Complete Friendraising Event Guidelines & Checklist

In recent years, "Friendraiser" events have become more popular as an alternative to expensive donor events which tend to scare off attendees due to high ticket prices and direct gifting request tactics. This guide, based upon actual past experience, is meant to be a straightforward and helpful overview with practical guidance on how to pull off a successful friendraiser event.

Cornerstone Services, Inc. was asked recently to help with both mailings and promotional materials for a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) friendraiser event. The purpose of the friendraiser was to appeal to potential board members and also to familiarize local VIPs and elected officials with the organization's purpose. From the Cornerstone side — that is, pertaining to our role with sourcing data, preparing an invitation design, printing and mailing the invites and creating retractable banners — this was a straightforward and familiar task.

And yet, I never expected I would write this guide. We were asked one additional thing: did we have anything that looked like a detailed checklist on how to pull off a friendraiser or similar function? What I found on Google was a whole lot of nothing — the usual amorphous blog postings chock full of generic content (we call them "bread sandwiches" because there's no content meat in the clickbait posting). So, this guide is for you — the unappreciated volunteer who probably missed a board meeting and got assigned the forlorn responsibility of getting a friendraiser event off the ground with no specific guidance. My job is to make you look good.

What is a Friendraiser?

Like the name sounds, a "friendraiser" is similar to a fundraiser, but the difference is usually in raising awareness instead of raising cash. Awareness, however, is rather broad so most friendraiser events have some scope. To help you focus your particular friendraiser scope, here are various ways in which we have seen friendraiser get-togethers work:

• To create general community awareness ("we're here!")
• To introduce to peripheral organization members new construction, services or not-for-profit endeavors
• To solicit a soft-appeal for potential board members
• To act as an informal appeal for new members to the organization or association
• To build a VIP tier of major donors
• To soft-launch a capital campaign, with support from existing major donors, to entice first-level contributors to become VIP members
• To organize a volunteer group of "second lieutenants" who may help spread the word about an organization's mission

The key with a friendraiser vs. a fundraiser is that friendraisers are not meant to be heavy sell, hard-pitch sessions. They are more likely to be akin to traditional "lunch and learn" activities. Friendraisers are typically not more than 1 hour, with finger food (and without a gala or sit-down style setting). It helps to have a controlled environment so that people can't just drift off or come and go as they please. If you keep the formal part of the event to one hour, with a tight plan-of-action, then this will help land the purpose of the activity.

Friendraiser Event Setting

They are best done in a setting that underscores the purpose of the organization. For example, if you are attempting to refurbish a community center for senior citizens, then the event would take place at the organizational location, even if the venue is only roughed out. For a nature preserve, there is no better way to highlight the mission than to be in the center of the preserve. Where possible, let your venue assist with the purpose of the friendraiser event.

If, for practical reasons, you need to have the friendraiser elsewhere, then make it a fun venue. To keep costs down, here are some event locations that might help spark some creative ideas:

• Outdoor setting with horseshoes and cornhole
• Sizable home of a VIP donor or association member
• Off-hours at a popular bar or brewery (just be sure you don't lose the ability to quiet the room for remarks)
• Local historical society or museum
• Area fishing and hunting club
• Golf course or HOA clubhouse with an attractive setting
• Anything with waterfront

People won't remember exactly what you said, but they will remember how they felt. They will remember if they had a good time. Here's a prime directive: it is your job to have attendees feel better about themselves, and your mission, when they leave vs. how they felt when they arrived.

Setting Successful Friendraiser Goals

It helps to work with the goal in mind of what you want to achieve with your friendraiser event. Get specific with your goals for the event. Even though the event is meant to raise general awareness, it can also mean that you have reasonable targets to reach. Here are some of the hallmarks that would indicate that you "crushed it":

• Number of people who sign up to volunteer
• Number of board member applications filled
• Matching funds to your arts grant
• New members of the VIP club
• 30-day full membership trial sign-ups
• New leads for potential donors
• Guest speakers confirmed for the next fiscal quarter
• Sign-ups for top tier member services
• Total people attended
• Board members who agreed to do the friendraiser next time

