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How to Organize a Fundraising Event for a Nonprofit Organization
137 Plays1 year ago
In today’s economy, nonprofits are fighting for limited resources while historically successful fundraising efforts no longer seem to be hitting the mark. In this week’s episode, we sat down with the experts in innovative events, KC Crew. Building on their experience from running some of Kansas City’s most unique and fun events for young professionals, they share their experience on how to capture the focus of the next generation of donors while maximizing event impact.
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Transcript
Nonprofit Events: Community Impact & Revenue
00:00:00
Speaker
In this episode, I got to hear from Greg and Mitch again talking nonprofit events. How can you use nonprofit events to not only benefit your community, but to help fill gaps at your facility and drive revenue? Yes, nonprofits do good out there, but they also make money. And so you as a facility can charge a discount rate to which help them out and help them get exposure through running your programming at your facility. Hope you enjoy this episode of the facility playbook on nonprofit events with Greg and Mitch from KC crew.
Podcast Introduction & Focus
00:00:30
Speaker
What's up, everybody? Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally. And this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues, and clubs.
Introduction to Facility Ally
00:00:49
Speaker
Did you know that most of those facilities I just mentioned use between four and six different softwares to manage their reservations, memberships, leagues, camps, clinics, and more?
00:00:57
Speaker
facility ally to the rescue revolutionize your facility with facility allies all in one system. Learn more
KC Crew's Role in Nonprofit Fundraisers
00:01:03
Speaker
at facilityally.com and here we are again back at KC crew in the KC crew office here at Hy-Vee arena with Greg general manager of KC crew and Mitch league director. We've been here before we like to do some deep dives into
00:01:17
Speaker
managing different things. Casey Crue does a little bit of everything, and so we've already talked before with them about leagues, we've talked about tournaments, and this one's going to kind of encompass a little bit of tournaments, but we're here today to talk about nonprofit fundraising. As a for-profit company, you know, you may not think, or a for-profit facility, you may not think about nonprofits and helping nonprofits to facilitate a fundraising tournament,
00:01:39
Speaker
But we at KC Crew have actually seen the opportunity over the last couple years and really dove in deep to it. So Greg, Mitch, maybe give us a little bit of a high level of what is KC Crew and then what does it do for these non-profit tournaments.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, so KC Crew, kind of a two-fold system. So largest adult sport and social league in Kansas City, 15,000 annual players, you know, that's all the 25 to 34 age demographic, all different parts of Kansas City. So the airport to Liberty, to Alisa, to Olathe, everywhere in between, you know, that's our audience who's coming together to play these weekly leagues who were in front of, you know, 365 days a year.
00:02:17
Speaker
On the other side is our events.
Challenges in Public Event Participation
00:02:20
Speaker
We were founded in 2012. We've been doing pubcrawls, tailgates, 5Ks, all different sorts of fun public events throughout our time that we've been in existence. And over the past probably four or five years, we've seen
00:02:34
Speaker
The issues of public events, there's two issues that are happening. One, ticket sales as a whole are just dropping. That's not just us, it's every industry across the board. We've learned that through conversations with people in all different industries. The other thing is, people are waiting more and more until the last minute to sign up for an event. So if you're booking a DJ and closing a street down,
00:02:53
Speaker
and doing five other things that you have to know three weeks out to get your deposit back, that makes your life very stressful and more stressful than it probably should be on a fun event. So
Adapting with Nonprofit Tournaments
00:03:03
Speaker
we said, how do we pivot?
00:03:05
Speaker
So with our events, we kind of pivoted to a three-pronged effort. So one, smaller monthly events, so pickleball tournaments, cornhole tournaments, networking events, really just stuff that we know how to do that's easy, consistent, it's stress-free if everyone signs up the day of the event. That's no problem for us. Second is a private realm. So the corporate sector, team building events, again, the fun corporate tournaments, pickleball, cornhole, trivia, virtual events, all stuff for the younger demographic for a business.
