EP 34: Avoiding Donor Fatigue at Your Event

Jeff: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. We have in the studio today two lovely young ladies -- because that's going to get me in good graces with both of them. We have Lori Mackay. Say hello.

Lori: Hello.

Jeff: She waved at the camera. She waved at me.

Lori: Hi, everybody.

Jeff: And Elise Druckenmiller.

Elise: Hello.

Jeff: Elise heads up our client services group and Lori is our onboarding specialist. And I'm Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. We are here to talk about one of the more classic fundraising topics, so hopefully you ladies got a good night's sleep.

Lori: Sure did.

Elise: Sure did.

Jeff: Good, because you need to be well rested for this one. We are talking about donor fatigue -- but more specifically, how it applies to events. If you've taken any fundraising classes or been through some of those fundraising training courses that talk about donor fatigue, we're not going to get into the more classic topics around donor fatigue as it relates to overall fundraising. We might jump back and forth into that, but we really want to bring it back to events. Event fatigue, donor fatigue, whatever you want to call it.

Elise: Boredom.

Jeff: Boredom. Are we already there? Oh, I didn't start the clock. I've got to start this clock to make sure we stay on task. But we've decided, just so you understand the concept of fatigue, we'll let this podcast run for one hour.

Lori: Or more.

Jeff: We're not going to do that. No, Stephanie's our producer and she's shaking her head -- not going to happen. All right, let's dive into this. So donor fatigue -- Lori, you brought this up the other day because we've been to a few events recently where you feel like you've seen this set in with a couple of our clients. Why don't you speak to what you're talking about when you think of donor fatigue at events?

Lori: Yeah, so it's kind of multi-purpose. Frequently at events, we all want to make as much money as we possibly can for the organization we're passionate about. And you hopefully have a room full of people that love you and love your organization and what you stand for. That's awesome -- that's what you want. But it's when you get into these events and either the ask is too long or it's too frequent, or it just feels like the entire time they're there -- rather than honoring the donor showing up and them having a great experience and then also giving to your cause -- it's this constant ask the whole time. It can also be reflected in having the world's longest live auction going on.

Jeff: So what I'm hearing you say is there are events where people are just being asked to pull out their checkbook every time they turn around. This is kind of like you don't want to be Spirit Airlines at your event. You want to be more like Southwest or United Airlines.

Lori: I would say more like a United.

Jeff: Fair enough.

Lori: Really good airline.

Jeff: Well, I'm trying to think of a really good airline. We travel too much. But let's think about that. With Spirit -- which I don't fly, sorry to all the Spirit Airlines listeners -- you might be asked to pull your credit card out and pay for things along the way. Southwest, you either have a drink ticket or you're going to pull your credit card out again. United, to your point, it's a card on file in the app. It's just a cleaner experience. So what you're describing is this idea of wanting it to be smooth, where you don't feel like you're constantly being asked to pay for things.

Lori: Yeah.

Jeff: And we realize you want options for people. But what I'm hearing is you've been to some events where there are maybe too many options.

Lori: Too many options that run for too long, to be very specific. So there are two types of fatigue. There's the fatigue of it just taking too long to do the live auction or the paddle raise. The guest is frankly losing interest and getting bored. That kind of fatigue where you've been to an event and it's just so much going on. Then there's the other kind of fatigue where when they come and check in, they're asked if they want to buy a raffle ticket. They go around the corner -- do you want a t-shirt? How about we do this wine wall and this whiskey wall and this pet-a-puppy?

Jeff: I love the pet-a-puppy, by the way. That was really great.

Lori: And then they're asked to do golden ticket for live auction. Then they're asked to sit through the world's longest live auction.

Jeff: I mean, there are two ways to look at it. Too many opportunities to give beyond -- I definitely agree you want to have a variety of giving opportunities where people can get something for giving. I definitely agree with having different options. You don't have to have all the options. You don't have to go look at the best fundraising ideas online and then do all 20 of them at your event. That creates donor fatigue, especially if your event is under 200 people.

