Is Your Fundraising Event Flirtable Enough?

Fundraising events may seem like great ideas to you if you are involved in the project. It is very easy to be caught up in the moment and imagine how the public will be relieved that your cause has found a way to support itself. But that evening, scintillating with potential, when people in your town have their options calling to them, their desire to meet and flirt with members of the opposite sex may take precedence over their concern for your project. While you may be able to talk to people about the project in the street, on emails, at booths, the people may be less enthusiastic when they are not around you and they have their own deep needs they are trying to meet. They may not be able to give priority to your cause because Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes first. The need for love and belonging is basic, and finding partners is what drives most people out of doors to events.

Does your event bring them together with others in a way that makes for easy socializing? Imagine the set up, and how people considering the event would imagine it. Does it sound like it would provide an inviting way for people to interact with strangers and feel safe to be somewhat forward? Or does it constrain people, keep them isolated in one spot, watching performers on stage? Does it put people at tables they can’t escape from to casually happen to be standing next to the person they have their eyes on? Is the tone of the event so serious and focused on the needs of your cause that people would feel it improper to loosen up and get into a lively mood?

Having something for people to walk around and look at on the walls, or in installations, that would allow comment to strangers is a good way to get people mingling. Art openings are well attended because of that.

Asking people to come in costume is a great way to get people in a light, playful mood, talking with strangers about the costumes. The event becomes about the people who are attending it. And though their rational mind tells them to go to it because they want to support your cause, really, a lot of is about how to get some attention, themselves. They want to be around others who share common interests and concerns. And if people they are interested in seeing are going to it, that will draw them, so they can have a chance to talk with them. Being able to interact in new personae will allow them to come to new levels of closeness with people they have been seeking that with. Score. And they may want to impress them by donating even more to the cause.

On your invitation, show a drawing, or a photo of people socializing, standing close together, so you can just feel the vibrations between them. They’ll pay through the teeth to get in the doors, in droves.