The theme is going to set the tone and mood of your event, starting with the very first words your audience hears about it.  Depending on what type of fundraiser you are planning, your audience may hear about it many months in advance or hear about it for the first time when the receive the invitation. 

Themes based on cultural influences (like Florence, Italy) can create strong, cohesive messages (www.freedigitalphotos.net)

With a school auction, for example, you are going to start talking to your parent body (who are the primary attendees) very early on in the school year despite the fact that the auction won’t be scheduled until sometime in the spring.  The reason for the early notification here is that your parent body is the primary source of volunteers, as well as the primary source of donation items.  When it comes to your donated items, your parents will either donate items themselves or they will pound that pavement to solicit items from local businesses they patronize, as well as from their families, friends and business associates.  

 

You should always start the fundraising early on and all that ties into the messaging around the event.  You want the event look to be consistent throughout the communications you have with your constituents.  If you have a volunteer team that solicits local businesses versus soliciting your constituents directly, you are still going to want to have consistency in the look and feel of the materials that go out because there will be overlap amongst the various groups with whom you are communicating.  If any of your business donors decide to attend the event or participate in other ways, it’s important that they feel they are at the same event they donated too.

Holiday or parties, like Mardi Gras, also serve as good themes for a fundraising event. (Stock.Xchng, www.sxc.hu)

This goal requires communication from your marketing team, your solicitation team, as well as your decorations team as early on in the planning process as possible.

The first step in determining the look and feel of your messaging is to determine what the overall look and feel of your event is going to be – the theme.  There are a different ways you can go for your event theme.  You can pick a cultural theme (Asian, Italian, French, etc.), a party theme (Mardi Gras, etc.) or an inspirational theme (Reaching for the Stars, etc.).  You can also choose to go with symbols and motifs for your event theme. 

Whatever you choose to do, the key is that your marketing team and your decorations team are on the same page.

One example at a school auction, the graphic designer determined the theme with her inspiration for a French Provencal theme centered around Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night.  The materials incorporated a version of Van Gogh’s painting.  When the guests arrived at the auction,

A school auction used Van Gogh's "Starry Night" as the inspiration for their event. (Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org)

the decorations team had pulled it all together with a beautiful French Provencal look, with the color scheme based on the colors of the painting itself – purples, golds, greens, and black. 

 

The next year, the auction committee selected their theme based on a culture, choosing an Asian-inspired event.  They then looked for a symbol to center their theme on within that broad category.  They selected a Chinese proverb that they felt was pretty symbolic for their community.  The proverb said “Learning is a treasure that follows its owner everywhere”.  When the theme was handed over to the design team, they came up with a very beautiful calligraphy version of the proverb and designed a gorgeous red materials plan.  Everything was red with white or black calligraphy.  It was very elegant and very well designed.  When carried out at the event by the decorations team, the linens, the signs, the decorative items all incorporated that calligraphy and the red, white and black color scheme.  They also utilized Asian style-decorative items, such as bamboo, to pull that theme through the event itself.

 

Overall, this school made conscious decisions to create complete events, where the thematic elements were consistently presented in all the materials from the solicitation forms to their final event decorations.  This kind of cohesiveness creates a incredibly powerful message for both the donors and the event attendees.