Elise: Yeah. If it's under 200, I've been there. I hear you on this one.

Jeff: And I think sometimes -- I'm not going to pick on live auctioneers, but sometimes they like to be the one on stage, so they're going to recommend a number of these activities. You walk in the door and it's raffle or drawing. Then it's wine wall or wine pull. Then it's heads or tails, and now we're getting into the onstage stuff. So I'm doing heads or tails, then a nine-item live auction even though there's 200 people in the room. That's a lot of live auction and takes 40 minutes or more. When that's done, we do the paddle raise, and then at the end of the paddle raise you do a runaround or last man standing.

Elise: I was just about to say runaround or last man standing at the very end.

Jeff: It's a great game. It is. But after you've already done all these things, people are just like, "Really? Is the bar open?" I've seen people just --

Lori: "When are you going to close the auction?"

Jeff: "I want to go home."

Elise: I think a lot of this, though, is understanding your audience. Who is in the room? Who are your givers? Who are your donors? Because you want to have all of these other, maybe lower price points, to get some of those other donors in the door. You want them to buy the raffle ticket or do the wine wall. But now you get to the point where maybe somebody who was going to bid on one of these live auction items -- I feel like sometimes we see a correlation with lower revenue in your live auction because they've already done all these other things.

Jeff: Yeah. And I definitely think that having an idea of your people and who's coming into the room matters. But also, just have some common sense around how many people are at your event and what kind of event you're running. Do you have a cash bar or an open bar? There's money going out right there as well. Are you running a real casual event where people can go around and play a variety of games? Do you want them to think, "I already donated by playing these six games over here, so now I don't need to donate over here"? And maybe the games were less than what they would have spent on a silent auction, live auction, or even just a paddle raise. Don't minimize a paddle raise -- it's a big deal at an event. So it's just understanding the room, understanding what you're offering, and also understanding the time frame of an event.

Lori: The length. I would agree.

Jeff: I think the other consideration is some events are two events in one. You've got a dinner or a gala one day and a golf tournament the next. So you know there's going to be more asks typically on that second day. What all does that look like? The total revenue has to be considered -- how you're getting that revenue and when you're asking. And also consider event fatigue in those cases, because if you're having a golf tournament and a gala the night before -- if you can pull it off -- talk about event fatigue. Tee off at 8 o'clock means people are there at 7, then done at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and then you try to have them sit around for an award ceremony and possibly an auction. Good luck with that. These people are exhausted.

Lori: And then it used to be where you'd go home at 2 or 3 o'clock, pick up your spouse, and come back that night. Lord have mercy, that's a long day.

Jeff: I like that approach because it does break it up. But to your point, at some point people are going to say, "You're asking me to buy another what?" So you're going to have to balance those out. And we can take an example -- let's do a real-world case. One of the events we did last year, they just did it again a few weeks ago, and what a remarkable improvement there was from last year to this year. Largely because we got involved -- whether we were invited to or not.

Lori: We kind of just did it.

Jeff: We said, "Here's your new run of show and here's what we're going to do. Tell your auctioneer and have them call me if he has a problem." Really what it was: last year you had the raffle or drawing. We had heads or tails with unlimited purchases -- and we'll talk about that in a second because that was absolutely absurd. Had to be the longest heads or tails ever.

Elise: They were definitely trying to set a Guinness world record on the longest heads or tails ever.

Jeff: But anyway, we'll talk about that next. Then we had the live auction, which had nine items in it, and there were 80 or so people in the room. It was brutally long. Then we had the silent auction, and then the paddle raise.

By the end, check-in was a classic 6 o'clock start last year. And by 9 o'clock, we hadn't even started the paddle raise.

Elise: Oh, right. Yes. Now I know who Jeff's talking about. Yes.

