Event CEO Podcast -- Episode 43

Michael Akin, Link Strategic Partners: Reframing Events as the Beginning of the Relationship

You are listening to Event CEO -- a podcast for executives who are looking to maximize their event ROI through business strategy, technology and innovation.Rebecca: Hello. And welcome to the Event CEO podcast by Linder Global Events. I am your host Rebecca Linder. Today we are delighted to welcome to the show Michael Akin, president of Link Strategic Partners. Michael, thanks so much for joining us.Michael: Thank you.Rebecca: Michael tell us a little bit about Link Strategic Partners.Michael: Absolutely. Link Strategic Partners is a consulting firm. We do strategic communications and community engagement work. So, on the strategic communication side, think social media, media relations, PR, messaging, all of that great communication stuff, including design, websites, etc. But what makes us unique and different is the community engagement side of the house.Everything we do has a lens towards community. Work is good for Link if it has a larger impact in the communities in which we serve. If it doesn’t, there are probably other firms out there that are better partners. But it’s that combination of community engagement and strategic communications that we focus on.Rebecca: And what drives you to do this work? Michael: That’s a really great question. When I came to D.C., I came here to go to school at GW thinking that politics is what I was going to focus on, right? That’s why people come to D.C. I was going to come and get an internship. I came down here to get an internship, and I got an internship. When I asked them how much it paid, they laughed at me. I said, “I don’t understand.” They said, “interns don’t get paid.” I am trying to think through. First my family, going to college, paying for school myself, how is

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this going to work. So, I went out and became a caterer. Which was my introduction to events. But fast forwarding I was a caterer for two years, then I worked as a community organizer for a year in the Shaw neighborhood working to keep very low-income seniors in their homes as long as possible. That’s when I like woke up to the real D.C. The D.C. that’s not federal government. But the D.C. that is made up of people, really good genuine generational after generational people. And I fell in love with ii. And the rest of my career became about how to piece together that investment in very hyper-local communities with this idea that we can communicate and engage better than we were.And that ultimately led itself to forming a company. Rebecca: So, how are you doing that? So, if that is your defining characteristic is that hyper-local, how does that play out? How does someone engage you around that, what’s that conversation that you are having?Michael: Absolutely. So, the types of industries, the cities we work in, the space we work in, is not defined as impact on community. So, I will give you a couple of examples.We’ve worked on large-scale sporting events. We’ve worked on non-profits. We’ve worked with city governments, state governments, local governments. The industries that we work in kind of run the gamut, but I think what we do in those is a little bit different. If you think about a traditional kind of PR or marketing approach without criticism a lot of that becomes very glossy level

communications. Which is how do we hit as many people as we can with the shiniest object, right, to try and move action. But if you start breaking that down on not just a city by city, by neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block level, how you communicate with people is different by the person by the block by the neighborhood by the ward by the city. And so that’s where our specialty is. How do you make sure you are engaging people at that super-hyper local level? Either through social media, traditional marketing, etc. But also, how do you when you are engaging those communities give them actual say in their decision making.I’ll give you an example. We just finished a fourteen-month project in Austin, Texas, where we worked across Austin to give residents a say in what they want their schools to look like for the next 30 years. We spent a year and a

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half doing that. Running community meetings, community engagement. Assimilated all of that feedback in a format that was then usable for the architects/engineers/school board. And ultimately a $1.2 billion bond was passed with a significant amount of community support because the community had a huge amount of say into what that bond package looked like.So, our job isn’t a political campaign and a back-end, our job was on the front end. How do you amass community input in a way that actually reflects what parents, students, teachers want so that policy makers can make better policy out of those types of things.Rebecca: That’s incredible. Congratulations. That’s quite a feat. So, one question is you are clearly not just working in the D.C. area? You are working all over the country and internationally as well?Michael: We are. Yeah. Our headquarters is here in D.C. We have people on ground now in Phoenix, Saint Louis, Cincinnati, New York, Maine and in July we’ll have a young man going over to Paris for us.Rebecca: Congratulations. You have been growing too. Well, from an events perspective talk to me how you use events in your work to activate and create engagement?Michael: For me everything is about forming and maintaining authentic relationships. I think events become one of the best ways to do that. They are one of the best tools for introducing and maintaining really authentic engagements with people.If you come to any size event, if you come to a community meeting in a school gymnasium or you come to a black-tie gala, those work best when people when leave those sessions with a way to keep connected. Whether it’s to each other, to the organization, to the school system. And so, events for us are one of the main tools we use to get people in a room that might not otherwise engage with each other. And then make the feedback out of those rooms traceable, recordable and transparent. So, it builds trust in that process going forward. Rebecca: Now do you produce those events yourselves, or do you connect with other organizations to help produce them?

