Why Do We Gather? How to Create More Purposeful Nonprofit Events

When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way to go from here, the cat offers a reasonable response: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. 

Alice says she doesn't much care as long as she gets somewhere. And the cat (who has clearly sat through a few nonprofit planning meetings btw) tells her it doesn't much matter which way she goes then.

I think about that cat every October.

Because there's a moment—around 5:45 p.m., linens on, centerpieces placed, the AV crew finally satisfied—when we stand at the back of a room we've spent nine months building and we genuinely cannot say what it's FOR. Not the mission. The mission, in all its overly wordsmithed glory, is splashed on every screen. I mean this room, this night, these 250 people. What is supposed to be different tomorrow because they came tonight?

We ask our donors to tell us why they give. We build whole surveys around it. And most of us have never once asked ourselves about the thing we spend the most money on.

When I first started working with nonprofit events, I remember my excitement the night of the annual donor recognition gala. We’d spent months planning every detail, and it showed. It was a shimmering, nearly flawless production, in a room filled with people having a great time. But I stood in the back feeling empty—not just tired, empty. And then my colleague said: Everything looks so good, but it has no soul. 

The words stung, but she was right. We’d been so caught up in delivering production value, we’d forgotten to stay focused on why we were doing it in the first place. We never asked what would change as a result of the experience, so nothing did. 

It took me a few years to diagnose that empty feeling, to step off the hamster wheel and look closely at what drives this work, at what really matters underneath all the shimmer.     

The Three Answers

Here’s what I've learned to do. When a team tells me about their signature event, I ask why they hold it. Then I wait. The first answer is always the polished one—community, connection, celebrating our donors. So I ask again, and I keep my mouth shut long enough to get uncomfortable.

The second answer is almost always one of three:

The board expects it. Somebody's spouse chairs the committee. Somebody's firm buys a table. Cancelling the event costs us more politically than running it costs us financially.

We've always done it this way. Our old friend the dragon, still guarding the calendar, still breathing fire on anyone who suggests the luncheon might have run its course sometime around 2000-and-late (I see you Fergie fans).

We need the net revenue (but that feels uncomfortable so we call it connection). This one's the hardest to say out loud, because it isn't shameful—we do need the money—but the dressing-up is where the trouble starts. Once we've told ourselves a fundraiser is really about connections, we stop measuring it as either one. So call it what it is, and don’t apologize. 

None of those three answers is purpose as stated. They're explanations for why something continues, which is a very different thing.

Here’s the truth: An event with no defined behavior change isn't an event. It's an expensive habit with a guest list.

That's the generous take. I'd actually go one step further: when we spend a quarter of our donor engagement budget on a night we can't explain, we've made a decision about our donors' money without being able to tell them what we bought. Call it what you want. I call it a quiet breach of trust.

This Isn't an Event Problem

Here's the part that took me too long to see, and the reason this piece isn't really about the gala.

An organization that can't say why it gathers usually can't say why it does a lot of things. The quarterly newsletter. The named recognition society tiers no one has revisited since 2011. The campaign kickoff, scheduled just because “a campaign requires a kickoff.” Events just make the widespread failure visible, because events have a date and a budget line and a room full of witnesses.

No, it’s not an event problem: it’s a culture problem. Culture reflects whether an organization is willing to interrogate its own habits. And what we won't interrogate ends up running us.

Priya Parker gets at this in The Art of Gathering: a gathering is people brought together for a reason. Reason, singular. Not “reasons,” plural. And not “because it's the second Thursday in April.”

From honor rolls to recognition societies, I’ve sat with plenty of nonprofit leaders wrestling with whether they should retire a seemingly beloved donor activity. It’s rarely a straightforward conversation, and the thing I’ve seen them get hung up on most often is not the value of the program itself (they usually can’t name it), it’s tradition. So they rush to answer the unrelated question, “what do we do instead?” and when they can’t, they stick with the status quo. Because doing something feels more comfortable than walking away from failure and giving ourselves time to create something more effective.   

But continuing to pursue that failure with event experiences is now just a very expensive bad habit.  

The Table Read

So let's name the fix, because a diagnosis without a remedy is just complaining with footnotes.

With a nod to my fellow theatre buffs, I call it The Table Read. Three sentences. Somebody says them aloud, in the room where it happens, with the calendar closed, and before a single deposit goes down.

Not written in a doc nobody opens. Out loud, where colleagues can hear how it sounds.

Sentence one: We are gathering so that [this specific group of donors] will [do this specific thing].

Not “so donors feel appreciated.” Feelings aren't behaviors. Which donors—lapsed mid-level? First-time givers from the emergency appeal? Board prospects we've been circling for two years? And what do we want them to DO—take a follow-up meeting, make a second gift, bring a friend, say yes to a proposal?