Jeff: And so by the time we got through all of that, we had guests getting up and leaving. It was around 9:45, 9:50. We were still getting into -- I think the live auction spilled into maybe 15 or 20 minutes past. Then we had to do a paddle raise, shut the auction down, get everybody checked out. People were really just grumpy and frustrated at the end. That's a long night. You'd say, "Oh, four hours doesn't seem that long," but it was a Sunday night, and that crowd was ready to go home at nine. They were not ready to go home at 10.

Lori: Well, let's also point out that they put an end time on the invitation. Putting an end time on the invitation can work against you when the program runs past it. You hit that time and you're maybe halfway through your program. People don't feel like they can leave.

Elise: And they shut the bar down.

Jeff: Yes, they shut the bar down. And the valets were ready to go home. We all were.

So when we met with them over the summer, we said, "These are the changes we want you to make." And they were open to it. In the very beginning, we said, "Heads or tails -- ideally, we'd like you to kill it."

Lori: "Oh no, we've got to have heads or tails."

Jeff: Okay, well, you have to limit how many necklaces people can buy. And if you're going to do that, it's just a warm-up game -- you need to make it go very quickly. So what happened in heads or tails last year was you could buy as many necklaces as you wanted. They ended up with two individuals left. They go up to the front of the room -- one of them has two necklaces on and the other one has 20.

Lori: That person really wanted to win.

Jeff: And it was just like, "We're going to have to sit through this." That took way too long. So this year, I think they agreed. I said, "When you look at all the ways we're going to ask people to participate, this is just a warm-up. We don't need it, we don't have time for it, the room is very small. We'll get everybody focused. We need to cut the heads or tails game, contrary to the auctioneer's desire, but it's fine." And then what we did next -- remember? We swapped the live auction and the paddle raise.

Lori: Which is a whole new controversial topic.

Jeff: Yes, in event planning, and I'm loving it now.

Elise: Yes, this is the third event. It's kind of a squirrel moment for me, but I'm thrilled with the paddle raise before the live auction.

Jeff: Now, we did make one compromise that I regret. But we'll come back to that. We swapped those -- did the paddle raise first to eliminate the fatigue of people sitting through a bunch of live auction items they weren't interested in.

Elise: Right.

Jeff: And then the only thing was, they wanted to do last man standing, and we said, "That's fine, you can do last man standing." But they wanted to do it at the end. So we got all the way down to $250, had great momentum in the room, and then --

Lori: It was just cut off.

Jeff: Right. A guy wanted to raise $100 and was told, "Oh, you've got to wait for half an hour until you can donate $100." So that one, we'd probably go back and say we wouldn't do it that way.

Lori: No.

Jeff: But either way, we did the live auction afterwards. We convinced them to reduce the number of live auction items and move a bunch of them to the silent auction.

Elise: Which was brilliant. That worked out.

Jeff: Long story short, we were done with checkout by 10 to 9. The room was cleared at 9. And the revenue was nearly doubled.

Lori: Oh, more than doubled.

Elise: Yes, in certain areas, more than doubled, for sure.

Jeff: And people were happy. There were smiling faces walking outside and getting in their valet vehicles. There was not a lot of grumpiness like there was the year before. You observe that kind of stuff and then you react to it.

Elise: It definitely felt less chaotic as well. Just well run, less chaotic. And that goes with donor fatigue -- a good run of show also plays into donor fatigue.

Jeff: We changed up some things at that event that kept the momentum going, except for that one moment. I'd have to agree that was disappointing -- it didn't go off as well. But it was still fun. They hit their goal.

Lori: Yeah, they hit their goal. It was fine. It just felt in the room like, "Wow, all these people are giving," and then -- stop. Not right now. "We'll come back, put a pin in that." And you're like, oh, okay. It's just a little awkward.

Jeff: So just a side note: if you're going to run a paddle raise before the live auction, don't couple it with any last man standing, because it just doesn't flow right.

Elise: Yes, you almost just need to lose the last man standing and go right into the live auction.