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Michael: So, it depends. Let’s say if we are working with a school system, generally they are doing those events internally and we will help them with that. For large-scale events, especially here in D.C. and other cities we look for partners like Linder and others to really come in with that expertise. We don’t have an event planning function as part of Link. So, we always partner in that regard with people who do that better. We’ve all spent a lot of time at more of the traditional gala’s or events, etc. We’ve spent a large part of our time going to those events. I find the ones that I remember the most are the ones where I had the opportunity to engage with other people in a way that the event was set up to allow for that. Or when I learn something from that event that I took with me afterwards.So, we try and keep that in mind when are partnering an event, when we were producing one ourselves, or when we are advising a client, it’s not an output of information that you are hoping everyone consumes. It’s that interactive engagement that I think gets people to want to come back to your event.Rebecca: Do you also for your events or for your clients, whether they have their own event company or strategy in place; one how do you dove-tail with an existing event strategy, and then two what are some of the post event call to actions that you think are necessary to keep engagement high? Michael: Right.Rebecca: I think that’s one of the biggest challenges with events that we see is that they are not often – they don’t continue on.Michael: Right. And if you think about most, I don’t want to overly generalize, but use a non-profit just for example. And it’s a broad sector. But if you think about a traditional non-profit that’s putting on an event, their whole year is geared toward that signature event. So, understandably for the staff and the board that event is a culmination of effort. We try to get them to look at that event as the start of what’s next, right? So, you have put all of this time and energy, and you know a few hundred or a few thousand people come and then you all go home, and you put your feet up, and you are like, “wow, we did it.” And in a couple of months we will start planning for next year.

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Whereas with social media and ways to keep people connected in the room and after the room, if you don’t have that strategy for what happens that night, what happens in the morning, what happens the day after, you have now brought 1,200 people together and then kind of let them go onto what’s next. Because we are all hyper-connected and have too much to focus on. People will remember your event while the are there, unless you force them into thinking about it later that night and the next day.So, we kind of look at it as kind of the beginning of a relationship as opposed to the end.Rebecca: Which I love. And my question to you would, just to give some advice to the audience, especially the non-profits, what are some of those strategies and tools for the post engagement?Michael: Social media to me is a no brainer. And it’s a bit cliché to say that because social media is so big and we all talk about, but we don’t really talk about how to really use it effectively. Again, using kind of an overly played out scenario, but if you think of a non-profit and a staffing demands on a non-profit, you usually have a communications director, if you are lucky, right? So, that person usually on the night of the event is checking in people, maintaining the media and trying to take some pictures on Twitter in between every thing else, and most of the time the WI-FI is not working to let them do it. And so, they get home that night and all of these people have engaged with them, but none that have engaged have come back from the actual organization. So, we think it is so important to go into an event with a really concrete social media strategy, and even if you only execute 50 percent over that night, that’s 50 percent more than you would have without going in with a plan and a strategy. But it doesn’t happen accidently, right? So, hashtags only work if people know to use them. So, we are big fans of multiple speakers throughout the course of a program, actually stopping the program and saying, “I want everyone to get on their phone, use this hashtag because collectively we can make an impact beyond this room.” It’s amazing how when you give people the permission to touch their phone they do, and you have a few hundred people in a room, it’s not that difficult to make something a trending topic if everyone is doing it at once.

