EP 12: Maximize Your Fundraiser's Potential with These Unique Revenue Drivers

‍

Narrator: 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 try to talk about ways that we can help you make your fundraising event even better. We've got Elise Negabauer here from Handbid. Hi. And Diana DuPlanche.

Diana: Hey, y'all. What's up? I'm happy to be back. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: It's been a little while. And this is my first time I get to have a podcast with Elise. And it's funny -- it's not even St. Patrick's Day, but yet you're wearing the green jacket.

Elise: I know. I wanted to go bright colors today.

Jeff: The two of us are we Christmas? I wore the uniform and you guys are wearing really bright colors.

Elise: Yeah, but you have the Handbid logo, which is kind of cool. The new one.

Jeff: Very awesome. Okay, real quick, a couple of housekeeping things before we get started. If you're enjoying this podcast, please share it. We love that. Subscribe to our podcast.

Diana: For sure.

Jeff: And if you have any questions or comments or things that you would like for us to talk about on the show, by all means, please share those with us as well. And I'd like to say this week, we had somebody reach out to us through our website, and they indicated that they learned about Handbid from the podcast. And I have a conversation scheduled with her for Friday.

Diana: There you go. I'm so excited. People who are listening -- thank you. And Jeff, you're not on any other podcasts, right? So it's this one for sure.

Jeff: What's the best way for them to let us know what they'd like to hear? Well, they can reach out to us through comments on the podcast itself, or they can go to our website and fill out a lead form and say, "I would like for you to talk about this on the podcast."

Diana: And I want Diana to talk about it.

Jeff: Just kidding. If you'd like to suggest any guests or if you'd like to suggest cast members as well, we can certainly do that. If you want more Diana, a little bit less Jeff, or whatever -- let us know.

Diana: I never thought of myself as a cast member.

Jeff: Cast member. Well, you don't work for Disney. But if you did, that's what you would be called.

Diana: This is true.

Jeff: Awesome. Okay, so our topic today is revenue generators that are not related to your auction or your paddle raise. Is that right?

Diana: Yes. It is. And this actually makes me think of one of my clients way back in the day. I went to her event. This was when I was living in Northern Virginia, and she herself was an event planner for big D.C. events. She volunteered to be the auction manager for the school. And she said, "Diana, I'm not trying to be ugly." I said, okay, go ahead. She said, "I'm going to take every dime I can from these people because I'm going to have five games and we're going to have..."

Jeff: Legally. Take them legally.

Diana: Right. Silent auction and live auction. So she had everything everywhere. And this is why we do these extra little games, right?

Jeff: Well, we do them for a lot of reasons. There are a couple of reasons why you'd want to. Obviously, one is it's another way to connect with somebody at your event who may not be ready to just write you a check to your charity. But it's also a way to get things transitioned or warmed up. It's also entertainment. You don't want people to be bored, right?

Diana: It's only fun if you win, you know that.

Jeff: I know. But what you're saying is it's giving people something to do.

Diana: Yes, that's right. You don't want anyone bored. Oh boy, at your event you really don't want a boring event. How to make your event not boring.

Jeff: For sure. Well, there's some helpful ones on here, and being that you are type-A, we do have your list. And then I noticed that we were kind of messing with your list a little bit, so it's probably not nearly as neat and organized as you would like.

Diana: It's okay. I can check things off, Jeff. It's okay. I'm a list checker.

Jeff: I think it's a very good list.

Diana: I do too. I love lists. So let's go through it.

Jeff: Let's do it. Throw some out there for us.

Diana: Okay. So I would say let's talk about what happens at golf tournaments, because I feel like they kind of live in their own little space where they can have some really specific games.

Jeff: They can. And they can get out of control. But let's go with the common ones.

Diana: All right. So one that we see is a mulligan. Why don't we describe a mulligan for all the listeners out there who don't know what a mulligan is?

