The document outlines the importance and planning process for special events, emphasizing their role in fundraising, awareness, and community engagement. It highlights key steps such as setting goals, establishing a budget, selecting a venue, marketing strategies, and the importance of sponsorships. Additionally, it provides a structured approach for event management, including planning, coordination, and the use of branding to enhance event impact.

1. MICE EVENTS

2. Why do Special Events?
• Raise Money
• Raise Awareness
• Increase Volunteer Opportunities
• Provide the experiential component to your development program
Importance of Special Events
• Bring attention to your mission.
• Improve bottom line performance & market share through new donors & sponsors.
• Provide a captive audience
• Create a meaningful way to thank existing supporters.
• Raise awareness & engage people.
• Build relationships with the business community.
• Can cultivate relationships with annual and major gift prospects.
• Key to successful fundraising

3. Keys to a Successful Event!
• Plan for success.
• Your ability to tell the community who you are and why you matter.
• Top of mind
Always do events to further your mission, not just to have a successful event.
Planning your special event.
• Research
• Design
• Plan
• Coordinate
• Evaluate

4. Why should you go for Event Planning?
Planning is definitely akin to effective Event Planning. To reach to the pioneer in your
field, you need to crack certain puzzles and put the pieces in line.
There is certainly no big secrets or hidden ingredients in planning your event.
All you need to do is to stick to the suggested framework as below to have a strong
event plan in place.
1. Calm brainstorming to create a vision.
2. Outline all aspects and give it a proper structure.
3. Connect the dots and have all technical issues solved.

5. 10 Steps to Plan Any Event

6. ✓ The very first step in planning your event is to establish a tangible goal and objectives.
✓ First, start by asking yourself: Why are you organizing this event, and what do you hope to
achieve?
✓ If you know your organization’s key goals before planning, you can ensure that every part of
your event is optimized for success.
✓ Are you trying to raise awareness for a cause, or collect a predetermined amount of donations
for your next project? Are you hoping to attract 50 guests, or 500?
✓ Setting a goal with quantifiable metrics of success will make it easier for your team to ensure
that you reach them.

8. Any event takes a concerted team effort to handle all the details. Consider identifying one
key Event Manager or Event Chair as well as individual Chairpersons for subcommittees,
such as:
▪ venue management;
▪ speakers;
▪ entertainment;
▪ publicity;
▪ sponsors;
▪ and volunteer management.
Assigning individual roles to team members creates a system of accountability, as well as
preventing tasks from falling to the wayside. Plus, it’ll allow you to delegate – but don’t forget
to account for committee meetings in your event plan timing!

10. ✓ Establishing your event’s budget is one of the most important parts of planning an event. I’ve
seen many great ideas fall by the wayside because the team who originally came up with it
forgot to take their budget into consideration before beginning to plan.
✓ Some of the critical expenses you need to include in your budget are:
• Venue: This cost encompass the rental as well as any insurance you need to purchase.
• Food and Drink:
• Entertainment: This field can be customized however you need it to be — whether it’s
allocated for speakers, or a DJ, make sure you have wiggle room for travel and
accommodation costs as well as any compensation.
• Décor: Establishing the costs upfront will help you determine which one you can afford.
• Staff: This category might often be forgotten, but it’s key to account for the transportation
and lodging costs of your staff, especially if you’re headed out of town.

11. • Marketing: Whether you decide to promote your event through Facebook or go old-school by
putting flyers up all over town,
• Software: If you’re not already paying for any kind of event management software, consider
incorporating it into your event planning.
• A/V: From projectors to wi-fi to speakers, this category encompasses a wide variety of costs.
• Miscellaneous: Even the best-planned event will have some additional costs come up.
Accounting for them in your budget will ensure you’re not caught unawares.

13. • The date might already be pre-set for a recurring event, but if this is a new event, be
sure to consider the following before firming up your date:
• Give yourself enough time! Ideally, you should have 4-6 months to plan, if not
more (depending on the nature of your event)
• Be aware of statutory and religious holidays
• Avoid school holiday time periods (winter, spring and summer holidays)
• Check dates with key participants – speakers, presenters, VIP guests, etc.
• Once you’ve set the date (and have already outlined your budget), you can start
booking any external staff (such as caterers) you need right away.