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So, we partner with the Washington Area Women’s Foundation every year. They do a wonderful lunch. For the last five years, it’s been the top trending topic for the three hours of that lunch. Overtaking Kardashians and Justin Bieber and anything else going on, because when you have 1,200 people in one room saying the same thing, it suddenly breaks through. So, I think events are a great way to do that, but then also having the organization liking and re-tweeting and engaging with people while they are there gives them the motivation to keep them doing more.Rebecca: So, that’s the night of, that’s the next day, but how do you stay connected to your audience throughout the year? Because I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we find – and expand your audience – that we find when we are producing events with our clients. That’s their biggest concern. How do we continue being on that? Are there other strategies outside of social media, or is there kind of a way to think about social media in terms of driving it through the full 365 days?Michael: Right. So, on the social media front, that night is the ability to start the dialogue. The night after and the day after is the ability is to keep that going. So, not just liking people that have tweeted at your event, but the next day and going back and thanking them for coming. Making sure you follow them back. Make sure you save their information somewhere so that six months out you can direct message them or reach out to them and say, “you know we are sending you a picture from that night, it was wonderful.” It’s a way to kind of keep that relationship alive throughout the year, we find is very helpful.The other way is being really diligent upfront about what level of information you want to collect on the back-end. So, I’ve been to some Linder events that are wonderful about capturing information on the front-end. You have a phone number and email you want to put down? Here’s the credit card information. If you collect that and the organization knows what to do with it,that allows for a relationship to continue. People like pictures of themselves from the night. So, we have seen really good examples of people using photobooths and others – I almost think of when you go to Disney World and you get the photo taken and they ask you if you want to buy it. So, the organization sends that to you two or three or four days afterwards, reminds you that you were there, and it gives you another reason to post something online.

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So, it’s trying to think about ways to make it easy for people to say how great you are later on.Rebecca: Is there any appetite in that mid-year point or as you march towards to the next one to also to create some kind of online format for engagement outside of social media? So, something that’s a longer format, so whether it’s a podcast or it’s a video, or it’s a question and answer with an audience around – even if it’s to create the conversation that they are going to have at their next event. How do you keep people going? Is there any appetite for that, are you seeing that?Michael: Yeah. I think there would be. I think it would be really important to figure out how that conversation breaks through beyond the event. So, you would know the breakdown of these numbers more than I would, anecdotally if you look at who is in a traditional room front event or a gala around a non-profit, there is a segment of those people who are fully connected to the organization’s mission and that’s why they are there. There’s a much larger segment that has been there because they have been invited by someone. So, I think the people who are already connected are going to be regardless, it’s at that hook that keeps everyone else engaged is often the missed opportunity. If you came for a really good night out because your friend had a table and invited you, that’s awesome, but it’s now up to us as an organization to keep you hooked in in some way.I think there are events that do that really well. I think there are events that could do that a little bit better. Often the motivation in the room is to raise money. And that’s a very good motivation and why you are holding a gala, right? But for folks who aren’t going to make a donation because it’s the first time they’ve been introduced to you, that’s when that high-touch follow-up becomes really important to make sure that you stay connected. I am a big fan when I am hosting a table with people I know didn’t pay for their tickets, very directly I will say, “my expectation as my guests tonight is that you are all making some sort of donation at what ever level you are comfortable.” And the way I would calculated is what would it cost to go out for a night in Washington at the very least make that. And if you can do more, great.

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And once you say it without any nervousness about putting that out there, my sense is that most people then donate, but you have to make that connection.Rebecca: Yes. Agreed. So, Michael talk to me a little bit about when an event company is coming as a separate entity, what conversation do you want to have with that company in order to have them execute successfully on your strategy, because it’s a bigger strategy and the event might just be a piece of it?Michael: Right. So, for us it’s really important to get an understanding of what everyone’s goals are, so we start with something called The Strategic Brain Trust. The first question in the brain trust is always define success, the end of our engagement success looks blank. And the last is always, your single best piece of advice for us is…In between that we ask about 15 or 20 really strategic questions about who you want in the room. Why do you want them there? What’s the call to action for each person? What’s the call to action through-out the evening? All of those types of things are important up front, to make sure that us, the client and the event company are all on the same page.We’ve had the great fortune of working with Linder on a variety of events. And I think why it works so well is because our teams operate seamlessly. It seems like they share an ethos. It seems like they share an understanding that this event is bigger than one event. So, when you’ve got that understanding up front that is shared with the client, we are all activating as part of one team. In most every event that I am at, especially in the non-profit space, our staffing between Linder and Link dwarfs the staffing of the group we are representing often by a factor of a lot. So, if we can all be brand ambassadors for that non-profit, we are doing a favor for them. And it’s important that we are not just the people there to put on a nice social meeting or nice lighting, but we can actually talk with some level of specificity about why this is an important event.And I find that if we kind of make that part of our mission, number one we are more likely to be brought back. But number two we are having a larger impact at the event.

