An eternal challenge of planning a gala fundraiser is how to differentiate your event from all the others in the charity landscape.
Like many organizations, the Maryland Food Bank had taken the well-traveled route of “find a hotel ballroom and host a ‘nice’ event,” says Deborah Flateman, the nonprofit’s chief executive.
Then inspiration struck: Why not host the charity’s signature fundraising gala in the food bank itself?
And so, in 2007, the “Blue Jeans Ball” was born.
A warehouse may seem an odd setting for an event involving fine dining and dancing, but Ms. Flateman says the site served two very useful purposes. It helped the food bank’s party stand out amid a busy calendar of competing events, and, even more importantly, it provided a compelling setting that drove home the organization’s mission.
“It’s one thing to talk what the food bank does, but very much another when people walk in and actually see the size of the warehouse and the scope of the work,” says Ms. Flateman. “It’s just unbeatable context.”
But despite success, the organization eventually decided to change course—using many of the lessons it learned over six years of hosting the gala.
Fun and Casual
The Baltimore-based organization worked with professional event planners Feats, Inc. to pull off logistics for the on-site soiree and to tweak the traditional gala model to work in a warehouse setting.
“We called our approach ‘blue jeans and bling,’” Ms. Flateman says.
Instead of the typical Saturday night gala, the group held the events on Friday evenings as a more “fun and casual, but not sloppy” after-work event.
Ms. Flateman says the 500-plus attendees each year enjoyed the non-sequitur combination of formal amenities—like seated dining in a tented area with a live band and dance floor—contrasting with a cocktail hour held amid the warehouse’s steel racks. Silent auction items were displayed on a huge conveyor belt, while the bar was built from stacked pallets of canned goods.
Promoting the Mission
Event organizers drove home the food bank’s mission by placing signs with messages about the group’s work throughout the warehouse: “Simple data nuggets, like one in seven Marylanders is food-insecure, or that we operate 227 school food pantries, but also donor appreciation: ‘Your help filled these shelves,’” says Ms. Flateman.
This approach extended to the silent auction, where signs like “The $45 value on this item can feed 20 people lunch for a day” quantified the power of donations.
The group also worked to minimize the event’s impact on the food bank’s daily operation, which she says was “slowed but not stopped” by party preparations. Despite the need to clear space for dining and entertainment, the food bank was able to function normally on all but the day of the event.
Change in Direction
Initially the group had hoped that hosting the affair in the warehouse would help cut costs. But Ms. Flateman says that the savings from not having to rent a site were more than offset by the expense of transforming an industrial space into a party venue.
So after the most recent Blue Jeans Ball in 2012, the Maryland Food Bank decided to change course.
“It was a hugely successful event, but when we did a cost-benefit analysis taking into account the hands-on involvement by so many people within our organization, we realized it was costing us in the area of 50 cents per dollar raised,” explains Ms. Flateman. “So, even though the final gala netted $176,500, it was an expensive way to raise money.”
Since gala guests were genuinely “excited and energized” by the warehouse setting, the organization came up with replacement events that require less physical transformation while still taking advantage of the “powerful messaging context,” she says.
The food bank now holds an annual donor-appreciation event where people who give $1,000 or more are treated to dinner in the organization’s industrial kitchen—built with donor support—cooked by students in the food bank’s culinary-arts training program.
Another new tradition is the “Pack to Give Back” event, where attendees raise a minimum of $1,000 in pledges or corporate sponsorships to come to a warehouse work day and pack boxes of food designed for a family of four. In 2014, 200 people, working in three shifts at 20 stations, packed 20,500 boxes of food, which cost the food bank $15 per box.
“It’s a great event—very lively, very hands-on, very mission-driven—that really brings home the work we do,” says Ms. Flateman.
By the Numbers
Blue Jeans Ball, 2012: $402,000 in gross revenue, $225,500 in expenses, making it “an expensive way to raise money,” according to Ms. Flateman.