it's like, you still need stuff for your auction. And we're like, yeah. And so anyway, we put together some pretty cool packages and sold them for $20,000. Including a John Elway football with some Broncos tickets.

Kari: Yes, we did.

Jeff: That came in the night before, I think.

Kari: Yeah, pretty close.

Jeff: Pretty much. Updated the live auction. So that worked well. I would say we probably need more ringmen.

Kari: Yeah, I think the venue is hard. And look, we weren't really planning on having a live auction. We got the items. We're like, I guess we're going to have one. And so we were definitely short on ringmen. And I think the venue is difficult. We didn't have people that had paddles. And we know what to do next time. I think it's fine as long as we have more people.

Jeff: But the other challenge that we were not expecting -- as the auctioneer was moving more into the crowd, the microphone was cutting out. It didn't have that long of a range. And we did not test that.

Kari: Well, that's something we will review obviously with our sound company. But that kind of glued the auctioneer to the stage.

Jeff: You're correct. And so that made it difficult. And so obviously the live auction was great and we basically hit our goal. But with that said, did we leave a few bids on the table because there were probably some people we didn't see?

Kari: Yes, that's probably true.

Jeff: Right. And I was not going to be a ringman because I was bidding in the live auction. So anyway.

Kari: Because you were sitting at your table for the first time in 17 years.

Jeff: I -- you guys -- I sat at my table for the first time ever. And I buy a table. I don't get one free. I'm a board member. I buy a table. And I have never sat at it.

Kari: I agree.

Jeff: But my good friend Scott from Make-A-Wish came and hung out with me and we sat at the table and we watched the horse race. I got to do that too. I got to bet the horse race. I was actually like a real participant.

Kari: Yes. So nice.

Jeff: Although that was the one mistake I did make -- I gave my radio up to one of our PWSA volunteers. He was like, you just need to go relax and enjoy yourself. So I'll take your radio. And of course, I didn't tell anybody. So they're all trying to get a hold of me. And I don't have it. And he proceeded to go off and get completely intoxicated. And so that didn't help either. So I had to chase him down later and get my radio back because people were none too happy with me when I was missing in action.

Elise D: It's okay. I kept my radio on. I knew Jason had it.

Jeff: So anyway. Yeah. And the only tech Handbid thing I had to fix was for my dad, and that's great. I can do that. He's 82, and I don't mind helping him out.

Jeff: Okay, anything else related to the event in general? Okay, so let's talk about some things that we felt didn't work -- that we want to kind of mention at the end here. So you mentioned earlier that the silent auction area was great until --

Kari: Got dark and there were no lights.

Jeff: We put lights over by the silent auction area. We put checkout at the silent auction. And we closed the auction in the middle of early May.

Kari: Well, our band was supposed to end at eight, decided to play until nine, which is a nice free bonus. But we decided we were not going to close the auction until the band was done.

Jeff: And so we closed the auction. We should have just closed it. I mean, I think that was the lesson. We needed to close it a little earlier.

Kari: Yeah. Because people wanted to go home. It's a long day.

Jeff: Whether we closed it earlier or not, we still were going to need lights.

Kari: We did. A little dark.

Jeff: Yeah, nobody could -- they had flashlights on their phones trying to find the items under the tent. And then the next day during cleanup, we found big spotlights. This is a concert venue. They had plenty of lights. We just didn't put them in the right spot. So that was --

Kari: Okay. Our producer over here is telling us rookie mistake, just for the record.

Jeff: Can you read that, Jeff? I don't know. It's so funny when you're like, you spend so much time planning. And you're planning for all the things you're like, oh my God, if this goes wrong, this is really going to stink or whatever. And then at the end, when you hear that was a problem, you're like, oh.

Kari: Especially since the lights were sitting right there.

Jeff: Oh, my gosh. Literally right on the other side of the fence.

Kari: Yeah, it's hard. You guys don't understand what this venue is, but this is a major concert venue. And so they've got those big trailer-looking light pole things. And there was one literally on the other side of the fence from where the silent auction area was. Had we known that, we could have raised the pole, plugged it in, and anyway, not a big deal.

Jeff: So I was going to say, look, if the worst things that we did were we had stale buns and we had a dark auction area, we can recover from that. At least you didn't run a concert with no sound.

Kari: So the sound was amazing. I mean, there are some changes we'll make to that. The stage was great.