Jeff: I agree. I think it was super fun. I enjoyed the event much more than the year before.

Lori: Yeah.

Jeff: So let's talk about other aspects of the event that can be fatiguing. We've already discussed check-in on past episodes, but can we stop fatiguing our donors by making them wait in line for an hour when they arrive?

Lori: Yeah, that would be great.

Elise: Number one.

Jeff: You don't want them to be exhausted by the time they get to the bar. The bar should be easy to get to and quick. Check-in should be fast and efficient. There's a lot we've discussed on that, but just to make sure you understand -- in terms of all the aspects of your event, that's one of them.

Lori: It's the first impression. It's very important.

Jeff: I'm going to bring up another one, which is going to sound massively inappropriate, but I'm telling you it is a big deal.

Elise: Oh, I'm looking forward to this.

Jeff: And that is having an adequate number of convenient bathrooms at your event.

Lori: Oh, right. Yeah.

Elise: Oh my gosh.

Jeff: We went to an event -- maybe 150 to 200 people -- and they had one men's restroom and one women's restroom. It was brutal. There were probably 20 women in line for the bathroom, and eventually they started using the men's room. I don't blame them. That's kind of an oversight. So when you're looking at venues and thinking about the overall aspects of your event -- where are my guests going to park, how far are they going to have to walk, where are they going to check in, where are the bathrooms, where are the bars -- make sure you have adequate numbers of bars too. We've seen that at events.

Elise: Yep, you just wear your donors out because they can't even get to the point of donating.

Jeff: Well, good thing they have mobile bidding in most cases, so they can bid on their phone while they wait in line at the bar or the bathroom. So just keep that in mind. Should we keep going with the donor fatigue thing? We can talk about checkout fatigue. Do you guys remember the event we did that was on four floors?

Lori: Yes.

Elise: Oh my gosh. That's right, the three of us were there.

Lori: Trust me, I definitely got a good workout at that event. Jeff and I talked about this in that other podcast, but we had our watches on and we were calculating how many calories we were burning running up and down the stairs. I was so tired after that event.

Jeff: Well, for that one, there were maybe 130 to 150 attendees, and they had almost 300 items.

Elise: They did.

Jeff: That's another area of fatigue. You have 250 to 300 items spread out across four floors for 150 people. There was a lot of stair-walking by everybody because there was one elevator, used by everyone including the staff.

Elise: Donor physical fatigue.

Jeff: It's a thing. There's mental fatigue, there's the classic fundraising fatigue where donors are no longer as empathetic or interested in your cause -- those are all the other types of donor fatigue that everybody wrestles with as a nonprofit. But at the event, it's complexity fatigue. Too many ways, too many moving parts, too many games. And then there's the physical fatigue of, "I had to park two miles away, walk in, wait an hour in line to get in, wait another 30 minutes at the bar, wait another 20 minutes for the bathroom." These are all the things you have to think through. And then, oh by the way, the auction is on four different floors and you're going up and down the stairs.

Lori: I think also, if your venue has four floors, what is the attire for the event? You've got to think of ladies' shoes and what you're asking them to wear.

Jeff: With all due respect, you have a choice on what shoes you wear.

Lori: No, you don't.

Elise: No, you don't.

Jeff: Producer Stephanie is saying no right now too. I've got three against one.

Lori: You are going to a black-tie event. You're not going to -- I mean, tennis shoes are cool right now. You could kind of get away with that.

Jeff: Well, men could with a tuxedo for sure.

Lori: Women are wearing tennis shoes now too.

Jeff: I'm just picking on you because every time I go out with you ladies and my wife, you guys are talking about how your feet hurt.

Elise: But we look good.

Jeff: Those are all trade-offs of looking good, I suppose. That's a total squirrel moment, but I agree -- keep in mind that your female donors attending the event are going to be appropriately dressed, and it might wear them out if you make them walk up and down stairs.

Lori: How does that sound? Is that good?

Jeff: Yeah.