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Rebecca: And are you driving audience attendance as well in the work that you do?Michael: Yeah. A lot of is audience attendance. A lot of it is some strategy around fundraising in the room. And a lot of it is that communication once you are in the room. How are you getting that message across?We’ve all been to events that I think do this really well. And I think that we have all been to events where there’s opportunities to do it better. It’s pretty typical now for the really emotional fundraising appeal to proceed to ask for money. And I think that makes perfect sense, right? But I think there’s a very fine line and this where we get into the community engagement piece of what we do for that to be authentic and truthful without being exploitative. I’ve been in those rooms where you see the person on stage bearing their soul for a fundraising ask, and even though it’s honest, it just doesn’t feel like we are serving that person in the best way possible. We’ve have been in the room when that is done so perfectly, because it’s empowering, there’s a video package around it, someone sharing not just the sad part of the story but the hope part of the story. So, I think it’s really important not to tie everything up into production, storytelling and fundraising, but to true to why these organizations do what they do, and then tie it to a fundraising ask. Does that make sense?Rebecca: Total sense. We agree, it is a fine line. Do you see any change in the way – there’s a formula, you touched on just now in the previous conversation, do you see that changing, is there a new format, is there anything coming down from the horizon from the community engagement perspective that you see that format of the gala, the traditional gala changing?Michael: It seems like from the ones that I have attended and the ones I have been a part of there have been a few different changes. The programs or the events that have the least appeal to me, personally, are the ones where you go, and the entire evening is programed. So, you have no opportunity to talk to anyone except to your left or your right. And then you get up and you leave, and you are done.I think the ones that work really well, that allow for engagement among people in the room, among the speakers and among the whole experience.

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And I have seen a lot of those experiential events, which are less sit down for a three-and-a-half-hour program then leave, and more of that different aspects of what’s going on there. I’ve also seen lately, and I would love to see more of it, more direct exposure to the organization’s mission, right?Rebecca: And how are you seeing that play out, and how does that manifest successfully for you?Michael: There are some ways that I have seen it done really well. And again, all of these can be forced if they are not done with some tact around them. But the organizations that say, of this 12-person table, two or three of the seats are reserved for community partners that work with us, and they just bake that into the model. So, you are buying a table but you know two or three of those seats are going to be reserved for a student and a parent that is part of the community network you are serving. I think there are ways to do that that make it less – let’s gather a whole bunch of people to help people that aren’t in the room and more let’s come together to figure out how we can solve this. And I fear a little bit when I get down this line of discussion that I start getting a little bit preachy, and that’s not the goal, but I think more than anything people are looking for authenticity now.The time of really rich people sitting in a room to save less rich people doesn’t work for the most part and it’s not sustainable because in a town like Washington you are all going after the same rich people all for really good causes.So, we’ve got to find a way to broaden that out and democratize it. Those events, those organizations that I think make a real attempt to bring in a variety of people, not only, I think, are more authentic, but they also keep up with the changing demographics of the city, right? Most of the philanthropic wealth in this country is still at the older level and at the older generation. Where most of the folks moving in are being part of not just Washington, but most urban areas aren’t that demographic.So, we’ve got to find a way to teach millennials philanthropy, and events are often the best way to do that. So, we kind of provide on-roads to giving at an event that people went because they really like the open bar, but they got there and realized this is something I would like to support. Even if it’s $50 and not $50,000, we’ve now cultivated a path for giving. That I worry that

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sometimes we forget when we are just catering to the folks who go to seven events a week. Rebecca: And quite frankly pipeline and sustainability is the biggest conversation that I think non-profits certainly are having. But how it plays out at their events can vary greatly in terms of their impact. So, aside from putting people at the table, what are other ways, one of the things that we come across is also to tell the story – not just from the stage, but in the cocktails, in the dessert, in interactive, and maybe some of it is through storytelling. Some it’s through interactive timelines. What are other ways that you are seeing that are really successful in ways of engaging with whatever that thing is, product, cause or mission?Michael: This one takes a little bit more work, but I find that we can keep attention when people know that thing that they are getting on their plate in front of them to tell the story is unique to them, right? So, if you know that one case study of how great this organization is everyone has, you are going to read it and move on. If you can say, on your table there are ten different examples of communities we have served, and I want everyone to take a minute and read them. Suddenly you are getting something that no one else does. Share that with your neighbor, talk about it, not in a contrived forced way but in a way of knowing that I am learning more about this organization, the people we serve, live at the table becomes one way.The other way and this is more on the kind of on the fundraising piece of it. I am a big fan of events when different parts of the evening are themed or sponsored by different people. I was at the Trust for the National Mall Gala, which I think you all produced this year, and I remember the dessert buffet was sponsored by, I think it was American Airlines, right? But it was such a unique way, of course there were lots of sponsors that night, but everyone went to the American Airlines desert buffet. And it was a very interesting way of that being an activation.I believe you guys also did the Pink Tie Party this year. I remember being at that one and I think it was Japan/American Airways or All Nippon Airways had a first class series of seats built into the event so you could go in and experience it. It was experiential. It was something that went beyond a logo, and it was something that was pretty immersive.