Jeff: Yeah. So a mulligan gives somebody an extra shot. There's a couple of different ways to do it. You can do a group mulligan, so you can sell the foursome mulligans. And if you're doing a scramble tournament, what that means is you're going to have all four players hit a ball, and then from one of the players' positions, all four are going to hit a ball again. And so what you tend to see is if all four of those players have not hit a good shot, they can take one of their mulligans and then take one more shot.

Diana: It's like a do-over.

Jeff: Kind of a do-over. Yes. And what always makes me laugh is when you see charity tournaments start and everybody for whatever reason thinks they all get a mulligan on the first tee, which is actually not true. Those are not usually included. You've got to pay for those. So mulligans are a very common way to do it. You'll see people either buy them with cash at the door -- maybe it's one for $20 or three for $50 or something like that. Sometimes they give you even a different colored ball as the record of the mulligan.

Diana: I haven't seen that.

Jeff: Whatever you do, one thing we've found works well for all those people that want to get as much money as possible -- like your friend -- don't put too many mulligans in your golf tournament or that golf tournament is going to go on for six hours.

Diana: Or longer.

Jeff: Okay. I've seen people have unlimited mulligans and I've seen people buy 15 or 20 of them. And hey, it's great cash to your event.

Diana: So how does a mulligan differ from something that I usually see called a free throw from the green?

Jeff: Well, that would probably be you using your hands to advance a golf ball, which is not legal.

Diana: Yes, not the same. So you just toss it out there.

Jeff: Yeah, I've seen that.

Diana: What's the one with the string? Do you know that one?

Jeff: Oh, there's a variety of them out there with string. So there's one where you can buy a certain piece of string and then that's how far you can move your ball.

Diana: I have not heard of this.

Jeff: I've seen that one -- that's pretty cool. There are all kinds of contests: closest to the pin, longest drive, straightest drive. People can either be entered automatically and win a prize, or you have people enter them. Either way, just be a little careful in golf tournaments because those games take extra time.

Diana: Yeah. I've seen some where you just put somebody on the green and they do a putt for dough.

Jeff: Like a putting contest. It is. And you get entered into a bigger prize. So say it's $25 for three putts and you're going to attempt this 25- or 30-foot putt. And if you make it, then you're entered into another contest or a chance to win something.

Diana: And what do you think is a good price for something like that, like a putting green you're participating in?

Jeff: You have to kind of know your audience. I would say also kind of what you've sold your foursome for. So if you're at one of the higher-end courses and people are paying $250 a golfer to play or $1,000 a foursome -- which is what we see a lot -- you'll find people that'll pay $20, $40, $50, $60 for raffle tickets or these types of things when they arrive. And you don't have to take cash -- software like ours or any of the other systems out there, a lot of them will enable you to track that. Or you can take both -- have it accessible through credit cards through software, and then also be able to record that the cash was paid.

Diana: Yep. We do it out on the course. That's the other nice thing.

Jeff: Out on the course. I like that.

Elise: One of the things that I heard of at a golf tournament that I feel could be fun for the golf tournament or any event is called a martini toss. Have you all heard of this?

Jeff: I want to hear more.

Elise: Well, it is literally a martini glass and the participant is given an olive, and you toss an olive into the glass. And if you get it, then you're advanced or you win a prize or something like that, but you pay to participate in the martini toss.

Jeff: And that's golf related?

Elise: Jeff, there are libations at golf tournaments. I don't know if you know this.

Jeff: There are. I don't think of martini and golf, though.

Elise: It depends on what time of day. Everybody comes off the course -- I think you could do that.

Jeff: I've seen those types of contests. You can also get into the mulligans, and you can sell the raffle tickets, and you can sell a variety of other types of games and gimmicks at every single one of these holes. So, why not a martini toss? You've seen the one, the helicopter drop, right, where they're dropping balls onto a green from a helicopter?

Diana: I have not seen this. I don't know what you're talking about.

Jeff: I've seen them drop the ducks in a duck race, but that's not golf. And we did one event where it was closest to the pin, and it was $1,000 a shot. And I kid you not, they sold 18 entries into this thing. It was pretty impressive. You got three balls, and they went out about 150 yards from the green, and you had to hit it over water. It was a lot of fun.

