Help! – Not a day goes by without you seeing someone in a fluorescent tabard emblazoned with the logo of a charity. They stand outside shops collecting money, selling key rings, pin-badges or other trinkets. While it can sometimes be a nuisance, have you ever wondered what goes into putting together such a campaign? That is a real event management challenge !

Event management courses will teach you that it can take up to a year to plan and co-ordinate a national fundraising or awareness campaign. You may think that that’s an exaggeration, but once you start a course, you’ll understand why it takes so long.

Charity or activist group fundraising, communications, marketing and volunteer co-ordinators’ teams put in so much work. They have regular meetings to plan the best approach for the upcoming activities. They agree on the key messages, trash out the advertising and event management budget. In the same vein, they review insurance policies to ensure that it covers staff, volunteers and anyone else participating. Lists of people who will be available to collect or steward events, are drawn up and double-checked to make sure that all time slots are covered adequately.

One of the most crucial details to clarify, is how to handle donations and purchases of trinkets? Nowadays, people are using debit and credit cards, PayPal and new phone-to-phone payment apps, text-to-donate-numbers as well as cash. If you want to maximise the amount of money collected, you need to have the resources and capability to accept donations from all of these sources. Details of how contributions can be received need to be highlighted on publicity materials. These include print media and social media advertisements.

Liaising with and carefully co-ordinating volunteers is essential, and requires a high level of diplomacy – particularly as the majority of volunteers are offering help for free. They are not employees – so they are not subject to the same rules regarding working hours etc. You need to remember that volunteers do not have to show up if they don’t want to. In addition, the way you handle any unrest or issues with a volunteer can have negative knock-on repercussions with the other volunteers, goodwill goes a long way. It is really important to brief everyone properly about what you need them to do, where they can help, what times they are required, who will be taking over from them, and most of all, make sure they have contact details and know who to contact in the event of an emergency. Safety is always a top priority.

Apart from fundraising collections, there may be a series of other events taking place on the same day, or over the weekend in aid of your organisation and run by non-staff members. Who is responsible for them? Do they need a supply of promotional materials, or help publicising the activities on social media or the official organisation website?

If it is an annual event, what lessons did the team learn from the last time? What worked, what could have been better? Did you get any feedback from the public about it? Did you get much press coverage? If you could secure a sponsor – which company or donor would be appropriate? Also, how would they expect to benefit from the association? What sort of input would they expect to have in how they run the events? In what way would you agree to include their name in any advertisements or marketing? would you need to include their name in any social media hashtags?

There is a lot more to charity fundraisers and awareness days than you may think. Therefore, spare a thought for all the hard work that has gone into it. The next time you pass a collector in the street, attend a family fun-day in aid of a local charity or see a social media post about a cause that is close to your heart.

If you think you have what it takes to get into event management, check out this online event management course and put your skills to good use.