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So, I like those as a way to kind of break through and make them feel real. I also feel if there is something that can be done in the room that truly benefits the organization beyond a donation, and those again, it has to fit with the type of organization you are.I will give an example. If you are working with an organization that works with military families. Of course, you want everyone to donate, but can everyone before they leave also go to a station and fill out a card for someone serving abroad, so you leave that night with 1,000 cards. There’s debate on one-time service events and their meaningfulness, but if you give someone a direct connection to mission that goes beyond I had a great time and I am leaving.Rebecca: It’s a nice way to interact for the community that you are actually trying to then serve. Michael: Absolutely.Rebecca: How about the call to action around volunteers? Are you too seeing – to actually cultivate people help serve; where do you see success there or is that coming through outside of events in the community engagement work that you are doing?Michael: I think it’s mostly in the community engagement. But you are giving me something new to think about, which I really like. So, is that call to action here, if you want to continue serve with us in whatever capacity on your way don’t just stop at the silent auction table but go over here to the membership service.Rebecca: Become a volunteer.Michael: Exactly. I think I have not seen that, but I think it’s brilliant! Let’s do this.Rebecca: See how we come up with good ideas together, there we go. How do you measure then success for your clients?Michael: It depends. I think metrics are always important.Rebecca: Define metrics for me.Michael: I know. So, much of this world is squishy. For social media there are actual metrics. How many looked at your Snapchat filter? And if

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you are not using Snapchat filters for your event I think you should. They are wildly cheap. They are fun, and it shows that you are connected, and they don’t cost that much. So, there are things where you can see how many people swiped over that? How many people took a picture of it and shared it with their friends? Those are hard metrics. What your Twitter following was… What your Facebook, your Instagram... Those are all measurable and should be reported even if they are small numbers, they give you an indication internally of where your audience is that you want to connect with eventually.Rebecca: And do funders, just to stop you for one second, do funders make a direct connection to that? Do they want to see those numbers in order to either sponsor or up their sponsors? Michael: I think it’s all in how you package it in your sponsor deck. If you can say for the last five years this has been the trending topic in Washington D.C., then suddenly you have a way of making that worth it to a sponsor. That’s a big piece of it.I also think it’s very important to be able to point to something that lasts beyond that event. And so, going back to social media and traditional media. If you go to any event you have this page of sponsors, and those sponsors are generally in the room and they have tables and they are selling tickets and all of that is great. What was the interaction with each individual sponsor before and after the event? And here’s where I want to get a little bit specific. If I represent a certain non-profit and I’ve got Linder Global Events as a sponsor for my event, I should be working with Linder ahead of time, not just to say here I’m going to put out social media thanking you will you re-tweet it. But going to you and saying, I want to develop very specific social media that’s only yours, and only organic to yours. And I want it to go out on Linder’s channels. And I will retweet.Same thing with a bigger company. Do you have media division? Great. Can we do a press release on your letterhead, X Corporation that you go out saying how excited you are to be our sponsor and then we will do the same back.Now you are thrusting into a very different level of coverage, right? Especially, if you are like partnering with a university, which a lot of people

