Planning guide

Art brings people together. So it’s natural for community foundations to place art—and artists—at the center of events intended to deepen donor engagement. The opportunities for creativity are endless. Receptions in private sculpture gardens, intimate readings by award-winning authors, road trips to major galleries, dinners celebrating up-and-coming artists, and behind-the-scenes tours are just a few ways donor events are taking place around California.

Through this experience, community arts leaders are learning that there is a big difference between a good event and a strategic event. The former is marked by smooth logistics and smiling participants. The second features both these attributes—plus a purposeful evolution in each attendee’s commitment to funding arts.

It’s about moving along

According to an event guide developed by and for community foundations, strategic events are part of a process designed to move donors along a continuum of involvement in funding local arts. Some have virtually no awareness of the need for community arts support. Others are steady arts givers. Most are somewhere in between.

The guide includes a set of tips for treating each event strategically: identifying your audience, defining a specific objective for each participant, clarifying a method for achieving the objective, and measuring results. It emphasizes the need to make sure that each event is part of a process that involves pre- and post-event action. And it features a week-by-week event planning checklist that can be adapted for local use.

This guide was developed through Communities Advancing the Arts, a major funding initiative of The James Irvine Foundation.

Filed under: Engaging donors