Adapt or Die: How to Keep Your Events Fresh, Relevant, and Engaging

Mark: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, the podcast that's all about taking your fundraising game to the next level. This week, the Handbid Home Team tackles how to keep your events fresh and engaging. From fading ticket sales to donor fatigue, they'll share how to spot when it's time to shake things up and simple ways to bring the excitement back. Let's jump in.

Mark: Welcome back to Elevate Your Event, the podcast where we share strategies.

Jeff: Strategies. That's right.

Mark: To help you raise more money, create better experiences, and stay ahead in the ever-changing world of events. And today we're going to dive into a topic that every event manager and auction chair should care about. Adapt or die.

Elise: Oh, that sounds so...

Mark: How to keep your events fresh, relevant, and engaging. Adapt or die. All right. We got Jeff Porter and Elise Druckenmiller in the house.

Jeff: That's right.

Mark: Don't sound so excited, Mark. I'm stoked. I'm back here at the producer desk. I got my Fresca, the drink of the 90s.

Jeff: Better than my coconut pineapple bubbly?

Mark: Yes. Way better. Way better. But listen, we'll take sponsorships.

Jeff: Yeah, that's right. Fresca or bubbly. That's right.

Mark: All right. So, hey, adapt or die. That's the name of today's episode. Your events fresh, relevant, and engaging. How many events would you guys say that you've been to, combined?

Jeff: Like this month or this year?

Elise: I go to a lot right now.

Mark: Yeah, I'm sure. In the beginning, like years ago.

Jeff: I went to every one. Yeah, so if you had to guess, like, I was going to 20 events a year. I think in the beginning I was probably doing 40 or 50. I was kind of on the auctioneer level.

Mark: Okay. Of events. And then obviously we have much better, more qualified people doing that now.

Jeff: Yeah. Working yourself out of the business. Well practiced.

Mark: What about you, Elise?

Elise: Oh, gosh. I probably would say that I do, what do you think? 15 or 20 a year? Yeah. Between. Yeah.

Jeff: She's better at it than I am. I will say, I'm actually really good at events, but I don't think I'm nearly as nice. Right?

Mark: We got that on tape.

Jeff: Yeah. I don't think I'm nearly as nice. I remember once I went to this event and it was like an hour and a half drive from my house. I get up there and it was very clear to me it was going to be a complete disaster. And so I was like, I got to save this event. And they're all asking me questions. I'm like, okay, here's how this is going to work. You've got to leave me alone, and I've got to get a lot of work done. And so the event was great. We got through it. By myself, I think I did check-in. I fixed all of their items that were missing. That's the one thing back then people wouldn't do is make sure everything was in Handbid. They would just put it out and just assume people could bid on it or find it in the app. And then we got through a live auction. I mean, it was such a success. And then they called up and they're talking to the sales rep and they're like, you know, Jeff did a really good job, but he's kind of a dictator.

Mark: Dick being the...

Jeff: Yeah. I was like, D-I-C, pause, pause, pause, tater. That's right. Emphasis on tater. And so our sales rep was like, I don't know if they want you back. I'm like, I don't want to go back. But trust me, I pulled it off. And she's like, no, they said everything went great. And I was like, okay, maybe this isn't my cup of tea, but you've probably done the one-woman show before too.

Elise: Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that my bedside manner is probably nicer than mine.

Jeff: I get a little stressed. I'm a really friendly guy, but when I get into stress work mode, it's just like, get out of my way because I'm going to make this work.

Elise: Yeah, like stop firing questions at me. Really politely, we actually had a really high-profile client and they were awesome. And they had uploaded and totally screwed up their guest list and then tried to fix it and made it worse and then tried to fix it again and made it worse. And check-in's in less than an hour and I'm sitting there and she keeps coming up and she's like, well, who's going to train the staff? I said, oh yeah, the other person with me is going to train the staff. She kept asking me questions.

Jeff: That was me.

Elise: No, it actually wasn't you. This is a different time. This was Diana with me. And so I looked at her and I go, ma'am, I just really need you to leave me alone for 25 minutes. And she was like, wow, okay. And then she tells Diana later, she's like, that's not very nice.

Jeff: And I'm like, well, I am in fix mode. Like focus mode. I get like that too. My wife's like, why are you raising your voice? I'm not raising your voice. I'm just getting intense.

