Thanks to David Hessekiel and the wonderful folks at the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council, I had a chance yesterday to riff for an hour on "The State of Event Fundraising." An overblown title, to be sure, but when David approached me several months ago about speaking I told him I wanted to steer away from my usual mix of strategy and analytics. Instead, I wanted to speak at a broader level about what I'm observing and thinking about.
In a nutshell, I think the dynamics in the nonprofit space are changing, and I'm not sure that we're reacting fast enough. I don't have many of the answers, and I haven't even articulated all of the right questions. But I know enough to know that I should starting talking it through with other thought leaders in the industry.
My fears of appearing overblown turned to performance anxiety when I learned that over 500 people had registered for the presentation -- a new record for Run Walk Ride. As it turned out, over half of those actually showed up and stayed to listen to my ramblings, which can be found on Slideshare here or at the bottom of this post. The entire hour-long presentation, with audio, can be found at Cause Marketing Forum.
I'm not sure what to take from all of that -- y'all don't have enough to do on Thursday afternoons, apparently . But I think what it means is that many others share my anxiety that the dynamics are changing, and many others share my hope that we can benefit from those changes.
I look forward to sharing some of the observations, thoughts, cautions, and ideas over the coming weeks.