Elise: Well, I like the idea of having each of these games or some of these games at a different hole. I think that it really makes the tournament special -- "oh, at the sixth hole, you're going to do this, and at the 12th, you're going to do that." Do people view it as fun? Or are they like, "oh, this is taking so long"?

Jeff: If there's too many of them, it gets to the point where I think it's taking too long. We did one tournament for a famous baseball player, and on one hole, you had to put on all this catching gear -- the mask -- and then you had to drive. Or there's another hole where you had to throw the ball up in the air and hit it with a baseball bat. That was your drive down the fairway. I mean, at some point, when you watch someone throw the ball up in the air and miss it 10 times in a row, you're like, okay, we're going to be here a while. They can get a little bit tough. You want it to be fun, but at the same time, you don't want to overdo it. I mean, we've seen it all. Potato cannons -- you've seen those where there's a cannon on the golf course where it will fire your drive for you.

Diana: Wow. And you can pay for that?

Jeff: Okay. There's a lot of times you'll find the local long drive champion will participate, and you can pay for him to drive for your foursome. I've done that -- we were on a par four uphill that's almost 500 yards. It is a really long hole. And this guy, I think we all paid him 50 bucks to put the ball 80 yards out from the green.

Diana: Sweet. Might be worth it.

Jeff: So let's kind of leave golf behind for a while. And let's move over to more of a standard traditional gala, where we see lots and lots of different things.

Diana: So many things.

Jeff: Yeah, we're going to go down a list. And it could be rapid fire. It could be "let's pause and talk about this a little bit."

Diana: What about a scenario of it's our 28th anniversary and we're going to do things where we charge people $28? So maybe it's a $28 raffle ticket, maybe it's a $28 donation. Do you all see this successfully executed?

Jeff: I think 28's hard. I would say you're definitely using software like Handbid to do that, because if you're using cash for that, you're going to drive some people crazy.

Elise: Yes, that's true.

Jeff: A 50th anniversary, it might be perfect.

Diana: Okay, cool. Very cool. So how about the gift card tree or the gift card grab?

Elise: I love those. They're just so easy.

Jeff: The best way to handle gift cards. When you go out and you get Subway gift cards for five bucks and all these other various gift cards and you're trying to figure out how to assemble them together into some sort of meaningful auction item -- sometimes you just turn it into a raffle.

Diana: And I think you're about to go through a gigantic number of drawing and raffle types of games, right?

Jeff: Yes. So we see something like a wine pull, or we see something called the whiskey wagon, which is basically just a way to sell a $25 ticket and you don't know what you're going to get from the wine pull. It's a similar concept. The whiskey wagon I think is a little bit more direct -- here is a whole wagon of whiskey, so you can buy a raffle ticket or a drawing ticket to try to win it. But you get to pull your whiskey wagon all the way to your vehicle.

Diana: And it has nothing to do with falling off the wagon.

Jeff: It does not.

Diana: I don't know if I want to be the guy that's walking out with a wagon of whiskey.

Elise: Don't judge. Don't judge. Party at Elise's.

Jeff: Now, one thing I do like with things like the wine pull or the gift cards is that everyone's a winner. And it's a great way to have a very low-priced item and let everyone participate. And then you're sure to win -- it might be a $5 Subway card, but hey, at least you get lunch.

Diana: Yeah, that's true. Spoken like Kenny Rogers -- everyone's a winner and everyone's a loser.

Jeff: I love it. But with those, which I don't think you mentioned -- in most cases you're buying some sort of number. It is a raffle in the sense that either you've hidden all the bottles of wine, or you've turned the labels around, or you've done something where people don't really know what they're getting. And then it helps to give them the range of, "hey, guess what, we're doing a wine pull. You're going to get two buck chuck -- that Trader Joe's cheapest of the cheap -- or it's going to go all the way up to this nice one." You've got to have some nice ones in there.

Diana: Yeah. Can't be too cheap.

