Get the money in the door

For a long time, I was a fulltime political professional, doing a lot of fundraising. I still do quite a bit. Today, I had a meeting with a gentleman who is chairing a fundraiser for a candidate.

In fundraising, all that matters is getting the money in the door. In this case, we have a June 30th filing deadline with the state -- everything we do is focused on raising every dollar we can by that date.

Originally, this fundraising event was scheduled for the last week of June, to accomodate our deadline. When I arrived, the host told me he needed to move it to early July. Ugh. You'd think that the change of a week or so wouldn't matter, but all that matters in fundraising is getting the money in the door. And if there is a deadline involved (because of a state filing, or a bill that is due, or whatever) then nothing else matters.

My initial response was to make an effort to shift us back to June, but it was quickly apparent that this couldn't happen.

So here's the salvage plan -- we'll send the invitations on June 18th. That's three weekends before the event (right in the 2-3 weekend timeframe that is best for event invitations). Importantly, it will give us almost two weeks to collect money that can apply to the June 30th deadline. In the invitations, we can include a line like, "Contributions received by June 30th will be particularly helpful." And we can focus on the deadline in follow-up calls and details.

None of this will make it as good as if the event itself were scheduled earlier, but it might just be good enough.

- sean

Sean Spence
Community Events
www.commevent.com
seanspence@earthlink.net
573-823-1308