15. Once you have a good idea of all the costs and the timeline associated with your event, it’s
time to start the real plan! Creating your event master plan will allow you to ensure every
aspect remains on track, as well as making it easier to coordinate with volunteers and event
committee members.
Your event master plan should encompass all aspects of the event, including:
▪ Venue, logistics, & catering management (contracts, permits, insurance, etc.)
▪ Speakers and presenters (identifying, confirming, logistics & management)
▪ Activities and entertainment
▪ Publicity and promotion (online & off-line, such as web page & online promotion; events
calendars; printed programs; media relations; signage; social media, etc.)
▪ Registration (online sign-up, payment and tracking; on-site sign-in, etc.)
▪ Sponsor and partner management
▪ Volunteer management and responsibilities

16. ✓ While planning your event, consider also
creating a detailed timeline, so that
everything moves smoothly. Include when
any permits or insurance policies need
to be submitted, when registration ends,
and a detailed timeline of the day-of.
✓ Finally, if you or your organization has run
previous events of a similar type,
reviewing any documentation that
exists at this stage can help you ensure
you’re not missing anything.

18. Once you have the date nailed down, it’s key to book your venue as soon as possible. Your
event has to have a date and location nailed down before you can begin advertising, so this
task needs to be completed as early in the planning period as possible.
Some things to consider when picking a venue for your event are:
▪ Accessibility. Does the venue have accessible entrances and elevators? Are there all-
gender washrooms? Will you have space for interpreters? This and many other factors
go into choosing a space that all participants will feel comfortable in.
▪ Size. An event for 50 people will need a very different space than one for 500.
Additionally, consider whether or not you’ll need separate rooms for breakout sessions or
the like.
▪ Parking. Is there a parking lot, or is it easy to access via public transit?

19. ▪ Insurance. Will you need to purchase separate insurance? What are their liability rules?
▪ AV. If your event needs speakers and microphones, make sure it’s easy to set them up
in the space that’s available. The same goes for Wi-Fi access (and cellphone
connection!), or any other technological needs your event has.
▪ Costs. How much of a deposit is the venue asking for? Will there be additional costs?
How much will you get back if you (heaven forbid) need to cancel?

21. If you want your event to stand out, you need to choose a timely and compelling theme that
sets you apart from your competition. This means that you need to come up with a dynamic
overall theme and you need to take great care with the actual name since it can be a key
attention-getter, especially in online media.
✓ Brainstorm names: When you are brainstorming the event name, think about:
▪ How is your event different from other events in your sector?
▪ What are you hoping to convey through this event?
▪ What are the main components of your event?
✓ Create a tagline: Once you’ve come up with a name, also try to craft a tagline – a short,
memorable branding slogan that describes the event.
“Exquisite occasions tailored to perfection”.
“Elevating ordinary occasions to extraordinary celebrations”.

22. ✓ Design a logo: The final step will be having a logo created to represent your event. A
logo can be an effective branding tool – offering immediate recognition of your event in all
your publicity and promo items (such as t-shirts, water bottles, bags, and more).
Once you have your name, tagline, and logo, use it in all your marketing collateral so that
people who are unfamiliar with your organization will start recognizing your brand – and
remember that the event is happening!

24. Are there organizations that you could partner with or call on for sponsorships to defray the
costs and increase potential participation? Plus, when you involve other people or groups in
your event, they have a stake in helping spread the word and making the event a success --
the more the merrier, right?
You might want to consider:
▪ Seeking corporate sponsors to fund a portion of the event. This can range from
national organizations that might want to sponsor a dinner, offer a door prize or a key
silent auction item, to local businesses that might be able to provide goods or services,
such as flowers for the tables, gift bag items, etc.
▪ Partnering with community organizations who might be able to offer a venue and/or
assistance with organizing or staffing an event.

28. Event promotion starts with the initial notice or page on your website, note in your
newsletter or email to save the date, and then builds to include online and off-line publicity,
media relations and on-going outreach to encourage registration.
Some components you might want to include in your plan are:
▪ Web page announcement
▪ Social media
▪ Email blasts
▪ Press and media connections
▪ Printed materials
Finally, no promotional plan is complete without the post-event thank you’s, sponsor
acknowledgements and articles about the event’s key messages or fundraising success.