If we can't fill both brackets, we're not ready to book a room. And if the honest answer is “we don't know what our donors want from us,” that's not a reason to guess in a conference room with two colleagues. That's a reason to ask them. Purpose-Driven work starts with data, and the data lives with the people we're gathering.

Sentence two: They'll walk in [this way], and they'll walk out [that way].

This is the delta, and it's where intentional experience design earns its keep. Name the entering state honestly—skeptical, distracted, unaware their gift did anything at all. Then name the exit. Then, design backward from the gap.

Picture a food bank's annual breakfast. 

Version one: hotel ballroom, scrambled eggs in a chafing dish, a slideshow, a nice board member with a microphone. Donors walk in supportive and walk out supportive. Nothing moved.

Version two: 6 a.m. in the distribution warehouse. Cold concrete under folding chairs, the smell of cardboard and yellow onions, a forklift beeping somewhere behind the pallets, coffee in the same paper cups the volunteers use. Every donor packs one box, tapes it, writes their name on the lid. They eat standing up. They leave with grit on their shoes and a very specific idea of what a $40 gift does.

Same budget. Wildly different exits. (And considerably better parking)

Sentence three: We'll know it worked because [this observable thing happens by this date].

Second gifts within 90 days. Meetings accepted within the next six months. Attendance from a segment that's ignored us for three years. Something we can count and actually will count.

This is Return on Engagement, and it's the sentence that gets skipped—we'll evaluate later, once things calm down. Oh my friends, the calm week is not coming. It never has. Evaluation gets built into the plan on day one or it doesn't happen at all, and then we're back at 5:45 p.m. next October, standing at the back of the room, unable to say what it's for.

Scoring the Gala

Watch what happens when we run the fundraising gala through this honestly. We are gathering so that table sponsors will renew at $25,000. They'll walk in as sponsors and walk out as sponsors. We'll know it worked because we've banked it by June 30.

It passes one and three, and sentence two is where it shows its hand. Walk in a sponsor, walk out a sponsor—that's a delta of zero, stated plainly. It’s the test working exactly as designed, surfacing that we're running a transaction and calling it a relationship.

And that's the point. The Table Read reveals what we’re actually doing. A revenue-only goal is legitimate—the outcome is real, it's just ours, not theirs—but once it's named out loud, we stop pretending the night is about stewardship, we stop counting it toward engagement, and we stop being surprised when the attendees don't feel closer to us. 

When we get honest about the reason—the singular reason—behind an event, that’s when we get real about what it’s moving and what it’s not. 

“But We Don't Have Time for This”

I know. I've said it, too.

Notice what The Table Read actually costs though: about 30 minutes, once, at the front end. Compare that to nine months of production toward a night that changes nothing. We're not short on time. We're short on the willingness to hear the three sentences fall flat in front of colleagues—because once they've been said out loud and landed badly, somebody has to do something about it.

That's the real cost. It isn't the 30 minutes of our time. It's the accountability that follows.

And I'd rather sit through 30 uncomfortable minutes in March than spend the following January explaining to a VP why the numbers didn't move.

Then, and Only Then, the Fun Part

Once the three sentences hold, design gets easier—or at least it gets possible. Engaging all five senses, building a genuine narrative arc, pulling donors from watching into doing: those tools work beautifully in service of a defined behavior change delta, and they're expensive decoration without one. Sensory design applied to an event with no purpose is just a very well-lit bad habit.

Tactics are the second conversation. Purpose is the one that makes them worth having.

Back to Alice

The cat wasn't being difficult (though I have always appreciated his flair for drama). He was being precise: if you don't care where you end up, every road works, and you'll walk a long way with excellent lighting and beautiful centerpieces and arrive absolutely nowhere.

So here's the invitation, and I want you to do it this week, not next quarter:

Pick the event you'd defend the most. The sacred one. The one where somebody will audibly gasp if you suggest moving it. Put 30 minutes on the calendar, get the people who actually decide things in the room, and say the three sentences out loud.

If they hold—wonderful. You've got proof, and now you know your design direction.

If they don't hold, you've just learned something worth more than the event ever raised. And you learned it now, in a conference room, for free. Just don't answer "what do we do instead?" in the same meeting. That's the question that keeps the tired old luncheon alive for another decade.

Event experiences represent one of the most significant investments of resources from our organizations and our donors. Don’t we owe it to both—and to ourselves—to ensure there is meaning and value, a soul, in every single one?

Do the table read, y’all. Choose the path that makes sense because you know where you’re going, and you’ll stop standing in the back feeling empty.

Ready to put purpose at the center of your next donor event?

Join Matthew Helmer and Angie Joens for DRG’s Keys to Donor Events Bootcamp this November.

Through eight hours of live learning, you’ll work through the WHY, HOW, WHAT, and NOW WHAT of donor events, from defining your purpose to designing the experience and measuring what happens next. Join us and start building event plans that bring donors closer to your mission.

Written by Matthew Helmer