Jeff: So, here's this $80, $100 bottle of Caymus, right? You have to give them the thought or at least the expectation that they could win one of those. And then you price them all in the middle -- $25, $30, or $40, whatever it is -- and then people feel like, okay, this is worth it. And I've seen them go high-end. We did a high-end spirit wall in New York, and I would tell you every single bottle was over 100 bucks.

Diana: Oh gosh, nice.

Jeff: Yes, and it was not a cheap ticket to buy. But some of those bottles were $600.

Diana: What?

Jeff: Yes.

Elise: Oh my gosh. I want to know who they know.

Jeff: Totally. Some amazing friends.

Elise: Is that like aged whiskey? What costs $600?

Jeff: This was like Cristal, the champagne. But it was a massive bottle -- bigger than a magnum. I didn't even want to touch it. It was so big. And yes, apparently it was 600 bucks. So anyway, there were a bunch of those. And the whole point is that they're either buying a number off the wall, or sometimes it's called a cork pull, where you have a basket of corks with numbers on them. That's another good one. And there are a couple of ways to pull those off. In Handbid, you can either just say, "hey, we're doing a whiskey pool or a wine pool, and there's 50 bottles." And so there's an item that you buy called that with a limited quantity of 50. Or if you want the software to track what bottles everybody bought, you just put all 50 in the software with a limited quantity of one. And then they know they bought bottle 16 or something. And that one's marked sold out and nobody else can buy it again.

Diana: Yep.

Narrator: Hey, just want to let you know, this event is brought to you by Handbid. Handbid is mobile bidding and auction technology software built by fundraisers for fundraisers. We're able to help you with everything from ticketing and registration to mobile bidding to live auction recording, appeals, you name it. And in addition to the software that we're able to provide, we have a ton of services we can offer you. If you need help getting everything set up, if you need coaching, if you need counseling and advice on how to get through your event, if you need someone to show up and make sure that it runs smoothly -- these are all the types of services that we offer. So if you want more information about what we do, please click on the link below or reach out to us at handbid.com, and we'd be happy to talk to you.

Jeff: For a lot of these games, also, you want to make sure that you have the ability to only sell them at the event, because obviously you don't want to be selling a wine cork to somebody who's not there. And you don't want them really buying them on their phones either.

Elise: No, you don't.

Diana: Right. Is that what you recommend to our clients? Event only?

Jeff: Yeah, move it all to the iPads. We have a setting called Event Only, and that basically says the only place you can buy this is off of an iPad, which are used at our event. So I think that makes it a little bit easier. People can see what they bought on their phone, but they can't pull the trigger there.

Diana: Totally clear. Okay, sorry, so keep going. You've got a lot on there.

Elise: I do. Okay, what about almost like a mascot kind of thing? Like if you are an organization that has--

Diana: The tigers.

Elise: Yes. Thank you. That you could just have a bunch of stuffed tigers and sell them as another stream of revenue to your participants. And then they can come home and say, "oh, I was at the Tiger Ball."

Jeff: Or connect them to your gift card tree. So put a necklace around the tiger with a number on it, and they buy Tiger 12. Tiger 12 maps to an envelope in your folder. And in that envelope is your Subway card.

Diana: Two tickets to the zoo.

Jeff: Yes, exactly. We love that.

Diana: And then what about this whole idea of the jewelry, Kendra Scott piece?

Elise: Oh, those are so fun. They go so fast.

Diana: So what's the price point on that, Elise?

Elise: They're a little higher. Around a hundred-ish. Maybe 75, just depending on what you're getting. But if you're guaranteed to have some kind of really fun jewelry, they go so quickly.

Diana: Okay. So the concept is I'm going to pay you $100 and I pull from this category or display that you have and I get a necklace or a pair of earrings or something.

Jeff: Okay. So that's another idea, which is similar to the wine wall, I guess.

Diana: Okay. The Golden Ticket. Can we talk about the Golden Ticket for a minute?

Jeff: Well, there are so many ways to do it. I was at an event where -- well, the Golden Ticket probably comes from a certain movie about candy that we all know.

Diana: Which we might not mention now due to licensing. I'm not sure. I love that movie.