30. ✓ Once you’ve prepared everything going on around the event, keeping track of the
order of the event itself and planning out your program is the next step.
✓ To ensure you’re prepared for anything, prepare an agenda that will walk you through the
whole day from setup to cleanup. Including every detail, no matter how small, will help
you feel like you have it all under control!
✓ Here’s a quick example of what something like this might look like:
5:00: Drop off silent auction items at the venue (Diana)
6:15: AV setup (Terry, Diana)
7:00: Have quick volunteer coordination meeting (Terry + volunteers)
7:30: Attendees begin arriving
8:00: Hors d’oeuvres served
8:30: Speaker 1 takes the stage
8:45: Break
9:00: Speaker 2 takes the stage
10:00: Awards presented (Diana)
10:30: Mingling, silent auction bidding finishes 11:00: Start clearing tables
11:30: Bar closes
12:00 Event ends; all guests must leave

31. ✓ Identifying just who needs to do what can also ensure that there’s clear accountability
leading up to the event.
✓ And as a bonus, you can also use a simplified version of this in any branding materials as
your public-facing agenda

32. Internal Strengths:
• Volunteer Corps
• Brand Recognition
External Opportunity:
• Community looks forward to our event
• New underwriter
• New businesses in community
Internal Weaknesses:
• Lack of Capacity
• Small, stretched staff
• No marketing expertise
External Threats:
• Another nonprofit event entering our
space
• Weak economy
• Changing weather patterns
Developing a SWOT Analysis

33. Experiential Marketing
“Research shows that face-to-face events have a greater return on investment than
most other forms of advertising or public relations.”
Experiential marketing, also called engagement marketing,
is a marketing strategy of generating experiences for the
customers by immersing them in real-world interaction with the
brand and its offerings
This type of marketing makes use of participatory and hands-
on strategies to create immersive and memorable experiences
which help the brand –
✓ Communicate to the customers its value proposition and
what it stands for, and
✓ Create long term relationships with the customers

34. Branding your event
• making a logo, developing a color scheme, selecting appropriate typography, and
designing marketing materials such as banners, flyers, and social media graphics.
• Special event branding creates an experience that participants will not forget.
• The event resonates with an organization’s brand promise & adds to the public knowledge
of its mission, vision and values.
• Branding an event creates a signature event in which members of the community and
sponsors want to be involved year after year.

35. Promoting Your Special Event.
Revenue Follows Good Communications.
“Any group that does not have an effective communication program will raise only a fraction of the money they
would otherwise attract.”
Strategic Communications for Non-profits
• Plan publicity early
• Budget ahead
• Define your target audience
• Set Goals
• Develop a strategy
• Know your deadlines

39. Create a Conversion Campaign – the final action taken by your target
audience in a purchase process, subscription to an offer, registration, etc. A
conversion campaign will allow you to communicate with a qualified audience
to generate maximum conversions.
• Set up social media & website with:
• Invitations to sign up for e-newsletter
• Announcements of volunteer opportunities at future events and programs
• Invitation to hold a third party event
• information about your programs and the people you touch
• Video & photos from event
• Post-event surveys
• Develop outreach program to participants & sponsors

40. Create a conversion campaign
• Set up social media & website with:
• Invitations to sign up for e-newsletter
• Announcements of volunteer opportunities at future events and programs
• Invitation to hold a third party event
• information about your programs and the people you touch
• Video & photos from event
• Post-event surveys
• Develop outreach program to participants & sponsors
Special Event Models.
Community wide-special events:
• A good way to raise money for your annual campaign.
• Tickets are usually inexpensive to attract hundreds of people.
• Event sponsors usually underwrite these events in trade for recognition in their target audiences and/or the ability to distribute or sell
product.

41. Silent and Live Auctions:
• Stand-alone events or paired with another event.
• Volunteers obtain donations of goods, services and merchandise.
• Expenses are low compared to gross revenue.
• Donors receive recognition and a tax write-off.
Theatre and art gallery opening parties
• Need to provide a built-in hook – an opportunity to see something new before the general public.
• Build more awareness than raise substantial money.
• Work best if the theatre or gallery owners take responsibility for promotions and inviting their patrons as a way to introduce your
nonprofit and make a donation to a good cause.
Sporting events:
• Good opportunity to hold a fundraising event.
• Many are held at athletic clubs, or during competition so you have built in attendance.
• They lend themselves to auctions and raffles.
• Best if your nonprofit participates but is not responsible to coordinate.