Sourcing Friendraiser Names

Now comes the less fun hard part. You need to source names. Who to invite? Where to get names? Cornerstone gets asked about data all the time, and there are lots of options. Here are ideas to help build your invitation list:

• Ask each board member to provide 5 to 10 names (with addresses, emails and phone numbers)
• General email inviting members to ask friends to attend (with specific RSVP instructions — you can't have a friendraiser without confirmed attendees)
• Data scrape from similar organizations (if you are an animal rescue shelter, you could see who the listed major donors of similar local organizations such as SPCAs are); Cornerstone is often asked to do data scraping — the "best list you can buy is one that you can't buy"
• Ask a sister organization to ask its members to attend; not all organizations are keen on list sharing, but some are
• Rent a list for an advance direct mailing — even though we probably would not initially recommend an unsolicited mailpiece, if you're short on time, a direct mail outreach can complement other efforts

Cornerstone recommends assembling a list of at least 250 potential attendees. For a list wherein invitees have direct ties to the organization, a modest return of 10% would seem appropriate (i.e. 25 attendees); for more robust groups, a 20% attendance of 50 mailing recipients is excellent. A list of 200+ also allows you to reach the minimum threshold for bulk mail, whereby postage at not-for-profit rates could be as low as approximately $0.15 per invitation mailed vs. USPS First-Class Mail Forever Stamps. Please note that unsolicited results for a targeted and rented list, in our experience, would hover around 1% at best.

Sending Friendraiser Invitations

Email: You can always send mass email, but we would suggest you also put a sign-up link on your website. Drive recipients back to the website (helps with your Google ranking too) but have them land, if possible, on a sign-up page for the friendraiser event. You could also send limited batches from your organization's primary email address, but if your emails get marked as "spam" you could unintentionally invite other problems.

Direct Mail: It's always an option to get invitation cards and, using First-Class Forever stamps from the post office, send out invitations yourself. Once you get to 200 or 250 count, looking for an outside service provider might make sense. Another half-way DIY suggestion: order 500 or 1,000 pre-printed invitations and envelopes, designed and printed by us, and then you could mail them yourself. This could be effective in allowing board members or staff members to put hand-written notes into the invitation cards. This is an approach that would personalize the mailing yet would not be allowable for bulk mailing under USPS DMM (Direct Mail Manual) regulations regarding "Handwritten and Typewritten Matter" ref: USPS DMM 243 section 2.4.

Getting to "Yes" for Friendraiser Attendance

You need to call. I know this is not the most enjoyable part of volunteering, but after you send an invitation, someone ought to wait about 10 to 14 days and then make calls. There is no way you can properly prepare for your guests if you don't have a solid idea of how many guests are coming. When you call, start by introducing yourself and then asking the person if he or she received the invitation. Here's a possible script:

Be creative and decide how far you want to push. One suggestion: ask for a tentative "yes" — a pencil-you-in-for-now kind of "yes" — and then follow up to make sure they can really go. This is a numbers game. You make calls. You ask for "yes." The answer is "no" unless you ask. Don't just send out a mailing card and cross your fingers. Successful friendraisers do not get pulled off with hope. Last suggestion: get over your target number — there will always be people who don't show up or cancel at the last minute.

The Friendraiser Checklist

Here's a sample checklist of what to do. Feel free to copy and modify in MS Word, MS Excel, or a Google Doc/Sheet:

Friendraiser Follow-up & Post-Event Review

Now that you're done with the event, make sure you send thank you notes to everyone as well as have an internal "how'd we do?" assessment of the day or evening. The above checklist should help you assign and organize this task. Further, you need to make sure that you don't lose track of attendees. The rule-of-thumb is that if they have "touched you" in any way, or you have "touched them," then they must stay in your world for as long as possible.

Hopefully you have documented your steps so that it will be easier the next time. You may run friendraisers more than once a year, so having a written playbook will be an essential part of the board's or organization's documents.

If you found this helpful, please reach out to us if we may help with direct mail "anything" from appeal letters, raffle tickets, or gala invitation mailings. Need help updating your nonprofit mailing privileges with USPS? See our guide on how to change your nonprofit information through the USPS. You may reach us at (845) 255-5722 or info@crst.net.

Frequently Asked Questions