Jeff: But being that it's about candy and chocolate, everyone bought a $100 golden candy bar and one person got the golden ticket. And that golden ticket gave them the right to have any of the live auction items.

Diana: Okay, so that is the way I've seen it done as well.

Jeff: I've also seen where you can kind of reverse that, where you give out three winners and they get one of three spots. You have prizes you're giving away, and those prizes are in these boxes. So you have three winners, they go up there and stand there, and then you auction off the fourth spot.

Diana: Oh, that's interesting.

Jeff: Yeah, and so now there's four people up there, and whoever won the auction gets to pick first, and then the other people get to pick randomly their box or whatever it is, open it up, and that's what you get.

Diana: Oh, very fun. And what do you think is the price point on a golden ticket?

Jeff: Oh gosh, I've not seen them sold for under a hundred dollars each.

Diana: Yeah, I agree. Because you're getting a live auction item -- no kidding, right? Otherwise it's a really nice donation.

Jeff: Exactly.

Diana: Can we talk about heads or tails?

Elise: Oh yes, that's at every event.

Jeff: It is. That was what I was mentioning earlier -- you have auctioneers or people who want to try to warm up the crowd or do a good transition. This is a good one because it's a very simple game. A lot of times what you'll see happen is a transition from a program and people eating into a live auction and a paddle raise, and people are talking, right? And the bar is busy, because most live auctioneers -- especially the good ones -- want the bar shut down during the live auction so that it's not noisy in the back. So what you'll see happen is they'll play this game, because the game gives people a little bit of a chance to get back organized, grab their drink, and then play, which takes no more than about 10 or 15 minutes.

Elise: Oh, okay. It's very quick.

Jeff: Heads or tails is basically a 50-50 game. Most often run by an auctioneer who's up on stage with some way of flipping a coin. A lot of times they're going to show up with a challenge coin. Very rarely is it a quarter, because those things fly places and you never find them. But it's a big coin. We had one auctioneer who had an iPad app and he'd hold it over his head and tap the button and the coin would spin on the iPad.

Diana: Oh, okay.

Jeff: Or, guess what -- Alexa and Siri will give you heads or tails too. So you can certainly ask them. What people do is you sell lives in the game. So I can have one life, or -- what do you usually see?

Diana: Like one life for 20 bucks or three for 50?

Jeff: Yeah, something like that. And they give you a necklace, and the necklace represents your lives. We'd always recommend you max out at three per person. So then I have my three necklaces on, Elise has her three necklaces on, the whole crowd's participating. They want you to stand up and then you're going to choose heads or tails. So you're either going to put your hands on your head or you're going to put your hands on your tail, and you have to hold them there. And then they flip the coin, and if you're wrong, you lose a life. And then when you're out, you sit. And when there are five or six or seven people left, they'll usually bring them up on stage and then finish the game up there. It's a lot of fun. And again, it's one of those loosening-up times. So have them go to the bar, have them come back, have a little fun, and then sit down and make the big money.

Diana: Yeah, and you make a little bit of money on it.

Jeff: Yeah. Usually you have to give a prize to the winner anyway, so ideally you'll break even. Have a decent prize too, please.

Diana: Yeah, don't have a lame one.

Elise: At least have a good prize. Free pick of a dessert from the dessert dash is not a good enough prize.

Jeff: Okay, well, since we're still on kind of this live auctioneer-directed thing, let's talk about last man standing, or we also hear it called the runaround.

Diana: Yeah, this is a hard one.

Jeff: It is a hard concept. It's a paddle raise, but it is a game, right? And the whole intention here is whoever is the last man standing -- the last person to donate -- wins the prize. And this has to be a good prize.

Diana: Right, it does.

Jeff: I've seen Bronco suites. I've seen a whiskey wagon. I saw a wine collection that was pretty impressive and got people into it. I saw a Yeti filled with Colorado beer. That was a fun one.

Diana: That sounds cool.

Jeff: Okay, so the key thing is that the donation amount needs to be relatively small. The most I've seen it is $100. And then I'm going to tell you: we'd strongly encourage you not to let your auctioneer change that price. I'll talk about that in a second. But either way -- a hundred bucks, I've seen it at $50, $25.