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forget sometimes. If you are partnering with a university they have an entire media relations division internally, the folks that their press releases go out to are very different than yours might as a non-profit. On their letterhead and vice versa. It’s kind of leveraging the kind of stuff you are going to do anyway, but for all of your partners try and get that brand lift. Rebecca: How effectively currently are non-profits who have that one communications director at doing stuff like that?Michael: It depends. I think it can be wildly overwhelming. But I also think it doesn’t have to if it is programmed in a way that it’s not all needing to be done three days before your major event when no one is sleeping. What can you do ahead of time to try and segment these things out?Honestly, a lot of the work we do with non-profit is around that type of support. We are also under no illusions and this is more the CEO/entrepreneurial side of what I do. We are under no illusions that most non-profits have a budget to do this stuff. Most of them don’t and putting on the actual event is a big lift for them. So, what we will do to get our name out there as Link Strategic Partners, is if it’s a non-profit whose mission we fundamentally believe in, we will donate our services in return for a table and a sponsorship. So, suddenly Links Strategic Partners is on the board as a $25,000 sponsor and we have a table upfront. Which is great from our marketing and branding, and on the back-end we are running all of the social media and media relations, etc. That they didn’t have a budget for but is now generating huge amounts of back-end support for them.So, those are those opportunities that I promote other CEO’s or entrepreneurs to look at those opportunities. Don’t think that just because you have a start-up you can’t buy-in to a major event. You probably can’t from a cash standpoint, but what can you offer that other people need, and where does that make sense.Rebecca: And do you find yourselves in – I would have to imagine this would be extremely affective – when you are onboard with a non-profit or an organization that’s kind of thinking the way you are, are you interfacing directly with the sponsors and their media people in developing that campaign terms of how they are showing up at the event?

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Michael: Yeah. There’s no downside to bartering in my view of how I look at the economy of these things. We get direct access to the leadership of an organization, to their sponsor base in return we are providing a very high level of service that the non-profit or partner would not otherwise be able to do. And if we all do that right, everyone comes out of that looking really good with a lot more opportunities in front of them.So, we do that a lot to point – and being very honest, and to the point when we started doing this I had accountants and business advisors and all sorts of people would tell us we were giving away too much work. And I said I need you to quantify those hours as a marketing expense, not as overhead. And that’s an internal billing thing, but that’s how I look at.If we are dedicating X number of thousands of dollars to an event like that, it is not overhead where my team is just donating time, it’s a marketing expense that otherwise we would have to go out there and get our name out another way. So, I think in this new economy we have to be creative that way to be able to support what we want to support.Rebecca: So, interesting. I think one of the real messages I am kind of gleaning from this conversation is that currently the way sponsors are often activated is really around the funding and then providing a universe of people at the event. But having a much more robust conversation with the sponsor, and their media teams and really planning that out, actually provides you with a much bigger bump and a much bigger value and then their numbers are actually contributing to your impressions and all the rest that you are then going to feed back to them post event.Michael: I am 100% with you. The other trend that that keeps up with then is what funders are actually looking to put their money into. So, outside of running the company I sit on six different boards and in those boards, we put on a lot of events. We talk to a lot of sponsors. I chaired the Urban League Board for a while, and a number of other non-profits. When you go to most funders, the days of unrestricted funding and/or event funding being the primary way of giving, has gone down significantly, and in some cases, they are not even allowed to do it any longer. So, that idea that we are going to do one blow-out gala and that’s going to be your buy-in just doesn’t happen any longer.

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So, you find a lot of non-profits get in this box of yes, I want the funding, but I don’t want the 70 percent of effort of that funding that’s come to creating a new program. How do we figure this out? So, in kind of a board capacity, I think it’s very important to sit down with your funding base and ask them what they need out of a year-long agreement with your organization. And they probably want the sponsorship recognition that comes from a gala, but they can’t use that as their primary reason for coming in. So, if you give them the fundability of the other work, and the gala becomes that add on to give them visibility, then suddenly those funding numbers get to where you want. But it’s just understanding.Rebecca: What the approach is. Let’s talk about the shift because we’re seeing it as well, that the entry point isn’t the gala anymore. The entry point is programmatic and sort of along that line. Talk a little about, is it summits and thought leadership series, is it the actual work that the organization is doing, how does a funder want to come in outside of the gala, traditional gala format?Michael: Right. So, if you look at where funding is going both at a foundation, individual and corporate donor and I will try not to get us all the way off track here, but if you look at the largest piece of the fundraising pie, it’s still is individual donors. The amount of funding that is corporate funding and the non-profit space specifically is, and continues to be, quite small. The foundation space is also quite small. Now there are big numbers in corporations and foundations, but the largest percentage is still individual donors. Individual donors are also the ones that are the least engaged in traditional galas. Right? Most people aren’t paying the $700 ticket or the $300 ticket, they are going to the corporate table that has paid $10,000 or $20,000.Rebecca: Or coming as our guest.Michael: Exactly or coming as our guest. So, I still think there is room in the event space to figure out how to attract individual donors in a better way, but it’s not going to be through those traditional channels of “buy a $10,000 table”. We have to find a different buy-in for that.Rebecca: And is that a strategy that you actively work on with your clients?