42. Award or tribute dinners:
• Most widely used special events.
• Provide a nonprofit an opportunity to award an outstanding community figure or to honor one of their own outstanding members.
• A significant event for major donors.
• Well-planned they produce the most income.
Special Event Roles
Event Chair(s) – Oversight of all activities related to event from start to finish.
• Oversees event at-large
• Generates budget with finance chair
• Appoints committee chairs
• Identifies prospective honoree
• Maintains communication with event team
Note: Most of the work stays in specific committees

43. Sponsorship Chair.
• Identifies potential sponsors/donors
• Determines benefits to sponsors
• Ensures that promised benefits are delivered
• Oversees sponsorship package development
• Works with sponsorship “sales” team
Host Committee Chair.
• Identifies volunteer needs for each committee with committee chairs.
• Communicates regularly with volunteers.
• Recruits more volunteers if needed.
• Oversees volunteer activities day of event.

44. Marketing/PR Chair
• Develops promotion package.
• Creates tagline and logo.
• Creates and fulfills hold-the-date cards, invitations, flyers, posters.
• Works with Webmaster to set up pressroom on event site.
• Develops communications pieces for various media.
• Creates media distribution list.
Logistics Committee Chair – oversees details and flow on day of event.
Invitation Committee Chair – oversees pricing, design and fulfillment of hold the date card and invitations.
Decorations Committee Chair – oversees site decoration.
Auction Committee Chair – organizes silent and/or live auction.
Entertainment/Program Chair – oversees entertainment and event program.

45. Sponsorships.
Why are sponsors important?
• Sponsors promote the cause to a wider audience
• Sponsors attract other sponsors
• Sponsors help cover costs so more donations & ticket fees go directly to nonprofit
Provide Great Reasons to be a Sponsor.
• Generate sales & leads in sponsor’s key business section
• Build relationships with new & existing customers
• Opportunity to ‘get in early’ & build fruitful relationships with your board
• Build brand awareness boosting market & buyer perception
• Benchmark products & services against competitors

46. Steps for securing sponsors - #1
• Put together a sponsorship team.
• Hold a brainstorming session to identify companies and local businesses that would want to reach your audience.
• Speak with your board, members and volunteers and find out with which companies they have relationships and if
they are willing to pursue or provide contact information for your sponsorship committee to use.
Steps for securing sponsors - #2
Research your prospects before you approach.
• Do you have an understanding of why current sponsors support your event?
• When do they set their marketing/sponsorship commitments?
• Do they sponsor specific organizations or causes?
• Do you provide access to their target audience?
• Do you have key influencers to help you reach your prospects?

47. Steps for securing sponsors - #3
Set sponsorship levels:
• Make sure the benefits at each level are distinct and enticing enough to encourage new sponsors to participate and to
encourage previous sponsors to move up a level.
• You should base your sponsorship levels on the benefits to the sponsor.
• Be flexible and be prepared to customize levels to meet their marketing needs.
Steps for securing sponsors - #4
Be prepared to call prospects and pitch your event as a great marketing
opportunity.
• You have 20 seconds to describe your audience, some of the marketing benefits and to offer to email your package.
• Be sure and post your sponsorship levels on your event website.
• Follow up, follow up, follow up! Once you’ve made your pitch and sent your proposal, don’t let the opportunity slip away.

48. Steps for securing sponsors - #5
• Cultivate your relationships by staying in touch before & after the event, not only when you receive their
money.
• Always give your sponsors all the publicity you promised.
• Provide links to all the publicity posted on your site.
• Thank your sponsors & then thank them some more.

49. Multiple sections in a exhibition.
▪Search &
download
jpeg, pdf
•Participate in quiz
•Win prizes
• See presentations
•Chat with speakers
•Slide + audio
•Nodes for info
•Chat with reps
•Leave v-card
Exhibitor
Booths
Auditorium
Presentation
Library
Search Docs
Prize Centre
Fun to Win
EXHIBITIONS

50. Multiple sections for visitors interest and engagement

51. 2 Node Booths

52. 3 Node Booths.

53. Twelve Steps to Exhibit Success:
1. Define Your Situation.
2. Identify Your Target Audience.
3. Research & Knowledge.
4. Set Measurable Goals/Objectives.
5. Involve Management.
6. Strategies & Tactics.
7. Integrate Current Advertising.
8. Develop Pre-Show Promotion.
9. Design an Exhibit.
10. Plan the Follow-Up Program.
11. Involve and Train Your Staff.
12. Measure Results & Make money.

54. THANK YOU