Elise: Yes. I'm going to fix this. Leave me alone. I know these guests are coming soon and I want them to have a good experience. If nobody has this energy, nothing will get done.

Jeff: That's right.

Mark: I don't think this is what you came to talk about, but anyway. Well, I mean, it's kind of part because the whole idea is this adapt or die. And so one of the things I'm curious about is what are the early warning signs that an auction or fundraiser might be getting stale?

Jeff: Well, I'm saying ticket sales. Yeah, it's like, the trend is down. Every year we have less people. Honey, do we have to go again to the same event?

Elise: I mean, but then you have your loyalists, right? You have the people whose kids go to the school or whatever, and they have to go to the event every year. So maybe there's a built-in audience that you have.

Jeff: You do. And I think the thing that a lot of people do is that they overly cater to that audience. And look, I have this audience too with my event. I have friends that are going to come no matter what, and I do a survey at the end. And it's so funny because I'm a country music fan, so most of the music and entertainment at our events is country music. And I have this one guy, and he's a major donor, and he says in his survey comments every year, "I don't love the choice of music, but as you know, I will come every year and support your organization." It's not that important to him.

Mark: Can we get Bon Jovi or something like that?

Jeff: Yeah. As soon as Bubbly sponsors us. But I think the important part of that is to say, look, if things are getting stale, it could be a little bit of the innovator's dilemma. And that's like the B-School book that is super popular by Clayton Christensen, which talks about companies that kind of get stale, super focused on a core audience or a core customer base that they miss the innovations and the changes coming along. When we see this, you saw this back in the day and still a little bit today, but mostly back in the day being like 10, 13 years ago, where people were like, "My donors won't bid on a phone or they won't bid in an app." And you're focused on this audience. But what do you do when those donors go away? Well, that's the innovator's dilemma, right? You get into this mode where these people could literally make you obsolete because you're ignoring what in the book is called a disruptive innovation. I will tell you, mobile bidding back in 2011 was a disruptive innovation.

Elise: For sure.

Jeff: Meaning it typically is better, faster, cheaper. And so what people look at is they say, well, that's going to be a problem for me because my core audience, my core customer base doesn't want it. We've tailored our event around this core audience, and that makes it hard to want to change because you don't want to anger them. But if you don't adapt, I don't think die sounds a little harsh. But you're just not going to grow.

Elise: Right. Well, one of the things I've seen too is that the position gets replaced. And then the new person doesn't know what to do. And so they just do what the person did last year. They already have the systems and processes and all that stuff in place. And so it's just easier for them to do what's already been done.

Jeff: Yeah, because they'd be like, I got so much other things I have to worry about. The last thing I want to do is change my auction.

Elise: Right. Yeah, exactly.

Mark: Adapt or die. Well, Jeff, Handbid often talks about organizations focusing too much on one donor group. And you kind of just mentioned that. You said it's like you focus too much on this one donor group, and it's risky because you're not innovating. You're catering to this one group, and then if they go away at some point, then you're screwed.

Jeff: I think you need to nurture some of the new donors. You need to figure out a way to attract them, right? Attract them and then nurture them. How do you do that, Elise? I'm going to play MC here for a second. How do you attract a new younger donor since you're, well, now you're kind of old now. I mean, you just had a big birthday. But you're still not as old as I am. So how do you attract younger audience?

Mark: We'll cut out all this silence. Don't say EDM music or anything.

Elise: If you want to drive your older donors out, then bring in EDM. Yeah, a DJ. With a laser show or a silent disco.

Jeff: Okay, well, we recently, for an organization I'm involved with, changed our venue and changed the style of the event.

Mark: To attract younger people?

Elise: Yes. Some of it was. And the other thing too, and I don't know that I am in agreement with this, or that I suggest it, but part of some of the feedback we were getting is we want these younger people, but they can't afford our high-priced gala-style ticket, nor do they want a gala evening. They wanted something more fun and family-friendly, which is a younger audience. So we changed the venue. We changed the style of the event. We're going from a gala to a music festival, afternoon barbecue, family-friendly. And with that comes a different ticket price.

Jeff: Okay. There you go. I mean, that can totally work. To me, yeah, I don't see a lot of people in their early 30s dying to go into the hotel ballroom wearing a black suit and gown.

Mark: You know what? People in their early 40s are not dying to go into the ballroom. I just want to get to bed by 10.