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Michael: We think about it a lot. And so, I will give you an example from the Urban League, which is one of the galas for the last two years you guys have produced beautifully for us. The challenge there was always if we set ticket price at $250 or $350, that allows us to justify the table cost for corporations and others. And it also means that most individual ticket buyers aren’t buying in at that level, and the next generation of ticket buyers are young professionals, we call them our Thursday Network aren’t buying in at all. And so, when I became board chair, we started the strategy in the first year of the gala that we were going to have our traditional gala, and then we were also going to have an after party for young professionals. And the young professionals we are going to sell a separate ticket for like $90 to their network to be brought in there. And at the same time anyone who came to the gala got to go to the after party as well as part of their ticket price.Now what did that accomplish? It allowed an entirely different group of folks to buy-into events that used to be off limits. It gave the actual ticket buyers who were paying that $350 an added “value” of an after party. And it forced some intergenerational mingling, which we need for any non-profit to maintain going forward.It also allowed the big Urban League to off set the cost for the young professional’s party, which the ticket price alone would have never done. So, I think there are generally ways to kind of check a bunch of boxes, but it takes some really diligent effort of saying, we are probably going to lose money on this in year one. But do we open ourselves up to a new network that we were never a part of and is that enough to carry forward?Rebecca: And from a sponsorable perspective, is that after party fundable or sponsorable?Michael: I think it is. And each year, and in this case, we found a sponsor that likely would have been part of the Urban League Network anyway but couldn’t quite figure out how that traditional, formal, black-tie gala fit into their budget priorities. But if you want to talk about attracting and recruiting and retaining millennials that’s an easier thing for us to fund. So, it’s that’s kind of building an event that meets the funding priorities instead of the other ways around.

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Rebecca: So, interesting.Michael: The other thing I would say from trends is when I started on boards, we’re not talking ancient history here, but I think if you look at how most fundraising was done we have gotten into a rhythm where organizations can justify break-even events, if it raised enough visibility. I don’t think we are in the space any longer, how I talk about it to most clients or boards that I am on, is that if the profit and loss numbers for this gala were reported on the front page of The Post, is that a defensible position? So, if you are spending $300,000 and you are making $300,000, that’s a harder thing to be like all of this money went to serve our clients. There are times when it’s still worth it for visibility and others, but I think boards have to be much more aware of “what is the return of dollars back to the clients you are serving?”. Because I have seen funders ask for that for more than they used to. And not just in a consulting capacity, but in a board chair capacity. That was one of the top questions I would get of my $50,000, how much of that can you guarantee me is going back to the clients you serve.So, we have to be aware of that to make sure those numbers are where they need to be. And that’s where I think organizations like yours and mine at some level help, is that we have negotiated with vendors, we know what things should cost. Just because we have had the same vendor for 30 years and we really like them, doesn’t mean that’s the best return on investment. But sometimes you need an outsider to come in and ask those questions in a deliberate way.Rebecca: So, let’s talk about how you come in and get to ask those questions. What is the best way for you to intersect with organizations that bring you on, at what point should they bring you on, what makes the most sense for you to be successful as an organization and for the organization you are working with?Michael: So, as a communications and a community engagement firm our preferred method of engagement goes beyond an event. It goes into a year-long cycle or a month-long cycle where the event is a piece of everything else that we are trying to accomplish.To get a tiny bit into our business model, every single thing we do across the board in the history of our company has been firm fixed-priced. We don’t do

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anything hourly. We do everything on an agreed upon preset price. It’s not a retainer that we are billing to, it’s a firm fixed-price that we do. We find for our business that’s better for a couple of different reasons. It gives us the ability to project out revenue a bit more, but most importantly it gives us the ability to have a relationship with a client that’s not dictated by how much you are getting charged every time I call you. So, in that format it allows us to form a relationship that goes beyond an event, or beyond a very specific hourly contract into something that says let’s meet everyone’s needs. I will give you an example of a really unique version of that.The City Open Tennis Tournament is one of our clients here in Washington D.C. Fifty years old this year, an amazing tournament, one of the only pro sporting events in the world owned by a non-profit, so the majority of the revenue from that tournament goes back to local education causes. In a traditional environment we would be hired as a communications partner just for the nine days of that tournament, maybe a little before and at the end. To their credit, the City Open hires us on an annual contract that allows us to be their partner 12 months of the year. So, that we can plan up and plan down, and do everything that it takes for those nine days to be really successful. The cost to them isn’t necessarily greater, we are just spreading that over a longer period of time with an understanding that we are better partners in that sense.Does that make sense?Rebecca: Total sense. And we kind of feel the same way. Often people will say, you can plan an event in six months, and we can but we would be much more effective to be at the inception at the conversation around what are your goals outside of the event, what are your goals, so those ideas can be infused into the event as wellMichael: Right. And the learnings.Rebecca: Correct. And I would assume – and just a quick thing on learnings. As part of the metrics of success potentially, I would think you would get feedback sometimes. Whether it’s from the community or from the audiences, how are you collecting that information?

