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 K-12 Schools lens
This is the true-cost accounting a school auction usually needs and rarely gets, since the auction is defended on its gross, the number parents remember, while its net after counting the parent committee's coordination hours and item procurement time is often far smaller. Net per attendee is a useful check on whether the auction has simply grown more elaborate, a bigger venue, a hired auctioneer, while its actual per-family yield has quietly shrunk.
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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