Jeff: Our vendors -- I'm going to give you guys a piece of advice, and this really did work for us. We picked vendors that knew each other. And so we have an AV vendor who's putting up the screen, and then we had a sound and stage vendor who's doing all of the audio, and they knew each other really well. I am telling you, that works out so well in your favor. They can work out issues between themselves. We didn't have to get involved in a lot of that.

Elise D: And that was unintentional.

Jeff: No, it was intentional. But it was -- they were the same two vendors. It was unintentional the first year we used them. And then when we had so many problems at Country for a Cure, we're like, we're just going to go back to what worked. And it was these guys. And so we went back to them and it was nice.

Elise D: I'm just telling you, they worked so well together. I was there for the setup and the teardown. I did not know which one worked for who.

Jeff: I know. Right. It was so --

Kari: I agree.

Jeff: Because we've seen in the past -- and you guys might have too, for our listeners on the show -- you've got vendors that are going to blame each other or they're going to conflict with each other or they're not going to share power cords or whatever. I mean, literally, our AV vendor -- the sound guy was trying to get, I'm not a sound guy -- James is -- James is probably sitting there and nodding. They were trying to get something to work with stereo sound or whatever. And the AV guys went and pulled a cable out and gave it to them. And then they started communicating on these different boxes they have and how they work. And they basically gave the sound guy a different box to use and it worked. That was so nice. So I would definitely recommend, when you guys are putting together your group of people that are going to put on a show for you, work with people that know each other or that can work together. And I think that will help.

Kari: Yeah, I agree.

Jeff: Food-wise, I'm telling you, those are the best fried green tomatoes I think I've had in my entire life.

Kari: They were good.

Jeff: The gumbo was good too.

Kari: Yeah, so we had an appetizer station kind of out in the area and we served cups of gumbo and fried green tomatoes. They were fantastic.

Jeff: One change I think we all agree we would make is how we laid out the food area. We were kind of constrained to a tent that had been put up that was not going to be easily moved. And so we had to kind of work with the tent the way it was laid out. And I think we would change it in the following years because it made it difficult to get people in and out of the food area.

Kari: Well, yeah. I think, too, the stations -- if we could figure out how to spread them out a little more. I mean, a caterer loves the fact that all the stations are next to each other because they don't have to walk everywhere. But it is a little bit difficult to manage. But I would tell you, the food was great. The buns on the beef sandwich were stale. I'd be the first to tell you -- I'm a perfectionist and I would change that out. But other than that, I saw no complaints about the food. Food was great.

Jeff: One of the things we did do this year that I thought was helpful was we had a pull-up banner and a giant video screen -- it was like 20 by 40 feet or whatever. And so we threw up a survey QR code near the end of the event. And we also had that survey on a pull-up banner at the entrance when people were walking out, so people could just scan it and give us feedback. And that actually worked. It's top of mind for them. Feedback was fantastic. Very consistent.

Kari: It was. People loved the venue.

Jeff: And it forced us to get the survey ready.

Kari: Forced us to get the survey ready. So we could send it out right away. Yes.

Jeff: But I would say the feedback was extremely positive. The only things that -- sometimes people don't like something that you served or whatever. But I would say for the most part, everybody kind of liked the experience in general. The things that we've mentioned to you are the same things they mentioned to us, including the fact that your silent auction should have closed at 8 because I wanted to go home. And I don't care how many encores the band wants to do. I want to go home.

Kari: Right.

Jeff: And our event does start earlier in the day. It's a 2 or 2:30 arrival time.

Kari: It is. And it's a Sunday.

Jeff: But we have staying power, you guys. We had an after-party on the roof of Fiddler's Green.

Kari: Which was great for us because we actually got to sit down and eat a little bit more.

Jeff: Yeah. Although, you know me, I'm asleep at 9 o'clock. So I think I slept through half the after-party. But we had a great time. It was really good. And then we were able to go in the following day and do all the cleanup, which is nice. We're not there until 2 in the morning cleaning the venue up. And we've had to do that before because if they have another event coming in, you can run into that problem.

Kari: Yeah. We're pretty fortunate that we have the relationship with the venue that we have.

Jeff: I don't -- yeah, I agree with that.

Kari: Yeah, they're special people. They're very generous. And not just generous with the venue, but with their time and their flexibility.

Jeff: Yeah. For dealing with our craziness. But -- best event ever.

Kari: Yep, I agree.

Elise D: It was great. I thought it was great.

Jeff: I know. We are never going to not hire an event planner again. Adrian's coming back every year.