Diana: Yeah, but then it goes on forever.

Jeff: Yeah, you got to be careful because it will go on. What happens is people raise their paddle, they call out the paddles, and then when all the paddles are down they say "going once, going twice," and whoever was the last paddle is going to win. And then all of a sudden -- boom -- there comes another paddle up because they want to be the last one. So it will go on for a while. I've seen them go on for 20 minutes.

Diana: Yes, I have too.

Jeff: And I would say my biggest request when I'm at an event and we have an auctioneer who does this -- it is a great revenue generator for sure -- but the auctioneer needs to be very clear that every time you raise your paddle, you are donating.

Diana: I was just going to say that. It's a commitment. You don't get to remove them if you don't win.

Jeff: That's right. It is a commitment. And that is why you also do not want them changing the price. Look, if it's going on too long, it's going on too long. I am sorry, but you cannot go from $100 to $200. You will confuse everybody, including your mobile bidding company who's trying to enter in all these numbers.

Elise: Well, I don't get confused, but --

Jeff: When did they go to $200?

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: Oh, you wait until you have to go up to the lady who donated four times at $200 and say, "well, it was really $800." And she's like, "no, it was a hundred." So, matter of fact, it wasn't. You missed that memo.

Diana: Yeah. So that's a really good point. I mean, it is an extension of the paddle raise. You are hopefully getting something great at the end. But it sounds like it really helps to have a skillful live auctioneer who's a good communicator.

Jeff: For sure.

Diana: So, okay, I love that as a revenue driver. I would say it's one of the larger revenue generators.

Jeff: Yep. We see that a lot.

Diana: Okay, so let's talk about -- have we talked about games of chance?

Jeff: They're all games of chance. Look, they're not gambling in a sense, but they are games of chance. You could argue they're gambling, but in most cases they're not. But there are types of gambling that you can do at an event, and one of them is raffles. Raffles are regulated, so it's worth being mindful of those and understanding what the rules are -- not just at your state level but also in your jurisdiction, because they change sometimes at the local county level. Just kind of know what those are. The big key there -- and we should just do a gambling episode -- is: consideration, chance, and prize. Those are the three elements of gambling. And so you have to break one of those ties in order for it to not be gambling. Consideration means someone paying you money, chance means the game itself, and then prize is the prize. And it's got to be one of those things where there's not really any skill involved per se.

Diana: Okay.

Jeff: So if you want to break that cycle, that's why a lot of people call things "prize drawings" or say "need not donate" or "no purchase necessary." You'll see all the McDonald's Monopoly things say that you can get a free one. And it is -- you can definitely send a letter to McDonald's and they'll send you a free stamp. So the whole point of that is that you can allow people to participate for free, and then you've eliminated consideration and now it's just chance and prize. Anyway, whole other topic on that. But in a lot of these cases, these are pretty harmless type games -- you're making a purchase, you're picking a bottle of wine. It's kind of like a transaction.

Diana: I think the key for all of these is to have a few. They're really fun and they're typically low cost. If you're at a school event, maybe your teachers might want to participate. People who weren't going to spend much money -- they won't turn down a bottle of wine or the chance to win a Yeti. But having too many can dilute them.

Jeff: Yeah, I agree. Dilutes them.

Diana: And do your homework if you're going to be running something like that. Okay, so the last three that I have on my list: centerpieces. And when we were putting this together, I heard an emphatic sigh from across the table.

Jeff: Do these work?

Diana: It depends on your centerpiece, for sure. They don't always work. But sometimes you have gorgeous flowers that are $100 arrangements. Then, yeah, they do work. But I've seen a lot of "here's a succulent." Well, okay, thanks. I can go to the grocery store for that one.

Jeff: So Mike, who's been on some of our episodes -- at his last event. Oh, he has good ones.

Elise: Oh my goodness. What are they?

Jeff: It was a decanter, and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Elise: That's so cool.

Jeff: And so you didn't have to buy it.

