Every event walks the tightrope between good party and successful fundraiser. If you don’t throw a fun party, no-one will want to come back next year. And if you don’t raise enough money to support the cause and justify the party, it isn’t worth doing next year.

A truly successful event has a unified vision from beginning to end that makes it fun to raise money for a cause the crowd is pre-disposed towards passionately supporting. Attendees should be invited to support a fundraising event that will be fun, not invited to a party and hit upside the head with an unexpected call for cash.

Everyone on your team’s vision of success should include maximizing the philanthropic potential of your attendees. There are always compromises, and I’m not suggesting that every event should have the same length auction start at the same time and feature the same lots. But I am wishing that event planners and event management companies would get on board with making auctions successful, and think about some of their decisions from an auctioneer’s perspective.

Case in point: at an event I did two weeks ago, the event planner put together a stunning room. Monarch butterflies were the main thematic element, and they were everywhere; projected on the ceiling, sitting on each place-setting’s napkin, and covering the three-foot high metal “tree” centerpieces at each table. From the standpoint of an event designer, it was gorgeous.

Guests at each table could readily see their mates across from them without the centerpiece blocking their view. And when you looked around you saw a forest of butterfly-covered trees. And that was the problem.

From the back of the room you couldn’t see the video screens through all of the trees, rendering the much worked-on video about the organization and its great work invisible to all but a few up front tables.

And when I was on stage, I was probably more voice than visible presence as well. Meaning guests couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see them, or their paddles. I am most effective when I can look a bidder in the eyes and ask them to spend more money. That night, I was happy just to figure out where the bidders were. Establishing any sort of intimacy died on the branches of fifty-something Monarch encrusted trees.

I know the event planner and his team very well. I’m already carefully wording my follow-up conversation with them. Seeing as how this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this at an event I was working on, I want to at least get them to acknowledge I have a perspective, if not see things from it now and again.

This shift in the economy really began impacting events as far back as March of this year. That’s when we started seeing bidders start to become increasingly hesitant. It’s also when we discovered that many events were having a harder time obtaining donations.

When it suddenly becomes harder to obtain lots for your live auction you have two choices: put on an auction with fewer or less valuable lots, or start buying auction lots. We always recommend relying upon donations, not only because they cost you nothing, but the acquisition of donations is an important exercise. We also understand that there are times when you simply need to bolster your auction and have no other options.

In this situation, we recommend a simple formula: for every $1 you spend, you should be able to earn $3 at auction. Otherwise, you are simply taking money away from your cause and giving it to a retailer or -worse yet- the new breed of charity auction lot middlemen who’ve popped up everywhere.

Your attendees and supporters are happy to give you money because they believe it is going directly to your cause. They understand the need to cover costs to put on an auction, and will forgive you for some strategic spending that helps you make far more than you would have otherwise. Don’t betray that trust by spending $3,000 on an auction lot that only nets you $600, as happened to a client recently.

There are lots of potential auction lots that seem attractive on first blush. Your first question should be, “Can I triple my money with this investment?” If the answer is yes, do it to fill gaps in your auction, but don’t let bought lots become your foundation.

If a lot is expensive, ask yourself if you could put a variation of the package together for less. No-one owns the copyright on a package, and you have every right to put a similar package together for less. The brokers who offer “no-risk” packages for charity auctions often overcharge, which becomes readily apparent once you start pricing out the components on your own.

Whatever you do, don’t waste money on airfare. The people you are targeting as major supporters have their own miles, travel agents, and favorite airlines. Round trip coach seats won’t bolster the value significantly in their minds.

Before you spend money on a whole new package, ask yourself if there are other packages in your auction that you could make better with a smaller investment. If, for example, you have phenomenal tours and tastings up in Napa or Sonoma but don’t have a place to stay, it would be worthwhile to try and acquire a hotel for a couple of nights. Many upscale hotels that are unwilling to donate outright are willing to offer significant discounts for purchased stays.

Museum passes for a trip to Paris, rounds of golf to accompany a stay at Pinehurst, or having an event’s invitation engraved on a large format bottle of wine are all examples of purchases we’ve seen surpass the 3 to 1 rule.

Don’t let purchasing your lots become the rule instead of the exception. Once you stop asking your board, committee and volunteers for help obtaining lots you start losing out on necessary relationship building for your organization and marketing for your event. The same relationship building and marketing that brings new bidders into the fold.

Attendees of your fundraising event need to know the difference their participation will help you make in people’s lives. There needs to be no question about the need, and how they can help you fulfill it; down to the level of the lowest fund a need pledge.

Bidders need to know that they can help, that their money is going to effect meaningful change. It is all about laser-beaming message, and in this case it is about quantifying needs at appropriate levels. Large, national charities face the perceptual challenge of massive national budgets. The reality may be that the Silicon Valley American Heart Association or Bay Area Red Cross serve the local community and are responsible for their own annual budgets, but it doesn’t always appear that way.

One Silicon Valley executive who was debating a $10,000 pledge at an event summed it up best, “I want to know how much my money is going to move the needle.” $10,000 is no paltry sum. I’m betting anyone reading this could change a lot of lives with $10,000. But measured against the multi-million dollar annual budget of heart research nationwide, it barely makes the needle shiver.

The challenge is to define the goals for your audience clearly, and communicate them effectively:

• State what your fundraising auction helps your organization accomplish.
• Equally importantly, state what won’t happen if people don’t show up and spend.
• Quantify your needs, and map them to pledge levels of your fund a need. For example: $5,000 will provide one bed for a hospice; or $250 will give four women free breast cancer screenings.
• Publish those needs, preferably in your auction catalog, and preferably in a way that people will actually read them. Just remember that a laundry list is bad, but pull quotes at the bottom of each page, Reader’s Digest-style, catch people’s eyes.
• Pick up the phone and start having conversations with your biggest supporters. Now. Be honest with them, and respect their honesty in return. It is better to know where you stand going into an event, than merely hope that people are going to give you money.

The most successful events right now are being carried by individuals. It is always a minority of people who carry the day for fundraising auctions, and in this economy even more weight is falling on their shoulders. Let them know how much their support means to the people you serve, let them know how many lives will be changed with their bids at your auction. Let them know how they can move the needle, and they’ll find a way to make it jump.

This is from today’s Wall St. Journal:

“According to a new survey from American Express Publishing and the Harrison Group, nearly half of respondents with incomes of $250,000 or more agreed with the statement that “I worry that at some point I could run out of money.” That’s up from about a third in April.

Fully 69% agreed with the statement that “The recent real estate and banking crisis has affected my sense of financial security.”

Of course, $250,000 is only “Obama wealthy.” And running out of money “at some point” is a long time horizon. Yet the survey suggests that even high-income earners are cutting back their spending for fear of what the financial future might bring. Fully two-thirds say that they are “looking closely at every spending category to see where I can save.””

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This is the group that I mentioned that used to be a reliable participant at auctions but is now far more cautious. We need to re-engage. It all goes back to “Laser-beaming the message”.