00:03:34
Speaker
to provide as an extra benefit to get them to stay. And then the third is what we're talking about today, the nonprofit side. And Casey Crew as a whole, I've actually been here from 2014 to 2018. I left and then got back in August of 2021. I haven't really had, you know, had my hands on a lot of the nonprofits that we had been doing, which we've done a graveyard 5K for the Elmwood Cemetery. It helps raise funds for Kansas City's oldest cemetery. We've been a part of Art That Blows, something that you helped found, a super awesome fundraising event.
00:04:04
Speaker
for Band of Angels and then Noah's Bandage Run that we partnered with Noah's Bandage Project. It's a 5K to help raise funds for them.
00:04:12
Speaker
And VoluLama, that was actually where this kind of nonprofit idea sparked. And you were actually the one that it sparked with. So if you want to kind of talk through how it clicked in
Supporting Nonprofits with Event Expertise: A Strategic Approach
00:04:23
Speaker
your head. Yeah, and to your point, I actually started a nonprofit years ago when I started Casey Crue called Social Heart. And the idea was helping different nonprofits raise money through fundraising. And so when I started Casey Crue, I had the same idea of like, if we throw a pub crawl, maybe we can have a nonprofit involved to help with volunteers. Then we can pay some of the money to the nonprofit.
00:04:40
Speaker
And it was great and awesome and it worked for years and years and years and we were able to raise a couple thousand dollars per event here and there. So, not a game changer when you're talking about a couple thousand dollars for a non-profit. Still great, a great way for us to give back, still helpful, great for exposure. But when Volley Llama came along, it was put on by this amazing organization in Kansas City. It was for the Noah's Bantage Run, but you had people like Charlie Hussle and several other groups, Chicken and Pickle, coming together to put on this really cool fundraiser for the group at Noah's Bantage Project and they called it Volley Llama.
00:05:09
Speaker
They brought us in through our partnership and working with Chicken and Pickle to help run the back end and staff it and manage it for them. And what we were able to do was essentially create a tournament that helped them raise several hundred thousand dollars. So make a huge difference for a non-profit. And you know in that event we were the engine just running the tournament. That's what we do. We know how to run tournaments. We can staff them. We can make them a great experience. And then their team handled all the sponsorship, the management of the facility, the logistics of everything.
00:05:35
Speaker
Along the years as it's grown, we've been able to help take a bigger part in that and help them in bigger ways. And so a couple years ago, I had the idea of like, well, if we're helping Noah's Bandage Project do this, maybe there's a way we can help offer this to other nonprofits. Because what we're seeing in the market is, like Greg said, our traditional pub crawls, our regular events were kind of diminishing. And so it's not really hard to make money and run an event.
00:05:57
Speaker
when you see people not signing up for the last minute or not signing it up at all. And so essentially what do you do in that scenario? And so we thought it would be better to help nonprofits with our expertise, guarantee a tournament, get the people to come out and play and help them raise a little bit of money. And also what we've seen nonprofits are seeing the same thing.
00:06:13
Speaker
People aren't signing up for their traditional golf tournaments. They're not signing up for their galas. Young demographics of adults are not wanting to get dressed up for a gala every weekend. They want to be casual. They want to support, but a lot of them aren't playing golf. It's a little bit harder. And then sponsorships. That's where nonprofits make the majority of their money.
00:06:32
Speaker
Companies are tired of sponsoring a golf tournament every single year with the same people showing up to it or less people. They're tired of sponsoring galas. And so for nonprofits, just like Casey Crue is a for-profit, we've got to continue to evaluate what's working, what's not working. We've got to innovate and make things better. And so for these nonprofits, we thought, hey, let's give you a vehicle, this pickleball tournament, this cornhole tournament, a wiffleball tournament, a three-on-three basketball tournament. Let's provide the vehicle and the engine to help you go sell sponsorship to make money to your
00:07:00
Speaker
people, your sponsors who love your goal or your mission, but essentially you don't have the cool thing to give to these new sponsors, this cool opportunity to give to your new donors. So let us be the engine behind that and let you go do what you do best, create the connections, get the sponsorship, and then let us run it for you.
