Holding a fundraising event for your favorite yoga charity can be a lot of fun and very profitable, if done right. The type of event I coordinated was a yoga workshop, which I’ll use as the example for you to follow the planning of. By the way, who says this can’t be done by you personally on behalf of a non profit organization if you don’t personally work for one? You could perhaps make a career as an event coordinator, maybe out of your home office.

Everyone in the particular organization I worked for voted and decided we wanted to hold a yoga fundraising event (get some ideas here). This was very interesting and challenging to say the least as some had no interest in doing yoga.

As I was in charge of coordinating this great event, I had a big challenge on my hands so I started brainstorming a list of all the possibilities. I then created a rough to do list then within each item, I wrote down as many details as possible. Most importantly I created a very strict timeline in which everything had to be completed by. I leave a day here or a day there time cushions for emergencies, set backs, and the uncontrollable.

1. Contact yoga studios to get quotes, packages, and any and all information they are willing do give. Getting as many details as possible is one of the most important parts of coordinating an event. Visit them in person, take a tour, see how things work in the establishment. You’ll need to ask as many questions as possible down to who provides the PA system and drinks or snacks around the holes and would there be any profit from the sales for your organization.

During this first step, I got package prices (and a discount since we were a non profit organization) and the package would include food. The package consisted of two hours of group lessons divided into two groups from a Yoga professional (I named it a Yoga Learning Clinic), the actual tournament, food, the sound system, help setting up, and clean up. (Just a side note that it did help that I was located in Orlando, Florida with some of the best yoga studios around. When deciding on the ‘type’ of fundraising event you’d like to hold think first about what your area is best at or what attracts people the most to your area and go from there.)

2. After setting the date, time, agenda, I then had to figure out how we’d make money in this process. Most organizers have this all figured out before and we did, but it comes down to details of how exactly will we pull it off through this intricate part of the planning process. One idea (that did very well) was allowing local businesses to sponsor classes at different levels of sponsorships. In other words, depending on how much they were willing to pay for a sponsorship, that’s how elaborate the sign that goes in the hole would be. I learned this approach from this article.

I personally visited and wrote to hundreds of local businesses to gain their support for sponsoring the class of their choice if they were willing to pay the price for the lesson. In return, they got a sign at the studio. I designed personalized signs (their logo and all) through a local sign shop. It was not difficult to do at all. The sign shop will be able to help you through the process as well.

3. The next major step in this process was to find an awesome keynote speaker and motivational speaker who would make sure that attendees were really involved and paying attention to our overall message. Plus, we needed them to ensure that people were donating money to us!

The first thing I wanted to do was to find a keynote speaker who was really going to make sure they aligned with our message and cause. After some research, I contacted the Keynote Speaker Bureau (https://keynotespeakers.info/) who really helped me identify the right speaker to kick things off.

3. After gaining local support, I had to come up with ways to make the event more exciting, so I thought about free stuff! Basically, I contacted travel agencies, bookstores, restaurants, theaters, theme parks, and department stores for donations of virtually anything they were willing to give out free. In return I would make posters and announcements of where I received the items from. So it was sort of an advertising trade off. I got movie tickets, dinner show tickets, helicopter ride vouchers, gift cards of all sorts, toys, and literally tons of different give-aways. I even got a vacation for two to the Caribbean. Each team would ultimately go home with something. The winning team of course got really great prizes.

4. I gained a lot of support, received excellent raffle giveaways, and got sponsorships. The main thing which I worked on from the very beginning was where would I get the yoga teachers from! I contacted yoga brands, businesses that specialize in everything yoga, and even yoga fundraising companies for mailing lists. I bought a mailing list from a fundraising company for hardly anything and mailed them out letters and information, how to sign up, and where to send their money to. I had created a very simple registration form to fill out and allowed them to create their own teams from their friends and fellow yoga companions.

5. As yoga enthusiasts and anyone interested in learning about yoga began to sign up, I started keeping very accurate records of who wants to be on whose team, who wants hamburgers versus hot dogs, team names, and how much was paid etc. On the day of the event, the teams got in line for registration and I looked at their list and gave them their packet and agenda for the day. In the packet were meal tickets, red for hamburgers or blue for hotdogs, one free raffle ticket, and the option to purchase more raffle tickets.

You’d want to come up with raffle ticket deals such as buy 2 or 3 tickets and get one free etc. If you have extra little prizes available, you could sell those and the money goes towards buying tickets. For example, buy a visor for $5.00 get 5 tickets. The visor was a freebie to you so there was virtually no cost involved and who doesn’t need a spunky visor at a yoga conference that perhaps you designed and had printed up for promotional purposes?

6. At the end of the day, you may feel very tired, but don’t let the tiredness ruin the enthusiasm. Try to end on a high key, a round of applause, or a big cheer. The last thing you want to do is let the participants dissipate into a lull. Maybe you could get one of your staff members to dress up in a funny costume or mascot to go around and keep the crowd alive down to the last minute of the event.

7. You’ll need to thank your sponsors. Thank everyone under the sun that might have helped you, don’t forget to send out thank you letters, and do let sponsors know how the event went and how their contribution was helping in the success.

8. Make elaborate notes along the way to help you organize the next event even better (Check out this article). You can hold a small event to start with until you get a feel for how the flow of organization works. In your notes, be sure to write down all of the information about your sponsors and keep your mailing lists safe.

9. Final record keeping and deposits from sales should be done as soon as possible. It’s very easy to get into the ‘it’s over let’s rest and then finish up’ attitude which only makes you procrastinate into maybe months of not getting it done. Tie up loose ends and close the books.

10. Don’t forget to reward and thank anyone your staff or helpers. Do this separately to encourage team work on future projects. You want to make your team feel special because without their support, it would have been much more difficult.

This is just an outline of how basically what’s involved in a fundraising event. The details will always vary but the steps are virtually the same to organizing any event. One last thing is don’t forget to smile your way through it all…even with the set backs.