Jeff: It's just probably not many people's gig. But changing it into either a more casual type of thing.

Elise: Yeah. I mean, we did all of this. We did venue. We did casual. I mean, oh my God, I'm not sure what's going to work and what's not going to work because we changed everything. I mean, things like an after party. All of the older folks will probably go home, but the younger folks will stay and they'll see that on entertainment. That's like, we're having a VIP after party with entertainment and catered. And they're like, that's really cool.

Jeff: So I think that's all, and adding, if you are going to do something kind of ballroom-ish, having a fun element to it to make it maybe a little less stuffy, like adding a piece of entertainment to it. Try not getting into a ballroom. That's my undertone advice.

Mark: You don't like the ballroom?

Jeff: No. Not really. The rubber chicken and the raspberry vinaigrette and the butter ball. We've talked about it. Or do something really different inside of a ballroom if that's kind of the venue you need. I love your idea of going outside, and I know it freaks people out. Like, oh my God, it might rain.

Elise: It might. It might, yes.

Jeff: Yeah, it might rain. That kind of makes the experience memorable. I went to an event that was in an airplane hangar, and that was pretty cool.

Elise: It was very cool. And they had Lamborghinis lined up and jets, and I was like, this is sweet.

Jeff: That is exactly what we're talking about. Get unconventional with your venue. You know, this guy Manon here recently, he's a friend of ours and he owns Fiddler's Green Amphitheater, which is a massive concert venue in Denver. And we had the same kind of conversation with him. How do you create an experience around your venue? And I think you will attract a new audience to that. Look, folks like my dad, my dad's 83. My mother-in-law's kind of close to that age and my other in-laws. They're going to come to my event no matter what. But do you think they love an outdoor derby event? No. With plastic chairs and a fire pit table?

Elise: Nope. Your mother-in-law does.

Jeff: Nope. She complains all the time. It's too cold. It's too hot. I'm too close to the stage. I'm too far from the stage. It's too loud. But guess who loves it? People in their 30s and 40s. I mean, we had Mitch Rossell come. He was on America's Got Talent. The guy was a lead Nashville country music star. It was awesome.

Mark: All right. So I think with all this being said, you have to be intentional. And I think Elise, you were talking about making sure to do surveys after you implement something different and then be intentional about reviewing the results to make sure that you're in the right or wrong.

Jeff: And look, a few years ago, we changed up our event. We moved it outdoors. We got rid of the Derby. We made it just a full-blown country concert. And guess what? We've never done it again. We brought the Derby back and we made it a full-blown country concert. We irritated our donors. Not in a good way. I mean, we didn't really anger them, but they were like, we love the Derby. Bring it back. And we were like, we were tired of the Derby. But the funny thing is our donors weren't tired of the Derby theme. They just wanted other things to change about it.

Elise: Well, and the thing for me, I'm thinking now that I've been two years now, I'm kind of like, that's the thing I want to do now. On Derby Day, it's like, I'm going to do this.

Jeff: So, Mark, how did we attract you other than hire you to be our emcee? You're a younger donor. Look at you.

Mark: You hire me, actually. You're like a young spry individual. That's right. I'm hip. I'm down with it. Well, I got to be the emcee of the event, so that kind of helped with me being there. I had to be there. But it was a good time. But surveys are important. And here's one thing I will caution everybody listening about surveys: you need to take the good and the bad and you need not to freak out about it. You can't overanalyze what people say. And you have to decide not every piece of feedback you get do you need to act on, even from some of your more important people. Because honestly, they might be your automatic donors. They're going to come back no matter what. You're not going to upset them that much.

Jeff: And I remember when we first launched Handbid out of the gate, first event Handbid has ever been used at, my derby event, May of 2011. Well, we did a survey and here's our board members coming in. And back then we didn't do the official Survey Monkey kind of thing, we just asked board members to connect with their biggest donors and get feedback. Just qualitative feedback. "Well, Jim likes the bid sheets better and he didn't feel like he could keep up. He's just, I don't think he won all the items he wanted to win." And there's a couple of those. And I said, okay, so before we go through all this feedback, I got to make one comment. We are not going back. We doubled our auction revenue. So we'll take this qualitative feedback and figure out how to manage it. But the one thing we're not going to do is make Jim happy. I don't want to make Jim unhappy, but we're not all about making Jim happy. This is an organization raising money for our program services. Doubling our auction revenue, going from $15,000 in the silent to $30,000, taking the live even higher. The whole event raised a ton more money. Sorry, guys. That is what it is. So let's figure out what tweaks we need to make to what we're doing. And I see a lot of times people will say, well, I got feedback from a bidder, and I know you want us to put items in categories, but they want everything in one category. They like it better that way. You have 300 items. You want to put them all in a row? Don't you think that's a worse user experience?