Diana: I did. I bought mine. It has a little auction insignia on it, like engraved. It was really, really neat.

Jeff: No, that's a new one. It's thoughtful. I think he may have sold out.

Diana: He did. And you can put -- I don't think he had one for every table, but what was nice about it is, I looked at it and said, I would actually put that in my house.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. Well, we have a client who supports special needs adults and children, but the special needs adults will make the vases and the bowls. And then that client will use them as the centerpieces, and then we sell them -- "Table 76 bowl" -- on our Handbid software. And so as soon as Table 76 bowl is sold, then people know that. But it's a great revenue driver. And it was even a better revenue driver when we put the picture of the kid who made it on the display sheet along with the item.

Diana: That is true. That's awesome. It wasn't just "Table 76 bowl," it was "bowl made by Samuel."

Jeff: Yeah. What a cute little kid he was. What a great idea.

Diana: Okay, another one is carnival games.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. All sorts. What do you see? Tell me some stories.

Elise: Carnival games. I heard of a dunk tank.

Jeff: Are you serious? We've seen dunk tanks. I've seen throw the baseballs at the milk jugs, throw the football through the hole. We had somebody do a Plinko game, like good old-fashioned Price is Right.

Diana: Yeah.

Jeff: And then the last one, I think, deserves its own kind of place in the sun -- voting.

Diana: Voting's awesome.

Elise: Oh, yes.

Jeff: And so, my derby event -- for years, we did a hat contest and then a men's seersucker suit contest. And the best way to do those is to turn them into a revenue generator. So when you walked in the door, we would take a photo of you if you were a contestant, we'd put you into the system with your name, and then you had a five-dollar vote connected to you. And so whoever raised the most money, quote unquote, got the most votes. There are voting scenarios out there where you want people to only cast one vote, but that's not really a revenue generator.

Diana: Yeah. And I've seen them for a Dancing with the Stars kind of event.

Jeff: Yep.

Diana: And also, what have you seen them at?

Jeff: Well, I will tell you, the Denver Zoo sent me an email yesterday about a new baby sloth. And they have a revenue generator to name the sloth. And sure enough, I looked at the cute sloth. I looked at the names. I talked to my kids about it. They got my money.

Diana: Yeah. I love that. That's so cool. Something like that -- if you have something special, you're naming your new mascot. If you're trying to think--

Jeff: Well, "taste of"s for sure.

Diana: Yeah, I was going to say the chef's event. Yes. Because you're kind of tipping, but you're also voting for "this was my favorite version of this."

Jeff: Yep. So I would say that's an easy revenue driver. You've seen lip sync ones. Lip sync, fashion shows. We used to do a fashion show for a jewelry company, and the contestants had to make all of their dresses or outfits out of the packaging and wrapping and the materials that came from the company.

Elise: Wow. It was kind of interesting.

Jeff: It was amazing what they came up with. They had various divisions that you could compete in based on your age and stuff. And so we implemented voting for them -- that's how they did it. They had professional judges at the event itself, but this was kind of like the "fan favorite," so the people that were in the stands had another ability to participate as well. And they made money off of it -- you make a few grand off of votes.

Diana: Yeah. So I would say overall we do see a lot of these kinds of extra revenue drivers. I hope we've given you guys some good ideas.

Jeff: And I would say nothing's off the table. Be creative, because those are the ones that people are going to remember. They're going to say, "oh, that event where they had the whiskey wagon." Keep it legal and make it fun. And kind of map it to your theme.

Diana: Yep. I think you guys will have fun with it.

Jeff: Well, this has been a great conversation. Very fun.

Diana: Thank you so much. I know.

Jeff: And thank you for bringing your notepad again with your organized list of notes.

Diana: You're welcome, Jeff. This is what I do.

Jeff: All right. It keeps us on task. And so anyway, we're going to wrap this podcast up by thanking you for listening in again. And if you have any other suggestions for things that you feel we should be adding as a suggested revenue generator, go ahead and post those in the comments. And otherwise, we will see you next time on Elevate Your Event.