00:07:17
Speaker
That at a high level was the idea that we had several years ago, but it's trials and tribulations and pricing and figuring out, did this work? Did that work? We've been really testing and figuring that out with several nonprofits over the last couple of years, and Greg's really led the charge. So maybe you just want to, at a high level, what are some of the different nonprofit fundraisers that we've done?
Pricing, Partnerships & Initial Challenges
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah so kind of getting into it all so really the start of this year 2023 is where it really kind of ramped up and we started to dive into it so first thing we did you know we're pretty we have our resources in Kansas City in the non-profit world so instead of just diving right in because we're the events team we know how to do a pickleball tournament we don't know the ins and outs of how a non-profit operates how they typically raise their funds what events they've been doing
00:08:00
Speaker
you know what how can we get creative with it so we tapped into non-profit kc support kc or not non-profit connect support kc kd lord was a massive help for us so we really wanted to come in to the non-profit experts say here's what we want to do we want to come in we want to help it we've seen the blueprint we know how it's done we know what we can do how you know
00:08:21
Speaker
well, essentially, how do we get into it? So we asked, you know, look for advice on the pricing, the conversations, the team registrations, you know, really any information that we were looking for, we tapped into our resources. And again, you talked about trials and tribulations. So we talked with them, and then we started our outreach. So just emailing nonprofits, getting ahold of them, saying, hey, here's what we want to do. Here's how we're going to go about it. Here's our pricing. We came in a little high on the pricing side up front. But again,
00:08:50
Speaker
We were coming off of Volleylama, where we helped an organization raise $300,000. So why shouldn't we try for that? So that was our goal. We're the events team, so we're essentially hired in as a contract to come and put on the event. But the money coming to us is a fraction of what is going to the nonprofit. So with that, we came in too high. We said, hey, our goal is, like I just said, to be a fraction of it. Let's bring it way down. Goal would be, go to a nonprofit.
00:09:19
Speaker
Let's put on an awesome event year one. You make X, we're down here. That's what we're making. Let's bring it again in year two, year three. Let's make it an annual thing, because that's our goal. We don't want to be working with 40, 50 different nonprofits every single year, a different group, a different event, a different spot. We want to team up with 10 to 15 who believe in what we're doing.
00:09:40
Speaker
really have the resources to handle the sponsorship side which I can talk about here in a little bit but you know there is a little bit of work on the nonprofits end but we pull all that extra time they would spend into figuring out how to run the tournament then they reallocate that onto the sponsorship side.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's important, you know, a lot of times I was very guilty of this when I first got to Kansas City and started my own business. You know, I didn't think of a nonprofit as a business. You know, when I found out that a nonprofit was hired somebody full time to run it, I was like, you know, I thought you should have just worked for free for a nonprofit. But I learned the hard way, if you want somebody to truly be dedicated to something, you know, you obviously have to compensate them for that. And so nonprofits have, you know, they have they have
00:10:18
Speaker
staff they pay people and so to in order to do that they need to make money and how do they do that through events through sponsorship through fundraising and so after a while you know you've tapped into the same fundraisers over and over for years you've got to bring in new new fundraisers and how do you do that if you're doing an old gala that no young people want to go to and so
00:10:34
Speaker
We're essentially giving you those engines to help bring in young people.
Managing Nonprofit Events: Staffing & Engagement
00:10:38
Speaker
And to your point, like, yes, you're a nonprofit, but you have a budget. And so you can hire us to essentially be your vehicle to make much more money by using us in that way. And so I think it's really important to remember that.
00:10:51
Speaker
You don't have to do everything for free for nonprofits. It is as much as you can do. I know we offer discounts. We offer promotions. We do as much as we can do as a business for those nonprofits. But at the end of the day, if we're providing a service and a value and we can help them make money and more money than they're paying us, it's a win for everybody. So again, win, win, win. One of our key metrics when we talk about all of our leagues, our tournaments, our nonprofits, we try and create a win for everybody.