Jeff: So how do you top this? These are the types of things that you go into the following year and you say -- I think obviously the first goal is we don't want to make it worse. I think we'll probably consider changes to the lineup of the entertainment. We'll make some adjustments to the sound and the orientation of the speakers. Although I thought it was pretty good, I think we'll raise them up a little higher. And look, you're not going to cater to everybody. People have to understand what the event is and what it's not. And I'm going to give this as advice and a warning to anybody who's listening to this. Look, do not change everything because you got one complaint from one person about something. Look at the general sense of how it went. This lady came up to me -- actually, this is the best part -- I was sitting at my table and the race was about to start. And this lady came up to tell me that it was too loud. And I was like, okay, well, the band's gone because now we're starting the horse race. So, and then obviously people want to hear the horse race, so they were cranking that up, the TV feed. And she says, well, I'm going to have to go. It's just too loud for me. I have to go back to the entrance where I can have a quieter conversation with my friends. I said, okay, well, if that's what you've got to do, that's what you've got to do. And then everybody's like, well, should we lower the sound? I'm like, heck no. We're not lowering the sound. When you actually sat in the back of the venue, my table was pretty close up front because the board takes the least popular seats and we give our bigger donors the nicer seats. When you go to the back of the venue, it sounds perfect.

Kari: Yeah, it does.

Jeff: So it's a little loud where we're at. But anyway, everybody's got their opinions on things. And I just want to warn people -- don't freak out when you get a complaint about something. Just take it in stride. The very first time we launched Handbid at this event, two of our biggest donors complained about mobile bidding. And they hated it and they wanted to go back to bid sheets. And then when they realized that that was not going to happen, guess what? They got on board. And they spent thousands of dollars every year at our event on Handbid.

Kari: There you go.

Jeff: So it works. But how else would we change it? I don't know. Some of the games that we had were not in a great location. People didn't even know that they existed, even though we had great signage. Just the way that the uniqueness of the venue made them hard to see. So we're going to move those.

Elise D: Yeah, we had an event-themed cornhole board. It was awesome.

Jeff: It was cool. Yeah, I think also -- so we're going to do that again.

Kari: Yeah, I think also we -- well, I don't know how to move it. We also priced some things a little too high, I think.

Jeff: Yeah. Once we lowered the price, we got a lot more participation.

Kari: Okay.

Jeff: Well, we have Derby swag. I mean, I think we priced maybe some of that stuff a little too high, too.

Kari: Yeah.

Jeff: But, hey, look, you kind of toy with it and you see what people are willing to spend money on or not. When people come into our event, they get fake money. Which we have to print every year because people tried to bring it back in the past. Some of that money, they have to spend it there because it's worthless when they leave. But you still have to -- it's funny. Even though the money's fake, people shop like it's not. Oh, I don't know, there's $25 in Prader-Willi money. I don't know if I really want to pay $25 for a T-shirt. We kind of priced it that way thinking it's like you get one free item. But people didn't see it that way. Oh, you live and learn.

Jeff: All right. Well, thank you, ladies. I tell you what -- again, great event. I think we feel like we're officially recovered from it. So we'll start thinking about next year. But sort of -- I don't know, it was the first Saturday in May and so it's been about a month.

Kari: Yeah, awesome. We still haven't reconciled it.

Jeff: I think I still have an open invoice. I think I still need to put my credits on there from my winnings.

Kari: I think you need to -- I think the money actually expires in like five days after the event.

Jeff: That's right. You have to turn it in or you don't get it.

Kari: Did you tell her? Did you read the fine print? Did you accept the PWSA Colorado terms and conditions when you arrived?

Elise D: Pretty sure I did.

Jeff: All right. I'm bringing that back next year. We're going to wrap this one up. We're inviting all of you who are listening to this show to come to next year's Derby event. It is -- oh, everybody has -- when is it? It's the first Saturday in May. It will be in Greenwood Village, Colorado. It's at Fiddler's Green.

Kari: It's on Mommy's birthday.

Jeff: Yes, it is my birthday next year. It comes about once every seven years, probably.

Kari: Yeah.

Jeff: Maybe we'll have another Derby cake for you. Yeah, we'll have a cake for Kari. Awesome. Okay. All right. Let's wrap this puppy up. Thank you guys for listening in on our Derby recap, and until next time, happy fundraising.

Narrator: Thanks so much to Kari, Jeff, and Elise for giving us an insider look at their event. Even with 17 years of experience, there's always something new to learn. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.