Sorority Fundraiser: The No Come Event

Don’t Come Event to Help Your Cause

A Don’t Come event is a simple way to get donations for your philanthropy or other cause with little preparation. The event, which will never really occur, will just take some creativity in promotion but little in planning. Your Don’t Come event will also allow chapters to purchase tickets but not have to put in any effort to actually attend your fundraiser.

The key to having a great Don’t Come event is how creative you can be with your invitations. Since you are not actually having a physical event, you can create any scenario for your fundraiser. There are a number of fun and outrageous scenarios you can create for your Don’t Come event.

For instance, have you thought about your event being a non-existent trip on the Starship Enterprise? How about a no-game between your sorority sisters and the Chicago Bears? You can create any scenario you want. You can even evoke the non-attendance of any celebrity. It can be your “Don’t Come to the No Book Signing with Stephen King” event.

Whatever creative title you come up with for your event, you will also need to decide on a date for your Don’t Come event. The great thing about your date for this event is that you have few considerations for this type of event. You can even set a make-believe date like “Star Date 26142 at half past a freckle and a hair.”

Once you have your creative name, date, and time, you can then come up with your invitations. Since you will have little cost associated with this event, you can go all out on your invitations. Keep your invitations along the theme of your event. For instance, if your Don’t Come event is a football game, you will want your invitations to your Don’t Come event to fit that theme. Your invitations can be hand made by your sisters, or they can be purchased through an invitation maker. You can even consider sending along sorority apparel or gifts with your invitations to each chapter.

While you are designing your invitations, you can also design your tickets. Even though no one will actually be attending your event, it is a nice touch to offer tickets. Keep your tickets along the same theme. For instance, if your non-event is meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can have your tickets shaped like barbells. These also can be hand made or ordered.

During this time you may want to consider adding a challenge to each fraternity and sorority to purchase the most tickets to your Don’t Come event. You can order some sorority merchandise to hand out as prizes to the chapter that orders the most tickets.

Once you have your tickets and invitations created, you will then need to advertise your Don’t Come event. You can make a big deal about your Don’t Come event by hand delivering your invitations to each chapter. This also allows you to explain your Don’t Come event to each chapter. Make sure you have a deadline on your order form for tickets, so that chapters will know when the donations are due. Also, the price of your tickets should take into consideration the amount you spent on invitations and tickets along with any sorority merchandise and gifts to hand out as prizes.

Upon the deadline for donations, make sure you follow up with any chapter that has not turned in an order form. Then send “Thank You” notes to each chapter that made a donation. Also you will want to award the sorority or fraternity that ordered the most tickets the sorority apparel and merchandise that you had ordered earlier.