Getting Ready for Glamour by Rachel Doyle

                                
Editor’s Note: It’s the most wonderful time of the year…Glamour in the City time!  Our friend Rachel Doyle, President and Founder of hot nonprofit GlamourGals, is hard at work putting the finishing touches on her biggest fundraiser of the year.  After I initially thought to ask Rachel a few questions to guide my post, I thought better of it.  Who better to get us into the mindset of the event-planning, goal-reaching crunch than the President herself?  Without further ado, Rachel tells all – the gritty and the glamorous!

It is Wednesday, April 30th 11:48pm EST, and I’ve just finished up a two hour-long conference call with my advisory board.  It is a week before our biggest fundraiser of the year—Glamour in the City.  Needless to say, we’ve put together quite the to-do list! 

Glamour in the City is a fundraising and awareness evening for GlamourGals.  This year the event will be held at Loft 11, where chic philanthropists and inspired entrepreneurs will sip on premium cocktails accompanied by Rockstar or Pom Wonderful mixers, taste a decadent table of treats from Sweet Street Desserts, listen to the live jazz sounds of elizabeth (just last week she played five nights at Jazz @ Lincoln Center!), try their luck at raffles for spa gift certificates, Neissing rings or an urban getaway at the Loews Regency Hotel, peruse program scrapbooks, and view photos of inspiring women—and this is just the cocktail hour!  The cocktails will be followed by the GLAMMYS!, our awards presentation hosted by Tracy Smith, CBS News with special guest Susan Schulz, Editor-in-Chief of CosmoGIRL! Magazine.

As I mentioned, we have quite the to-do list (i.e. finding a place to store all 20 cases of those amazing treats in NYC before the event!). But the to-do list started with a plan, and now that it is in its fourth year, I thought that I would share some insight into planning the larger than life soiree, Glamour in the City.

This year our goal is to raise $100,000 to fund our five year strategic growth plan.  We chose this amount because last year we raised $50,000, and since our organization has doubled in size since then (we now reach 50 volunteer chapters  in 11 states), we thought we would double our fundraising goal. What is most important in setting a fundraising goal?  Attainability. Our goal is attainable because six months ago my advisory board and I sat down and broke it up into $50, $500, and $5,000 increments. Our fundraising strategy started in an Excel document during a conference call and set a clear, concise and well thought out organizational strategy for Glamour in the City right away.

And since that conference call, we’ve updated this Excel spreadsheet daily, and added on multiple tabs for guest lists, timelines, budgets, prospects, sponsors, press, and more.  It serves as a daily reminder of what still needs to be done, and it keeps us focused and on task each step of the way. While it may be fun to fiddle with the colors and column widths, it’s important to have a spreadsheet that’s usable and that encourages people to be accountable for what they promised to do at your last meeting! We created just such a sheet, and this sheet has allowed us to boast about our 80% capacity and the 80% of our fundraising goal which we’ve attained as of today! And, by the way, we have a BIG surprise at the event, so we hope that you’ll join us to witness it and be a part of our goal!

Since I’m living and breathing it this week, there’s no better time for me to share some tips with other fundraisers and event planners…

General Insight:

Learn from the feedback from your previous events. Make sure that you have a debriefing session with attendees right away to find out how you can improve upon the event. For each fundraising or programming event that we run, we always have a board meeting within a day or two to capture candid feedback.  Last year we didn’t have seating, and in the packed room it became hard to hear or see the presentation from the back.  Solution:  We introduced VIP seating in a new venue with a flexible floor plan that would still fit our budget—rentals can be expensive!

Specific Insight:

Recognition: Fundraising events are perfect opportunities for recognizing the support of your sponsors.  For example, at this year’s Glamour in the City event, Brookdale Senior Living’s Vice President will personally present the Glammy Awards to our volunteers.  Giving our sponsors the opportunity to really be a part of the event is critical to the development of a meaningful relationship with them.

Nitty-Gritty Insight:

Be your own guest: An event is all about creating an experience. Think about how your guest enters the room.  How is registration set up? How will she move about the room, or even better yet, how do you want her to move? If she comes alone, will she have things to do before the presentations begin? At Glamour in the City, guests can eat, drink, listen to music, peruse scrapbooks, and check out raffle items, including an interactive boutique raffle from Chloe and Reese—and the designer will be there to meet and greet and share her custom designs!

The next week should be spent on the phone. In this day and age when it seems that every bulk mail house has your home and email addresses, a call is so personal! Starting a call with a thank you for past support, ideas, and interest is always a great way to begin.  People have a much harder time saying no over the phone,  and a call allows you to personally connect with supporters that may offer other resources to you in conversation. For Glamour in the City, we try to keep a range of ticket prices that allow any level philanthropist to contribute and enjoy the evening so that “I can’t afford it” excuse is automatically disqualified.

I look forward to having Elisabeth Anderson cover the event and to sharing more exciting news… see you on the red carpet!

Rachel Doyle, President and Founder of GlamourGals is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit that empowers girls to become leaders through intergenerational makeovers - be inspired.  www.glamourgals.org.  She has been featured in the NY Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Montel Williams Show and was named the first ever CosmoGIRL! Of the Year by CosmoGIRL! Magazine.  Rachel has managed the growth and set the vision for GlamourGals for almost a decade expanding the organization from three volunteers to almost 1,000 in eleven different states.