Elise: You recovered nicely. And to speak to that event -- the whole 300 items for 150 guests, that's exhausting. For you as the person collecting those items, the volunteers organizing those items. It turned out to be a great event, but it's somewhat unnecessary and causes fatigue for more than just the donors.

Jeff: Yes, and when you're fatiguing your volunteers, that unfortunately leaks into the donor experience at your event. So it helps to be very careful and very purposeful, because more is not always better. I think that's the theme of this in general: just because you can doesn't mean you should. It helps to be thoughtful and considerate of your donor's experience. Walk through the venue like a donor would walk through it before you open.

Lori: And we're talking about your bidders, not your item donors.

Jeff: Yes, we can come back to that. I think the number of items relative to people -- everyone asks, "What's the right ratio?" I've heard so many auctioneers throw out numbers. It's not that simple to figure out. But if you have 100 bidders in the room and 300 items, that's too many items. We know that. I've seen auctions where you have 100 bidders and 25 items, and they've been killer. You just have to decide what the right mix is. And you also have to look at the item mix.

Elise: Yes.

Jeff: People get tired of the same stuff.

Lori: Oh, that's a good point. Over years.

Jeff: Yeah. And I get it -- you have a board member and they've got an amazing condo in the mountains and they donate it every year with a ton of restrictions on when it can be used. They're difficult to deal with, but they're a board member, so it goes in every year. At some point, that thing needs to make its way into the silent auction and into the corner. You need to trade it up. Maybe it's Keystone or Breckenridge, and maybe you find something in Jackson or Aspen. It might be a consignment item, but just look back through the stuff you've had in the auction a long time and ask yourself, "Do I just need to refresh this item?"

Elise: I would completely agree with that. There have been many events I've gone to year over year -- because you love the org and you want to go -- and I'm like, "Seriously, this is the same thing again." How many times are we going to have the Navy SEAL shooting experience? It's a cool item, right? The first year, everybody wants to do it. Second year, a lot of people want to do it. But that's not the kind of item you buy year over year.

Lori: It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's an experience.

Elise: Yes. So maybe do it every other year.

Jeff: Or just swap it. Which is sometimes a good idea when you've had an item for a hundred years. Maybe another charity that has some cool stuff would want to trade with you. We're not going to get into the tax implications around how that works. I'm just saying those are the types of things you can get creative around.

Lori: I like that idea.

Elise: I do too. I don't think I've ever been involved in one of those conversations.

Jeff: Oh, yes, you have.

Elise: Oh. I stand corrected.

Jeff: When we did that event down in Orlando, they had a lot of country music stars and signed guitars from the artists attending the event. They're not going to auction all those off. So I was like, "How about I grab that item from you, and I can get you this trip instead? We'll just swap." Because you go to another event and it's all trips, and they need physical items. So if you know some people around town, maybe you can come up with a little marketplace as charities.

Lori: I like this idea. Elise and I, in all of our spare time, will start a new business. The swap meet.

Jeff: You cannot trade your guests, though. If you have one of those problematic guests, you cannot pawn them off on another charity's event.

Elise: We want to do that with some of our board members.

Jeff: I didn't say that.

Lori: That would be hilarious. I have a board member I could trade with you.

Jeff: Yeah, we could try trading board members. We'll see how that goes over. If I end up being the one that's traded, I'll know. "I just think you should be considered for this organization over here."

The last one I'd put on the list is the theme or the location. This isn't a podcast specifically about event themes and changing it up, but that can get a little old. Or sometimes you can even misinterpret it as being old -- maybe you just need a little bit of a break and you come back. My derby event, how long did we run it?

Elise: Gosh. 10?

Lori: 13, 14 years?

Jeff: Yeah. And so we were like, "Okay, we're fatigued on the event."

Elise: How many hats do I own? And derby dresses. Oh my gosh.

