Make it or Break it: Taglines For Events

Expert nonprofit marketer Nancy Schwartz whose website Getting Attention! has been super informative as I did/do more nonprofit marketing at organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Hoboken Shelter, and PBN.

I've been reading (read skimming) the emails about her 2012 Nonprofit Tagline Awards, and winners have now been selected from over 1,400 entries.  Today, I had some time to take a look at the finalists and some of them were really creative. It got my brain jogging about our fundraising and events and the messaging we use. I think I (or we) always thought a great deal about taglines for the  organizational and program use but not as much about taglines specifically for fundraising and for special events. But since we as fundraisers want to inspire people to attend/give, we probably need messaging here more than anywhere else.

Here are some of the taglines I have used recently for our events at the Hoboken Shelter (this is where I do most events)...

For our 30th Anniversary, our invite cover was a house made up of pictures of guests and we used a line that the women's group had stenciled above the door, "May all who enter as guests, leave as friends." And we invited our family of supporters to celebrate the community we'd created for our homeless neighbors.

In just a few weeks we'll host our second launch party to kickoff a 5K race put on by the Hoboken Elysianettes called the HoBOOken 5K, held Halloween weekend, that benefits the Shelter. When I was doing the invite, I was trying to come up with a cute and not overused tagline connected to running or Halloween.  I eventually gravitated to Halloween and the launch party is a "Get in the Spirit" Wine and Chocolate event to kickoff the 5K.  The flier invites all ghouls, gals, runners and non-runners.

Lastly, in terms of event messaging, the Teak Silent Auction, which is one of our biggest fundraisers and typically brings in $15,000 to $20,000.  I was nominated for the Marketing and Public Relations Chair because of the work I've done with the press, marketing and social media.  I started playing with taglines.  I don't believe we've ever used one, but since I was inspired...
"The Teak Silent Auction: Come to Bid, Stay to Strengthen our Community."

This was a 5 minute experiment...thoughts?  Thanks to Nancy for getting everyone to think about messaging.  As the end of the year comes in we should think about how we talk about ourselves and our messaging and not miss good opportunities to get across what we do.