I work for a small shelter for homeless women. Currently we have two major events a year - a Gala and a large luncheon type event. We are currently analyzing the effectiveness of our events and I have a couple of questions for anyone willing to answer: 1) How many events do you put on a year and how successful are they? How do you achieve this success? 2) How do you get a smaller event (like a membership coffee) to feed into a larger event? 3) What kind of follow up do you do with event guests?

Hi Bethany! I also work for a homeless shelter and we have six major events and three to four minor events a year. The major events include two friendraiser styled events, one major gala, our annual meeting, and a holiday event for the children in our shelter. Our events have become more and more successful monetarily over the last three years. Our gala has sort of tappered off and we are working this year to help gain some speed with that one. In terms of numbers we have sold out all our events this past year so far even in a bad economy in Michigan. In terms of feeder events, we focus our smaller events on thanking those who have come to other events throughout the year and encourage them to bring others. We really use our donors to become solicitors for us. As for thanking guests, everyone of course gets something at the end of each event as well as a thank you note but we really focus on having our senior staff talk to as many people as possible and share the information after so we can target folks to get involved in other committees, projects, etc. Hope this helps a bit! [i]--- Edited at 12/14/2007 1:30:16 PM by Michelle Mirzoian[/i]