How to Run Your Gala or Fundraising Event in PatronManager

Updated on Aug 23, 2024

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How to Run Your Gala or Fundraising Event in PatronManager: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1117801

No matter how you pronounce it, organizing a gala (or any fundraising event, for that matter) is a big undertaking! This article points you to resources to organize and track your gala in PatronManager, including:

How to set up your gala
Patron registration
Reporting on results

You can also check out our recorded webinar on Running Your Gala in PatronManager here.

Why organize your event in PatronManager?

We're defining "gala" here as any fundraising event or party held to raise money for your organization, often including activities like auctions, cocktails, dinner, and non-ticketed performances.

Though you may have other tools you use to build and track your gala, use PatronManager to utilize:

Campaigns: track your attendee list and your revenue all in one place
Enhanced Donation Forms: sell your gala tickets/tables online with custom, flexible pricing!
Easy reporting: you’ll see real-time results to easily track the progress of your gala

1. Make a plan

It's important to have a plan before we get started! Take time to think through the event and what information will be tracked in PatronManager, such as:

Are we selling single tickets or tables?
Are we offering any pre- or post-gala events?
Do we need the names of additional guests?
What other information do we need?
Do we need to know dietary restrictions?

Consider this: if there was a paper registration form for this event, what information would be on it? This can be super helpful to reference when creating fields and forms for the event.

2. How to set up your event

First things first: let's set up the structure we'll need in PatronManager to track all our information. We'll need a Campaign, a custom Record Type, custom fields, and a new Page Layout to organize for our event.

Set up a Campaign to track patrons (including RSVPs) and donations

We'll uses Campaigns to track attendees and donations under the banner of our gala event. The best part of using Campaigns is you can nest them in a hierarchy system to better track your development department's plans.

Learn All About Campaigns here, and check out all our Campaign articles to learn how to create a Campaign, add Campaign Members, and create a Custom Status to track RSVPs.

How should I set my Campaign up?

We recommend using a three-tier Campaign hierarchy (or, optionally, four-tiers) to track all development efforts (including this gala):

Parent Campaign: tracks all development efforts during the fiscal year, e.g. "FY2020 Development"
- Mid-level Campaign: groups all the galas you'll do in this fiscal year together, e.g. "2020 Donor Galas"
  - Child Campaign: tracks the invitees and donations for this specific gala, e.g. "2020 Spring Gala"
    - Optional Child Campaign: track special groups of people within your gala (such as VIPs or Major Donors), e.g. "2020 Spring Gala VIPs"

With this Campaign structure we can track information such as:

How this gala is contributing to the fiscal year overall
Projected/actual income and costs for this gala - and for all galas this year
RSVP Status for all invitees with Custom Campaign Member Status for “RSVP Yes” and “RSVP No”

Learn more about Campaign Hierarchy in this article.

Create a Gala Registration Donation Record Type

Record Types let you create different stages, picklist values, and page layouts for your Donations. Gala Registrations or fundraising event registrations are different from a regular donation in many ways, and a designated Record Type helps you keep everything organized.

In short, Record Types keep your Gala Registrations distinct - both in look and in the data you collect. We can also use the Record Type to filter Donations, making reporting a breeze.

Learn more about how to set up a custom Record Type here.

Create custom fields to track event-specific information

Custom fields are used to track specific information relating to your gala or fundraising event.

Fields for your event typically fall into two categories:

Fields for patron registration (like the patron’s name, how many tickets they’d like to purchase, their dietary restrictions, etc.)
Fields for additional record keeping (like the type of auction item the Patron won or the year the Gala occurred in)

Some of these custom fields you create can be used in tandem with Enhanced Donation forms.

Here's our article all about Creating Custom Fields.

Ideas for custom fields

Here are a few ideas of custom fields to create:

Gala Tickets (text field): allow patrons to select how many tickets they'd like
Gala Tables (picklist field): allow patrons to select the type or total number of tables they'd like to purchase
Post-Gala After Party (picklist field): allow patrons to select whether they will attend a related event
Dietary Restrictions (picklist field): allow patrons to select from a list of dietary restrictions
Dietary Restrictions (text field): allow patrons to write in any dietary restrictions on a registration form

Refer back to your event plan to decide what fields will need to be created for this event.

Use a custom Page Layout for Gala Registrations

Now that we have our Gala Registration Record Type and custom fields ready to go, we can customize the Page Layout for these records.

Page Layouts customize the appearance of your donation records, such as the organization of buttons, fields, and related lists. We've got specific information we want to track for our event that we don't need to see on standard donations such as dietary needs or the names of their table guests. We can add those fields and remove any necessary fields on the page layout.

Our article Page Layouts: Change the Way Your Accounts, Contacts, and Donations Look walks you through the process to update your page layouts.

3. Patron registration

Get ready to register your guests with both online and manual registration.

Use an Enhanced Donation Form for online registrations

Enhanced Donation Forms automatically calculate totals from special fields - pretty useful for patrons to select the number tickets/tables they want to reserve and then pay for that amount!

Now's when you'll put those custom fields you created to work. You'll connect your custom fields to enhanced donation form fields to to be used on your registration form.

Learn how to use Enhanced Donation Forms in our article How to Create an Enhanced Donation Form.

Manually enter registrations

For patrons who want to pay for your gala with cash or check, you can manually enter their registration. Be sure to enter information for ALL the required fields, including number of tickets/tables and the total amount of the donation.

Remember to calculate totals! Automatic calculations don't happen when you manually enter gala registrations.

4. Reporting on results

Tracking your gala or fundraising event in PatronManager means you can get real-time data with reports in your system. You can use reports to view data on your Donations, Campaigns, and Contacts.

Check out this chapter all about Reporting to see all your options, and take a look at these examples we've gathered for you to get you brainstorming:

See the donations that came in through your gala or fundraising event