Lowering Frills to Raise Funds
By Brendan Coffey

Motivation Strategies
Spring 2005
page 38

Creating a top-notch event in the age of tight budgets isn’t easy. It’s an even greater challenge to create something special with limited resources when attendees are some of the wealthiest and worldliest people around. The Sonoma Sweetheart Auction found itself in such a position, yet managed, with some creative thinking applicable to many events, to slash their already-tight budget and get a better response from attendees to boot.

The high-profile auction draws 350 of Sonoma’s biggest names, from winemakers to celebrities, to raise money for the northern California city’s Boys and Girls Clubs. Auction officials had grown to believe they couldn’t hit the proper balance between price and return, a problem many budget-strapped groups have developed in recent years.

Auction tables accented with
inexpensive thematic screens
and vintage photos

“Costs were rising, the satisfaction level wasn’t increasing and…no matter what one did, in the end the result was marginally successful,” says Marshall Bauer, owner of Sonoma-based Wine Country Party & Events, of the auction fund-raiser. “Yes, it worked, and, yes, everything was done on time, but what one could provide for versus what others wanted to accomplish wasn’t a healthy mix.” Eventually, WCP&E, which runs 3,000 events a year, was brought in to save the situation.

For 2005’s auction, officials wanted to wow attendees with their surroundings, but were starting with very raw material: a basketball gym. They chose a 1920s theme, at which guests enjoying a jazz-club cocktail experience in a space adjacent to the gym would be unexpectedly “arrested” one hour into the event. The “police” would round up guests and put them in “jail,” the converted gym, where the main event would take place amid playful convict touches like license plates doubling as bidding paddles.

With this fertile theme now established, the challenge then became the decorating budget--$28,000—and how one outside designer and prop company envisioned bringing the theme to life.

To create a jail effect, the prop company wanted to rent a number of expensive pieces, including a 10-foot brick wall that would run $1,500 for the night. The designer also planned to use a cadre of $50-an-hour designers to hang extensive fabric swagging to cover up the gym rafters. Bauer, who purchased 26-year-old WCP&E two years ago, was already familiar with the budget-strapped event when the auction’s executive director, Kathy Wilson, called to ask his company to take the project over from the prohibitively expensive designer and prop firm.

What $13K Can Buy
Bauer not only said yes, but said he could do it for half of the $28,000 allocated—not including food and beverage—a claim that initially made Wilson wary of winding up with an event that screamed “cheap.”

Attendees found the auction far from cut-rate. It was a resounding success: More money was raised than ever before, and attendee feedback was positive.

The key to replicating that success, says Bauer, is avoiding the natural tendency to overwhelm guests at every turn. Detail is expensive; budgets get busted when planners do too much on tables and add too much detail in every facet of the event, he says. Large centerpieces, complicated table settings and widespread fabric swagging run costs up quickly.

“If you put 30 things on a table, someone has to set each of those up,” Bauer adds. “Typically, that’s nondesign labor, so then you have to have expensive designers supervising what they do,” he explains.

Another costly approach is trying to round up a number of harder-to-find pieces, instead of working in a creative way with items every rental company is bound to have. For example, WCP&E uses half-round tables with cutout centers, lined up in serpentine fashion, to create long and unique-looking bars. Such a setup also gives adults more room to mingle, as opposed to small cocktail tables that get cramped and also seem like “toy furniture” to adults, he adds. For the Sweetheart Auction, Bauer put the bar tables on risers to give attendees a spacious and unique-looking experience from that of other events.

Instead of hanging swagging to lower the ceiling, Bauer’s team saved thousands of dollars by raising the floor with risers, on top of which the banquet seating was set up. In addition, inexpensive fabric screens with frames made of steel tubing were deployed. Bauer’s firm can adapt the screens, measuring five by 10 feet, to create many moods with inexpensive backlighting and interchangeable fabric panels. In the auction’s case, silhouettes of flappers and other jazz-era icons were projected onto them.

Spend Money Where It Counts
Some well-chosen splurges, however, are inevitable—even advisable. “There should always be one large design element that sets the tone for the evening—something slightly outrageous, slightly over the top,” says Bauer. One or two elements like that is enough to establish in the minds of attendees the event is something special, he says.

For those whose budgets allow, there are other expenditures worth their weight when it comes to impressing guests. For this wine-savvy crowd, stemware was definitely one worth exempting from the corner-cutting drive. Small touches like higher-end Riedel crystal make a great impression, even though the cost different is nothing to sniff at: $2 a stem versus 45 cents.

In the final analysis, the key is to figure out what little touches will impress specific attendees, says Bauer. High-end glassware may mean nothing to another type of group. Also, going overboard on expensive décor can actually detract from the main event.

“The primary mistake is too much is thrown at the event. This stuff is expensive and you don’t need outrageous centerpieces and incredible staging sets and so on—it’s like throwing money away with both hands,” says Bauer. “Most of the simple, elegant design elements convey very well to events.”