Events 101F - Can we get it for free?

Can we get it for free?

The second most asked question for events.

Anything that is necessary to create an event, especially a fundraiser, event committees seem to think it should be free. And for some reason, they believe the event producer should be able to get it for them, for free. "Isn’t that why you hire an event producer – to get things for free". As well as providing free services – after all, it is for charity.

There are no free services. If there was, we would live in a barter world, where money was not a component. This is not the case. Businesses allocate a certain percentage of their budget to marketing, charitable support, advertising, community relations, and sales. A percentage of the budget where “free” falls.

In return for "free", there must be some benefit. This is where most volunteer committees lack the experience to identify the benefits.

Let’s use printing - one of the most requested “free services” for any event. We could use banquet rooms at hotels, golf courses, wine, catering, décor, flowers, gifts, and labour as the example, hwowever, for this post, printing will do.

Free printing is a misnomer. Events are inviting the printer to sponsor the printed materials.

This often is not a wise decision. We advise that events pay fair value for all services. Negotiate a fair rate with the supplier or vendor. If the provider of services chooses to become the sponsor, recognize them as so, offering them the same value as any other sponsor.

Why? Because donated services never work out over time. Donated services are never properly allocated in the budgets, never properly recognized as being sponsored, and committees do not document donated services for the next committee. Events tend to burn out donors - in the long run doing more damage to relationships than all the goodwill, friend raising and fundraising accumulates.

As an example, a volunteer board, who hosted one large fundraiser annually, inevitably had an annual(new) Gala Chair and Gala Committee. Each year, they used an example of the print program from the past year; each year a committee member identified a new printer who would donate their services.

Yes, every year they changed printers. The challenges – they never had the original files, so either an overworked, underfunded staff member (usually new) tried to recreate the program from scratch, or tried to find a graphic designer to donate the services, or the printer tried to recreate the program. The labour costs were horrendous.

“The staff can do this was the common refrain”. Labour costs never factored in. Nor did the committee have to deal with the fallouts – missed work deadlines, programs not completed, other revenue streams missed.

After 10 years of this, the not for profit had a terrible reputation in the city. Not only from printers, but in all industries.

Be aware the power of the negative word of mouth – the world is a small place, the six degrees of separation is down to about four degrees of separation, and negative comments will reflect poorly on the good works of the charity or the not for profit. In this case, attendance to programs decreased yearly, board members did minimal terms, and the major fundraiser of the year decreased in revenues by 11 percent per year.

The worst blow was to their reputation. Finally, a new gala committee, headed by a new chair, identified the problems, and chose to solve the challenge. Chose to hire a printer, to create a sponsorship brochure – a beautiful glossy brochure, mailed out to all and sundry. A brochure that cost more that the last ten years of printed programs. Hired a new company, which have never worked with the charity.

Can you see where this is going? Ten years, ten printers, the new chair had no background, so did not even think about awarding the contract to a printer that had supported them in the past with “free printing”

The next major faux pas… mailed the brochure to the complete database, which included all the past printers who had done programs and “Free Printing”

What did the brochure ask for – among many things? Yes, you guessed, free printing for the upcoming gala. All over town printers were furious, and vowed never to help another charity again. (Yes, poor decisions reflect badly across a larger scale than one would think.)

That year the attendance at the gala was the lowest in history, donations were down, and revenues were minimal. The not for profit was steps away from bankruptcy.

The upside of the story – the founders of the not for profit heard what was happening with their vision, stepped back in, redid the strategic plan, recreated the governance board, refinanced operations, hired a respected event producer and over the next several years recreated their vision.

Leading the not for profit to success, where services are paid for, and sponsors benefit from their support of the event, and the charity. And the charity or corporation does what it was intended to do - stay true to the mission statement or corporate mandate, not produce events.