Elise: Well, this really important bidder told me they liked it that way.

Jeff: That's the kind of stuff where I'm like, okay, look at it and say, is this really something that is what's best for our organization?

Elise: Yes, exactly. Sorry, better way of saying what I just took five minutes to say. At the end of the day, is this better for the organization?

Jeff: You know what? That's another, look at this, two times in one episode, you get the "you're better than this." Hey, I had to make up for calling her old.

Mark: Now what about the person that's afraid to make a change because it's like, this is the way that it's always been done, but they want to start to branch out and maybe take a risk and do something different? What are some things you could slowly implement into your event? Obviously, software for instance could be something you can implement. But what are some other things that you could do to kind of warm-tub it?

Elise: I mean, every year we take a collection of survey data, our own input and feedback, because we've all been to so many events. We see what changes we made, which ones we're going to stick with and which ones we're not. And we make incremental changes. We don't ever not do something. And that doesn't mean there's things that you can always change up. And some things are just plainly obvious. Like we were at an event recently and the auctioneer was terrible. He wasn't good. I don't think we even had to argue with the charity about it, but it was one of those things where that's a change I would make. If you want a more engaged audience, make that change. We've been to places where you've used this venue for six years. Is it maybe time to change it up? Sometimes it's not. Maybe you have the deal of the century. Maybe it's your own house. I have no idea, but think about little things like that.

Jeff: I know that they don't sound little to some people, like changing the venue, but things like that where you're just like, we're going to look at something and try to switch it up, I think can make sense.

Elise: Yeah, I don't think you have to blow up your entire event like I just did. Change everything. I also think it's hard for people to make change. So I think doing it in small bursts and then getting the feedback and saying, okay, that worked, that didn't work. What else could we maybe switch up?

Jeff: But let's talk about your event for a second because I don't know if necessarily you blew it up, but I think your decision to change to the outdoor event and model it similar to how we did our derby event was really a compromise between "I want a certain group of people" and "I have this ballroom that I'm going to do it in." And I need a certain amount of money power in the room. I need a certain amount of money in that room that's going to generate the revenue I need. But I also want to invite first responder families and people that I want to reward. And those people take up space too. So you have this conundrum, this tension between, am I going to fill that table with people that are going to donate and spend, or am I going to fill that table with people I want to honor?

Elise: We tried to marry it. It's hard because you're saying, hey, I'm going to honor you, and I need you to raise your hand during the paddle raise. And by the way, you're a fireman, so I don't think you make a ton of money. That kind of stuff is hard.

Jeff: And so you moved the venue, expanded the capacity. And now not only can you invite those people you want to honor, you can also invite the people that you need there that are going to help support the organization. Now the firemen can bring their families and stuff, which is cool.

Elise: Yeah. So I think it was a nice compromise. I think it's going to feel like a little bit of a blow up, but I think it's a good move.

Jeff: We've had a lot of positive feedback, so we'll see.

Elise: Saturday.

Mark: Saturday in the park. Anyways. All right. Well, hey, that's it. I mean, I think this had some entertaining gems and some informative information. So if you've been afraid to adapt...

Jeff: You better start adapting.

Elise: Yeah, get the courage. Get the courage. Call us. We'll help you.

Jeff: Yeah, right? There's a wealth of knowledge here at Handbid. You want some fun ideas? We got them. Whatever you do, don't change your mobile bidding software.

Elise: Unless you're not using Handbid.

Jeff: That's right. Then change your software. Then change it. Call us up. We'll help you out. Exactly.

Mark: All right, so I think the big takeaway here is events thrive when they evolve, whether it's diversifying your audience, trying something unconventional, or simply making space for fun. You're going to see stronger engagement and better results when you're willing to adapt. So that's it.

Jeff: Love it.

Elise: Until next time.

Jeff: That's right. Happy fundraising.

Elise: Happy fundraising.

Mark: If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.