There are five ways to increase the results of your Ask Event^™ and ensure that you meet or exceed the predictable results.

1. Sponsor

Have the event sponsored by a corporation or foundation that already knows you and supports your work. You can determine the dollar amount of the sponsorship. At a minimum, it should cover the costs of putting on the event.

As your event grows in size and stature each year, you may be able to raise the price of the sponsorship and offer more visibility for the corporation than they would have received for sponsoring your golf tournament or other smaller special event. One organization we work with has a $250,000 sponsor for their large Ask Event.

Ideally, you will have only one significant sponsor, headed by a person or group of people who have been involved as volunteers or beneficiaries of your work. In addition to making a large sponsorship gift, they may participate in the program, perhaps as a Testimonial Speaker or the Pitch Person.

2. Challenge Gift

Having a significant Challenge Gift can make a big difference in the bottom-line results of your Ask Event. In addition, it lets you start your event with a boost of confidence. This gift from one or more major donors is announced just prior to the Pitch. Ideally, the Challenge Gift is set up as a true match for some or all of the money raised at the event, giving your guests a sense of urgency and a sense that their gift is being leveraged. They will perceive it as a bargain of sorts, to make a gift to you that day.

3. More Table Captains

The most obvious way to increase the bottom line is to have more people attend your event, which, to follow this model, would require more Table Captains.

The results of your Ask Event correlate directly to the number of people in attendance. In other words, the more guests you have, the more money you will raise.

If you take this to heart, you will allow the lead time necessary to go through the preliminary steps to generate a long list of Table Captains.

Specifically, this will require two things: putting on regularly-scheduled, well attended Point of Entry Events, and making a detailed Treasure Map^® with your team of the network of people in your organization's universe.

Until your Point of Entry^® Events have become part of everyday life at your organization, you will not have the model solidly entrenched. You should be so comfortable with the content and format and venue for your Point of Entry that you could put on this sizzling one-hour introductory event on a moment's notice. The more Point of Entry guests you have, the more passionate Table Captains you will have.

The Treasure Map is your most powerful tool for identifying groups of potential Table Captains that are right under your nose, yet you may never have thought of them. Rather than relying on the same old prospects, most notably by pressuring your board members to once again hit up their friends, you should branch out to all the other individuals and groups that are already demonstrating their support by being involved in some way in the day-to-day life of your organization. Detailed instructions for creating a Treasure Map are included in each of the three Raising More Money books, and a shorter version is available on our Web site.

Your Treasure Map will change rapidly as you implement the model, so I recommend you make a new Treasure Map at least twice a year. Many groups do this quarterly.

4. Higher percentage of "Ripened Fruit"

By now, you have probably had the thought: "Why is only 20% 'ripened fruit' required at an Ask Event? Why not more than that?" You can see that the bottom-line results also correlate with the percentage of people who attended a true Point of Entry, received a Follow-Up Call, and were properly cultivated following our permission-based system, so you know they are ready to give.

Clearly, the more "ripened fruit" at the Ask Event, the better. Groups that have 80–90% of their guests in this category raise several times more money than those with only 20%.

After the first Ask Event, every single group comes to this realization on their own and suddenly becomes more interested in the rest of the model. They recognize that for the same amount of work it takes to put on an Ask Event, they could multiply their net results if they just took the time up front to more fully cultivate their donors.

The sad fact is that most nonprofits are so locked into the treadmill of survival-based fundraising, that the thought of planting the seeds, tilling the soil, and waiting until the time is right for the harvest is unrealistic for the first Ask Event. If we could make you do that, we would. Instead, we have the 20% "ripened-fruit minimum" rule.

5. More Ask Events Per Year

I hesitate to suggest this option, but many groups use it with great success—putting on more than one Ask Event per year. While your first event may raise more money than any other fundraising event in your organization's history, if you have followed the model, this amount will include all of your five-year pledges. In other words, the actual amount of cash (or credit card or stock) gifts you will have at the end of the first year's event will be a little more than one-fifth of the total. And that amount may not be enough to cover the operating shortfall you have for the first year. Thus, the first reason for putting on more than one Ask Event per year is to raise more money.

And for groups whose first event is in the spring, a second event in November can help to get them onto an annual cycle of a November event, which is the single best month to hold the event (unless you are in a resort community where you have seasonal visitors—in which case April is best).

The second, and the best reason for holding multiple Ask Events per year is location. We work with one organization in a mid-sized market that puts on twelve Ask Events per year. They have segmented their area with great care to know how far people will drive to go to such an event and where people draw the invisible boundary lines between communities. They have had great success.

Another example is a group with a large geographic catchment area, such as part of a state, an entire state, a region, or the entire country.

If you are considering multiple events, put on your first event in your main market first. Ideally, this will be the area closest to you. This will allow you to test out all the variables in a community you are familiar with before you take the event on the road.

There is one other reason for multiple events that may occasionally have some legitimacy; namely, the size of your venue. We worked with a well-known and well-supported fundraising foundation for an historic landmark building. They insisted on having their Ask Event in the building, but it could only accommodate 100 people. In spite of our advice that they hold the event in a larger venue to save themselves having to put on multiple events, they insisted. They held four Ask Events their first year, each in their gorgeous building. Because they had been meticulous in putting on their Point of Entry Events, doing their follow-up and cultivation according to the model, they batched their guests into four separate groups, based on which people were ready to be asked to give. Needless to say, they did fabulously.

However, by the second year, they realized that putting on four Ask Events using the same team of volunteers and staff in the same community was a bit taxing. They now put on one large Ask Event each year, at a downtown hotel. With such a high percentage of "ripened fruit"—people who have already seen their landmark building at the Point of Entry Events and were then further cultivated—they no longer feel the need to hold four smaller Ask Events per year there.

Focusing on these five leverage points will give you more control in predicting the results of your Ask Event.