00:11:14
Speaker
So maybe talk about what it looked like. Volilamo became a beast because it's a huge team. It's a lot of big companies working on that. And that's how they were able to raise $300,000. So to your point, we came in like, hey, we're going to help a nonprofit raise $300,000. But just like us, we need resources to execute. And so maybe let's talk about, we went in thinking we were going to raise X, and then we learned differently.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a deep dive on the Volleylama piece. It's a massive, it's a who's who tournament. It's the biggest players in Kansas City. Charlie Hustle, Sporting KC, Chicken and Pickle, Whiskey Design. That's the committee. It's people who have outreach within the entire town outside of Kansas City. So they can go out, they have a sponsor who's going to pay $5,000 to put a team into this event.
00:11:59
Speaker
not a lot of other nonprofits are going to have that sort of outreach, which is what we learned after diving in and starting down that route. Really, scaling back our pricing, talking with them, saying, hey, a lot of nonprofits are also dealing with staffing issues, just like every single other industry in the world is dealing with right now, us included.
00:12:21
Speaker
they don't have the time to put towards planning the event. So us being that vehicle, like he said, really just coming in as, let us pull everything off your plate for you. The planning, the location, the consulting, the sponsorship, we can assist with that. The day of, I've been to nonprofit events. There's been organizations who we've tried to work with. They've essentially said no.
00:12:45
Speaker
We're going to do it ourselves. She said, all right, cool, awesome. We actually go and play in the event just to see how it is, experience it. And I get there, and the nonprofit is the one having to check people in, having to work at their own event.
00:12:58
Speaker
They don't get to talk to their partners or sponsors, their attendees. They don't get to talk about their message, possibly get new board members, new volunteers. That should be their goal during their event, not having to work and run the registration table. So that's kind of an added benefit that we do where, hey, not only are we going to help you plan your event, the day of, your goal is to come here, have fun,
00:13:17
Speaker
interact, have a couple drinks, and, you know, celebrate your organization. We're the firefighters. We're checking people in from the moment they step onto the facility. We're welcoming them with a smile. Hey, how's it going? Are you playing in the tournament? Do you know where to go? Here's the timeline of everything. Restrooms are over there. Let us know if you have any questions. So that's really where we want, you know, we want to be that all in one team. So, because a nonprofit, again, you don't have, they don't have the time to, you know, spend any extra beyond just getting a sponsor to say yes.
00:13:47
Speaker
Well, I think it's really important to focus on what you're good at. No matter what it is, throw in a tournament, which if you check out the tournaments episode, you can figure out how we run tournaments sufficiently. These nonprofits have never run a pickleball tournament, a Cornell tournament. But those are the new hot things, so they're all trying to do it. So they're not sure how to market it. They're not sure how to run it. And so to Greg's point, it's like, why are you running a pickleball tournament when you're good at fundraising and you could bring in more dollars? Hire someone to run the pickleball tournament to check people in to manage it so that you can go out there and raise the most money possible on the one-time event that you're doing.
00:14:15
Speaker
And I was going to touch on that. We're the experts on running tournaments, on running these events. We've done them for years for profit. Let's take what we know, go help someone raise a bunch of money, where it's a win-win for them. They don't have to worry about the logistics. The time they're spending on planning on finding teams and all that kind of stuff, they can spend more and get more sponsors eventually raising more money for the
00:14:36
Speaker
nonprofit and the event. We also have a staff. So we run leagues with 60 part-time staff members where, yeah, you're paying us. Well, part of that payment is going to be for an army of staff. So it depends how big the tournament is. You can bring two to five staff members out there who are going to show up.
00:14:52
Speaker
Unfortunately, sometimes with volunteers, they might not show up and then the nonprofit is running short people and they're having to run the registration table fires or down people where when you hire us to run the event, we're going to bring our staff members out there. Our staff members get paid a little higher than just normal.