Jeff: So we thought, "We're worn out on this topic. Our guests must be totally worn out. They must be so sick of this." And part of our fatigue was the mental and emotional stress of whether the first Saturday in May was going to have good weather in Colorado. Do we do it inside? Do we do it outside? All of that wears you out. So we moved it to the fall, to a country music concert last year. This year, we're not doing an event -- that's just because we keep getting bumped from the venue. Not because of behavior, but contractual obligations at the concert venue.

But that same venue has helped us re-secure the derby date because we started hearing back from our donors saying, "We missed the derby and we want it back."

Lori: Wow.

Jeff: So maybe sometimes you're wrong about what your donors want. Or maybe the two-year vacation break was all everybody needed and they'll come back to it. But think about where you do your event and how it's structured, how it's themed, and decide if you feel like it's getting a little tired and old.

Elise: For the derby event, the country music concert was great, it was fun, but we really loved how the derby was during the day, a family event. We could bring the kids.

Jeff: So we're like, "Gosh, we didn't think about that." We're going to try to bring in a country music artist. Now, my wife is not at all excited about this idea, because she's like, "You're going to have people show up at 3 or 4 o'clock because the horse race in Denver is around 5, and then stay for a concert?" I'm like, "Yeah." She's like, "They're going to be exhausted and frustrated with you."

Lori: It better be a good lineup.

Jeff: We're going to have to increase the amount of money we pay for a band and get somebody good. I don't know -- we'll see how that works out.

Elise: We're going to have a podcast number two about whether Jeff fatigued his donors.

Jeff: That's right.

Well, Carrie had a pretty good idea. And again, this goes back to switching things up. If we go back to a derby event, are we going to do it the same way we've always done it? I can tell you exactly how that run of show works. Maybe not. Maybe we bring on the artist in the afternoon. Maybe we start the event at 1 o'clock, they perform from 2 to 4, then we do our horse race betting stuff and our live auction, and we're out of there by 6 or 7.

Lori: That's possible. Maybe you don't even do a live auction.

Jeff: You know what we should do? We should do a podcast series on planning my event. That would be fun.

Elise: Yes, that would be fun.

Lori: Because I'm going to need a lot of help.

Elise: I thought you were hiring an event planner.

Jeff: Yeah, I could hire -- well, it also gets Stephanie to participate. Producer Stephanie gets to participate. All right, well, we promised this was going to be an hour. We're not going to make it an hour. We're going to wrap this up. I think we've covered the major points here. In terms of donor event fatigue -- we're not talking about classic donor fatigue, but donor event fatigue -- let's just quickly summarize by going backwards through what we discussed.

Your theme. The venue. Rolling back from that, the types of items you've had and how many years in a row you've had those same items. The number of items relative to bidders -- the ratio. The physical fatigue of what you're asking your donors to do, whether that's flights of stairs, a 20-minute walk from the parking lot, hour-long check-in lines, long bar lines, long bathroom lines. Then we talked about too many things for them to do at the event, making it too complicated. Boring them with long run-of-shows. Too many live auction items. A long paddle raise.

A last man standing that takes -- I mean, the one I went to in April took probably 30 or 40 minutes. You think that's awesome, and it is cool -- you're making money. But at the same time, there are a lot of people in the room that are pretty worn out on it. Just making sure you understand: am I maybe taking something too far? Maybe I need to cut something out.

Elise: Quality over quantity.

Jeff: I agree. Yeah, for sure.

All right, well, this was good. If you have any questions about donor fatigue or event fatigue, or if you even just want to reach out and say, "Hey, this is what we've been doing, what are your thoughts?" -- we'd be happy to talk through those questions with you. And if you like this podcast, please tell a friend. Tell one of your fundraising consultants, tell one of your fundraising colleagues. Go out there and find somebody you can trade auction items with, and mention that you heard that amazing idea on this podcast. Leave us a five-star review anywhere you listen to your podcasts, and we look forward to seeing you again on another Elevate Your Event podcast. Until then, happy fundraising. Bye.