Fundraising for Marie Curie
Reflecting on our fundraising for Marie Curie, there has been a variety of both strengths and weaknesses throughout
Strengths
Firstly, positive customer and client relationship management was a key strength. Allocating one main contact point to streamline communications, we managed to maintain positive and consistent communication with our charity representative, ensuring she was consistently informed of our progress and that we were meeting her expectations. As such, this also helped us make sure our project was going in the right direction. In addition to this, we also networked exceedingly well to gain sponsors for our Bake Sale and Raffle contest, as well as performers for our Open Mic Night, using a variety of contacts and influential individuals. This was also a strength when reaching out to our networks for donations on JustGiving which resulted in unexpected levels of success.
Secondly, regarding our internal organization, as a team our planning and organisation was a prominent strength. We split up into different teams to facilitate handling our different events, with one scrum master to oversee and ensure all deadlines are met. Additionally, we remained efficient by creating multiple schedules. For example, during the Open Mic Night we had a core schedule which included all the tasks that needed to be completed on event day, as well as a list of individual roles and responsibilities, allocating each person hourly roles during the event. To ensure organisation with performers, we also created an event rundown sheet of performances, expected duration, and required equipment for each act which we got in advance through our performer registration form. As such, each performer was informed of their estimated time slot prior to the event. Moreover, it made it easier for us to make last-minute adjustments due to no-shows. This form also helped us gain clarity on what equipment we needed to source for the event.
Thirdly, strong, consistent marketing was essential and effective for us. Our marketing team explored Marie Curie’s website to get a good impression of their brand identity which was then leveraged in both online and offline marketing initiatives. Doing so not only created a stronger brand identity for our group, but also helped us remain consistent and recognizable with the client which in turn helped us gain more supporters from the public. Leveraging several social media platforms such as Instagram stories and posts, Facebook groups and pages, and WhatsApp helped us better reach and engage with our network and target audience. Finally, we anticipated where we had less engagement and formulated a contingency to offset this; for the Raffle contest, as there was low online engagement, we decided to employ in-person selling tactics using food as an incentive among student groups which turned out to be very successful. This also negated any potential missed revenue from the Bake Sale.
Other key strengths include adaptability and teamwork, good resource management to minimise expenses, and competitive pricing by offering high value for money. For example, we priced our Open Mic Night tickets at £3 which prompted many people to buy tickets last minute on the door. Finally, diversity within the team with regards to our mindset and skillset supported our creativity, as well as our ability to offset others’ weaknesses (Gassmann, 2008).
Weaknesses
& Lessons Learnt
Regarding our weaknesses, firstly, there were several instances that lacked our attention to detail. For example, for the Open Mic Night, while we tested equipment several days prior, this was not done very thoroughly leading to some setbacks during the event (such as feedback from the microphones) as we overlooked smaller details in the audio setup. This led to additional stress on the team to solve the issue last minute. Moreover, we did not account for the large amount of background noise which made two microphones insufficient for some acts, as such, we had to rush to source an additional amp during the event. In retrospect, carrying out a thorough test and rehearsal, as well as having a better understanding of our team’s limitations and opting to consult one of our experienced performers who would be more knowledgeable in this area, would have helped reduce the issues we faced here.
Secondly, time management is another area we could have improved on as a team. In the Open Mic Night, we did not account for sufficient buffer time between performances leading us to go slightly behind schedule. While two last-minute no shows helped balance this out putting our event back on schedule, in the future we learnt that we need to allocate more time in this area, especially for first-time performers. In the Bake Sale, better time management could have allowed us to apply for permits earlier, therefore potentially getting a better timeslot for our sale, a lack of which led to low interest and foot traffic in the first two hours. We managed to minimize the impact of this relatively successfully through our product variety, increasing efforts in the lunchtime hours, and organizing a Raffle ticket selling with the anticipated leftover products. That said, having an afternoon timeslot could have helped us sell more products and, moreover, raise more money as we would have sourced more food and drink to sell if we had a more peak time. Finally, poor time management had a large impact on the success of our raffle; not allocating sufficient time for businesses to internally coordinate prizes and get back to us led to us losing two prizes that would have been very appealing to our target (ITSU and Good Day Café coupons). As such, while our first two prizes were strong, we noticed considerably less interest in our other two. Moreover, as we could not launch the raffle until all prizes were confirmed, delaying this gave us less time to sell tickets which led to us not reaching our goal in this area. Overall, a more in-depth assessment of the time required for certain tasks would have helped us create a more accurate retroplan for better success, especially with regards to the Raffle contest.
Finally, a limited marketing scope for our Open Mic Night resulted in our audience being mostly made up of students. While our marketing was strong in the channels we chose, resulting in 101 attendees, a greater effort on offline marketing for this event could have helped us better reach the wider Bath community, resulting in a more diverse turnout.