00:15:08
Speaker
a league event because it's a one-time event. We're going to have our best staff members come out there, be the best representation of us and be the best representation of the nonprofit as well. So they don't have to worry about any of that stuff. We've dealt with all that with running our leagues, with running tournaments and events. So we know how to put out fires because we've been doing it for years. It's just an indifferent asset now.
00:15:28
Speaker
And I think that's a great point, is every nonprofit ever relies on volunteers. It's a really important piece of it. But when it comes down to the experience of your event, if you don't have the volunteers, they don't show up, whatever happens, they're volunteers, you know, it's gonna happen, then you're kind of screwing over all the participants who signed up for that event and they have a bad experience. So to that point, it makes sense to hire someone to bring out staff, to make sure, to guarantee they're gonna be there to run it, to make sure it's a great experience so that you can grow it over year after year and raise more money every single year.
00:15:57
Speaker
the gala you've been running for 30 years, the golf tournament you've been running for 20 years, it had to start somewhere. So we're here to help you essentially start a new yearly tournament, a new yearly event that's going to help you fundraise for years and years to come. So I think that the staffing part of it is really important as well. So what does KC Crew offer that other organizations don't for these non-profits?
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah,
Comprehensive Solutions for Nonprofits
00:16:20
Speaker
I think just the organization, you know, we are, like I said, the full events team. I know there's, again, the pickleball tournament that I went to, they teamed up with the venue that they were at. They said the venue was hosting the tournament. But again, when I showed up, the nonprofit still had a piece to, you know, they had responsibilities on the day of the event.
00:16:41
Speaker
So again, we are that full events team so we can advise on the event consulting. So you may, you know, we can help with the event location where we think would be the best place to do it based on, you know, parking, part of town that it's in, accessibility, the time of day, how long to do the tournament.
00:17:00
Speaker
You could do, you know, some people may do, you know, a seven hour tournament for a nonprofit, which don't ever do that because they're there for the nonprofit. They're there to have fun. The tournament's not the main reason why that they are there for the tournament to compete, but they're there for the nonprofit. So you wanted to get in.
00:17:18
Speaker
have fun, but you don't want them to drag on to be a long negative experience for them. And then again, we just talked about it, but just being the firefighters the day of, we've seen every single problem 10 times over. So we know how to handle everything. We can pivot on the spot. We can, you know.
00:17:38
Speaker
we handle the event. It's really just taking all their worries, all their woes, all their stress about the event off the plate for them and that comes on us where you know it's really not stress for us because we know what we're doing. Sure and we have the tools to run a efficient event and tournament with it really the technology that we use to run our public tournaments, our leagues. We bring that into the non-profit event as well and make it a streamlined event where it's
00:18:03
Speaker
We know what we're doing because we do it every day. That is our expertise. We're experts at events, tournaments, and leagues. So hire us. You don't have to worry about anything. Back to the experience. It's a better experience for all the people paying to be there because they get to interact with the nonprofits as we bring all the equipment. You don't have to buy equipment for your event because we will bring all that kind of stuff. That's what we do. Yeah, on the sponsorship side, too, we've seen the blueprint. So we can come in and really advise
00:18:31
Speaker
What are the sponsorship levels? How much should each sponsorship cost? How many sponsorships of each level do we have? What comes with it? We work with you to see what value you can add, what value we can add, and really how to maximize each sponsorship. Because again, that's going to be your money making. If you're trying to make money off team registration,
00:18:51
Speaker
We shouldn't be doing an event. I think I'm going to touch on that in a second. But what you said earlier about facility, like kind of like one stop shop, Casey Cruz, the one stop shop, and we can help you find a location because we run leagues and tournaments and events all over the city. We know every facility is out there. We know the pricing. We have relationships. So if you're looking to do an event or a nonprofit fundraiser, we can help identify the best location. We already have a relationship there. We can help you get discounts. So it helps going through us because we already have those relationships.