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Michael: A couple of different ways. On the kind of high-tech side of things if you have a really solid mailing list of people who are at an event I am a fan of the post-event survey, but not like 30 questions but like two with an open-ended format of telling us what you like.Rebecca: Are there two like “home run” questions everyone should ask?Michael: I think the one that I like the most which is actually the hardest to get people convinced is a good question. Talks about motivation to act afterwards. So, what did you know about this organization coming in on a scale of one to ten, how much did you know after the event and how likely are you to stay engaged? I think that very simple metric is a great way of showing if that moved people to action. So, I like that question a lot. Sometimes people don’t love that question because, what do you do with that information, right? Whereas if you say, “did you like the food?”, you can do something about that. The same with “did you like the parking?”. Rebecca: Well, you can do something, you could completely change the program and kind of content you are serving up.Michael: I think it also gives specifically non-profits metrics that they can then go to a funder with and say, it’s not just a gala 70% of the people who came to our gala were moved to take action after that. That’s now fundable outside of having a really fancy dinner.Rebecca: Right.Michael: Does that make sense?Rebecca: Total.Michael: So, I like looking at it that way. I think it’s also really important as partners to sit back down and look at the numbers. Did we meet what we wanted to on every level? Were our event costs where they needed to be? Was our fundraising where it needed to be? And what did we raise in the room? I think the more that organizations get comfortable sharing that level of data we all walk out of then knowing did we hit our metrics or not, and what can we do differently for that next year. Because they are all interconnected.

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Rebecca: Well, what I can say that as an event professional we have always had great success with partnering with your company in particular and other companies around the world. And there’s a real difference. It makes a real difference in terms of the outcomes and while there’s hesitancy, oh, we can produce in this in-house, we can do the social media in-house, there is true value in taking on partners that can help organizations like this think bigger.Michael: Right. I think there’s always opportunities for partnerships that somehow get lost in the event space. Maybe you don’t see this as much as I do. I am thinking specifically of non-profits again. They spent all of this time and strategic planning, and everything is planned out like page by page to a level of minutia, and all of the sudden it’s time for the event. We are going to get a quote from six different hotels and we are going pay the best one – it’s like no go to those hotels and ask if they want to partnership with your organization, because they have social metrics that they need to report out every year too. That’s it’s almost like that it’s a space that is so foreign to what most non-profits are operating in every day. They just don’t believe they have the right to ask for that.Rebecca: Partnerships it’s the wave of the future, I agree.Michael: So, then I will use the Urban League example again, because it’s one we have worked together on. Bringing Linder in was a partnership decision. It was a business decision, but it was also a partnership decision that we want to pay the money for the most professional vendor we can to help produce an event that tells the story that we want to tell. Because that will make us better. Then we went to the Reagan Building, which has hosted us in the last two years. And the said we don’t just want to be a vendor, we want to be a partner. That’s a sponsor, that’s figuring out if you have any room on the corkage fee. It’s all of that stuff that comes from being a partner. Then you go to like a ride-share company and like Lyft who we work with and they want to be a partner and provide not just pick-up and drop-off, but they want to build out an outdoor pick-up and drop-off lounge. So, suddenly you produced something bigger without anything out of pocket as a non-profit. So, it’s trying to find those partnerships in the same way you would at any other part of running your organization.

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Rebecca: Michael, thanks so much for being our guest on the show today and providing us such valuable information and insights. In the meantime, if you have more questions for Michael, or me that you want answered in an upcoming session please email us at eventsceo@linderglobal.com. And follow us on social media, all of the links are on our website at LinderGlobal.com. Thanks for listening and until next time make your days great.

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