Event ROI: Keep, Fix, or Kill
The honest audit your events have been avoiding: real costs, real returns, and what to do with the answer.
Through the International NGOs lens
The true-cost accounting matters because a chapter dinner often has costs paid in the donor's home currency while net is reported back in program currency, so the calculation has to run consistently or the event will look more efficient than it is. The acquisition framing at the end of this lesson, new names who would never answer a letter, applies well to diaspora-community events, which can be a legitimate low-yield, high-acquisition channel if named honestly as that rather than judged as a revenue event.
Continuing education
1.00 points
Securing the Gift · Volunteer Involvement
Learning objectives
- Account for an event's true cost across three ledgers, direct costs, staff time at loaded hourly rates, and opportunity cost, and compute its true net, cost to raise a dollar, and net per staff hour.
- Run every recurring event through the ROI calculator annually, subtracting sponsorships that would arrive anyway and relationship gifts booked to the event, and sign a written verdict of keep, fix, kill, or repurpose.
- Fix an event that must stay by cutting hidden staff hours, giving the committee defined jobs, pricing tickets from actual costs, and following up with every flagged guest within 72 hours.
- Read a composite gala retirement for its sequence: the sheet to the finance committee first, sponsors converted before the announcement, a final event as an ending, and the freed hours reassigned to named programs with numeric goals.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 18 min
Video lesson
True-cost event accounting
I Pause · Securing the Gift
- 20 min
Template· XLSX
Event ROI calculator
III Discern · Securing the Gift
- 19 min
Field guide· PDF
Fixing the event you have to keep
VII Multiply · Volunteer Involvement
- 15 min
Case study· PDF
Case study: killing the gala, raising more
III Discern · Securing the Gift
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
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