00:19:17
Speaker
If you're your own facility looking to get started and running this, you have the facility, you know the pricing, you know your cost, you also know your gaps. Casey Crew is a gap
Sponsorship Strategies Over Registrations
00:19:25
Speaker
filler, so we go to facilities and we try and fill some of their gaps to help them bring more revenue. Well, if you're the facility, you know where your gaps are, so you can help work with these nonprofits to identify we have a gap here. And if you guys come in, we'll either give you the courts for free because we know we're going to make money off food and beverage, or we'll discount the courts dramatically because we know you're going to bring 100 people in when we wouldn't have had 100 people.
00:19:42
Speaker
So I think that's important if you own your own facility to look at the gaps and then offer discounts or offer what makes sense to you as a facility. And then to your point, teams versus sponsorship. So everyone, including Casey Crew, every nonprofit's out there trying to run a pickleball tournament now, right? So we need teams of two to sign up for $100, and you're going to play in this pickleball tournament. Well, now you're competing with Casey Crew. You're competing with all these other nonprofits trying to run one-off tournaments and trying to get two people at a time to sign up for their team for a pickleball fundraiser. And to Greg's point earlier,
00:20:10
Speaker
They may not know anything about your nonprofit, so why would they sign up in a tournament they don't know anything about? They don't know the competition level to what we said earlier. The people playing on the weekends are looking for competition. So in that way, maybe let's talk about why we shouldn't go after team registration versus why you should go after sponsorship.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's the marketing side. If you're going after just the general public as a non-profit trying to market to them, where do you even start? That's a tall task as opposed to, let's say you either do a $100 team registration to a public or you already have your list of sponsors and donors turn it into a $500 team sponsorship, which gets them a team, which gets them a mention during the tournament.
00:20:52
Speaker
and then whatever other value pieces we can add to the sponsorship. So that turns one, that one public team that you're hoping signs up into a connection that you already have that's going to be a higher value sponsorship going towards your organization. So you're getting the same thing at the end of the day. You're getting that team spot, but you're maximizing the value. You're making your sponsors happy because then they get to put a team in. They get to come play pickleball. Like we've got to play pickleball in volleyball in 2022 as Casey Crew.
00:21:22
Speaker
Matt Beazler. He kicked our butt, but it was a lot of fun. So having the sponsors come participate in that event is just an extra step. It's more than just a sponsor sign or a logo on a banner. They're engaged, they're activating, they're playing. Also, if it's their younger audience for your company, that's two younger members who are coming out to the event, which is what your nonprofit, as a nonprofit, you're looking for your future volunteers, your future board members.
00:21:49
Speaker
you're looking for the 25 to 34 audience who's probably going to be coming out and playing through that sponsorship. So our emphasis has always been sponsor over just the general public for teams and court sponsors, tournament sponsors, whatever it may be.
00:22:06
Speaker
And sponsorship-wise, since we know the tournaments, we know the events, we know where we can add on additional sponsorship opportunities. So if Greg had the great idea of cornhole events, let's do sponsored boards, so they get to bring home something from the event with them, rather than just a sign that's hanging up, oh, thank you to our sponsor blank. Thank you to our sponsor blank, but it's on a cornhole board that looks awesome that they get to take from the event back to their home, back to their work, that has the event, it's a piece of the event, it has the event logo on it, and it lives on forever with that sponsor.
00:22:34
Speaker
Sure. No, that makes a ton of sense. And I think, you know, it's as easy as that sounds, it's a little bit challenging. You're probably not going to get the one off teams to sign up. So I wouldn't do it. But it is definitely challenging to go sell these larger sponsorships to companies, you got to have the relationships as a nonprofit, you got to have these things. So your nonprofit, you need to find ones that are kind of well established, that essentially have those relationships and are confident they can sell those types of sponsorships.
00:22:57
Speaker
you know,
Streamlining Events with KC Crew's Expertise
00:22:58
Speaker
from the KC crew side, we do this already, we run cornhole tournaments, pickleball tournaments, events, we have sponsorship, we sell sponsorship. So we know exactly what the value of things are, the cost of things are. So we can help you identify here's a sponsorship level, you can get your boards branded, you can get your courts branded, we can do a live stream and have commercials on the live stream. So we've already identified a lot of these things for ourselves. And now we're helping you as a nonprofit do it. So you as a facility, you can look at, you know, what can we offer these nonprofits,
00:23:22
Speaker
that can give them a leg up to then go sell sponsorship and not have to worry about the management of it. So that'll be a question is, you know, if I'm a facility looking to get started, what's the logistics? How should I get started in like, I want to get a nonprofit fundraiser in here. What's the first couple steps I should take?
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think kind of the same exact route that we took. So any non-profit resources, hubs, connection points in your city that can, you know, like we have Nonprofit Connect, we have Support KC, their outreach is for numerous different non-profits. So that's one way to get in front of them.
00:23:54
Speaker
or just an email. Honestly, I don't think I've had a nonprofit not respond to an email I've sent because they're dealing with staffing issues across the board. They need help. They need different unique ways for their sponsors to come in because their sponsors are also looking for new unique opportunities as well. So if the company comes in,
00:24:13
Speaker
or you have a cool unique opportunity to present to this nonprofit where all they have to do is get a sponsor to say yes and you or the you know you bring in another group to partner with you guys handle everything for that nonprofit pull it off their plate that's kind of the you know best case scenario but
00:24:30
Speaker
just outreach. I mean an email is really all it takes to get a meeting set and again I don't think a nonprofit will say no if they have an opportunity in front of them where they have minimal work for an opportunity to put on a cool unique event that's going to raise funds that's going to be impactful for them.
00:24:46
Speaker
I would also say, what are you an expert at? Look at what you offer at your facility. What can you provide to a sponsor or a nonprofit that they can't get anywhere else? If you do X, don't go do Y. Offer X as an opportunity. We are experts on pickleball and Cornell tournaments and other events. Great, we're going to do those in a nonprofit realm. We're not going to do something we know nothing about because that doesn't make sense and we have to go learn everything new. Know something you know how to do and just offer in a different realm, AKA nonprofit.
00:25:13
Speaker
I
Success Story: VFW Cornhole Tournament
00:25:14
Speaker
love it. And so to that, you know, one of the biggest wins we've had is with the VFW. And so I'm actually a veteran, and I'm a lifetime member of the VFW. They're national headquarters in Kansas City. I worked with them a little bit through COVID. And you know, one of the challenges that the VFW is having is, you know, younger members joining the VFW because there's been a big gap between wars. And so they're trying to get younger people in that don't think of the VFW as an old place to go smoke and play bingo.
00:25:40
Speaker
And so they're looking at like, well, how do we bring younger members in? Well, are you offering things for these younger members? And so we help them identify, you know, hey, let's throw a cornhole tournament at your national convention in Phoenix. And so maybe talk a bit about a little bit about that process.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, so that was probably one of the coolest things I've done with KC Crew just, you know, for the VFW, which is an awesome organization. We started working with Lynn Rolfe over there. Her headquarters is in Kansas City. You're a veteran, you got the connection. So that kind of made it easy getting in the door, but a lot of the work was after that conversation. So Mitch touched on it of the cornhole board branded designs, which is, again, it's more than just your name on a banner. And then you go out there and then you leave and you don't see it again.
00:26:22
Speaker
You get that awesome board out there. It's used during the tournament. And then when it's over, you take the board home with you to, again, your house, your office, wherever you want it. The event lives on afterwards. So we essentially met with them, helped them. We set up a whole landing page for them, really built out, hey, here's the time of day we want to host the tournament. Here's how many teams we can have. We helped with the sponsorship side. So we set up a whole sponsorship section and we helped them identify each sponsorship level.
00:26:50
Speaker
what comes with every single thing. We had a Google form. I said, Lynn, I need you to get people to say yes. Fill out this form, which is four items. I handle the rest. So he got 27 people to say yes. We got 27 different awesome, unique boards created for him. And it was funny. We had about eight to 10 sponsors. When I was emailing them, they said, oh, we don't care about the boards. Just have them out there for the tournament and then donate them off.
00:27:15
Speaker
Every single one of them showed up to the tournament, saw their board and said, screw that, I'm taking it with me, package it up right now. So just to see our whole idea that we really just made up kind of out of the blue for it to all take place, it all happened. The VFW's goal was to break even, and we helped them raise over $32,000 for a PACT Act benefits assistance program for burn pit victims.
00:27:40
Speaker
The fact that we blew that blew their break even number out of the water on the first year of something that we just kind of made up and it all came together perfectly like we flew out to Phoenix. Mitch and I did. We brought a commentator out. We had a live stream up on our Facebook. You can go see the videos on Casey Cruz Facebook right now. We actually did an impromptu match between
00:28:01
Speaker
Humana and USAA, which are two pretty big partners of the of the VFW. So we actually pitted them against each other. And Booch, our commentator, was like, can I talk some smack during this one? So he was making fun of them because they had no idea what they were doing. They were missing the board and Booch had a blast with it. So it was just cool to, you know, be that new fun thing at the VFW convention. And we met with Lynn afterwards a couple weeks after and
00:28:27
Speaker
heard that all the other vendors were like, hey, what the hell are they doing? We want to be part of that cornhole tournament. So to see just everything that we thought it would be come together and actually take place was the coolest thing about it. And we'll be back at the national convention every year for the rest of the time, probably.
00:28:43
Speaker
I hope so. I hope so. Yeah, it was really cool to see that execute. I couldn't join you guys. I had a newborn baby, but really, really excited to see you guys take that run with it and just make it amazing. And so for me, the coolest thing is like we took an idea that the VFW already has a lot of fundraising efforts. They have a lot of partners and sponsors of the very, very big organization. But to be able to take an idea that we thought would work, we knew would work, and then take a chance on it and actually more than succeed and help bring in younger members, help bring in more vendors, more sponsors that are interested for See It Year to grow,
00:29:13
Speaker
to grow year after year was really, really cool and I think a huge win. To take nothing and then help them raise $32,000 off of something we do every single day was a really cool thing. I think also we did the goal of people talking about the National Convention. I wanted to go next year. People are like, oh, we need to plan our meetings around that so we can go play in the Cornell tournament. Getting people to post-sponsoring teams to go play. So it's post-playing the Cornell tournament that way they get their post versus post and state versus state. So people are already talking about who's going to play in it next year.
00:29:42
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining me guys today on the Facility Playbooks. You know, we talked, today we talked nonprofit events. We've already talked about leagues and tournaments.
Advice for Facility Managers: Collaborating with Nonprofits
00:29:50
Speaker
So if you're looking for some education around leagues and tournaments, how to run them, how they work, check out future episodes with K.C. Crew. If you're looking to automate your facility, check out facilityally.com. Last thing, you know, what's one tip you'd give somebody in the facility world to working with nonprofits?
00:30:06
Speaker
I would say, again, I touched on it earlier, but don't be afraid to just reach out, send the email. That's all it takes. You know, they're looking for help. They need help. They need an easy way for them to help generate more money in a unique, fun way. So just active outreach and then make sure that you're accomplishing their goals too. So, you know, most of the time fundraising is going to be a massive piece of it, but they could also be looking to find a way to bring in the younger generation. So if your facility that hosts
00:30:35
Speaker
pickleball or has a turf field where you can do a soccer tournament something for you know that's young
00:30:41
Speaker
low barrier to entry has a younger demographic to it. That's really, you know, that's probably going to be a big piece of what these nonprofits are looking for. Because as you know, the generation who goes out the door with the golf tournaments in the galas, they need something to refill that. And that's what they're looking for as part of the events who are coming in with these new, you know, fun, younger active events as well. Awesome. Well, thanks again. Thanks for joining the Facility Playbook. We'll see you next time.