Table Hosts vs. Open Invitation Banquets
A banquet is a banquet, right? Wrong.
The truth is there's strategy involved. Banquets are highly strategic events that can make or break an organization’s budget. If you fail to meet your fundraising goals, you will need to put in extra effort for the rest of the year to fill that gap.
If you perform better than expected, you will set your non-profit organization up for success. That additional margin can even be used to make major improvements with the extra funds. Wouldn’t that be a great position to be in?
Professional fundraisers know that certain banquet styles are better and more effective than others. Certain setups will be more conducive to raising funds and attracting the right people to your event.
Table Hosts or Open Invitation?
One common question is whether it’s better to host a banquet with either table hosts or an open invitation. While both are banquets, they can feel like comparing apples and oranges.
While table hosts are highly targeted and aim to attract those with higher capacity to give, open invitation can appeal to families and the general public.
For banquets with table hosts, the idea is to ask a current donor or member of your community to host a table with a number of seats. They will be responsible for inviting table guests, acting as a host during the banquet, and both distributing envelopes and collecting donations.
Sometimes, nonprofits will not charge table hosts anything to host a table. While other organizations may choose to charge for tables and even offer VIP table options at a greater price. It depends on your strategy, goals, and donor base. Then, the table hosts will invite guests who will hopefully donate much-needed financial gifts to your organization.
For open invitation banquets, you will simply invite all your donors to attend or other members of your community. You could include an ad in a church bulletin with a registration website for all who want to join. Or, you could simply send out an email invitation to your whole CRM system and see what kind of response you get.
On the surface, the table host style sounds like the most work. How do you choose table hosts? How will you know who to choose? Can you rely on them?
On the flip side, why choose table hosts if you truly want the sky to be the limit? Won’t open invitation allow you to invite more guests and not limit your organization to a number of tables? What if donors feel left out?
We will share the pros and cons of each and walk through both types of banquets. We will share our pick for the best option at the end, but don’t scroll quite yet! We have valuable fundraising tips throughout this blog to help you plan your own banquet.
The Benefits of a Banquet with Table Hosts
There are many benefits to hosting a banquet with table hosts, including developing relationships with table hosts, having more control over the type of attendees, ensuring event attendance, and delegating some share of your responsibilities.
In the end, a banquet with table hosts has the potential to raise more funds if the banquet goes off without a hitch (or close to it). We’ll expand on each benefit below and share our reasoning on why these events can produce better financial results.
Develop Relationships with Table Hosts
When choosing your table hosts, you should be very selective and only choose people you know are reliable donors with plenty of connections. Who you select as table hosts will directly play a role in the amount of funds you raise at your banquet.
While it requires extra effort with the selection process and ongoing host communication, you have an opportunity to further invest in table hosts and strengthen those relationships. These individuals could be your go-to hosts for years to come, and if you show them your gratitude and the difference they are making, they will become even more dedicated to your mission.
These donors can potentially consider donating assets, stocks, or even writing your organization into their wills if they become invested in your worthy mission. A banquet with table hosts will help you network with these top donors to begin building a foundation for long-term partnerships.
Invite the Right People with the Capacity to Give
Because you are so selective in choosing the right table hosts, you have more control over who will attend your banquet. As you communicate with table hosts, you can share your goals for the banquet and ask them to invite people who would have the capacity to donate a gift of a certain amount.
Also, birds of a feather tend to flock together, so if you ask an affluent table host or well-connected business leader to invite their friends and family, there’s a greater chance they could have the capacity to give more funds as well.
Segment Tables for Even Greater Fundraising
You can even segment your tables further by offering VIP tables with a higher cost per table. You can market your VIP tables by placing them right in the front of the stage, giving VIP attendees dedicated time to meet your special speaker, or providing them with special services or benefits.
This will enable you to bring in even more funds on tables alone. Plus, it will elevate your VIP donor experience, and perhaps even help regular table hosts desire purchasing a VIP table the next year when they see how awesome VIP tables seem at the event.
Ensure Attendance with Host Accountability
One of the table host’s responsibilities is to remind their table guests of the event and registration. This is much better for accountability than mass reminder communication from an organization.
These table guests likely know the table host well and will want to attend the banquet. They could be looking even more forward to it, knowing they will be spending the evening with friends, family, or connections. It will be much more personal to them and help prevent last-minute no-shows.
However, keep in mind that sometimes no-shows happen even at weddings. While 100% attendance might not be possible, table hosts can help you improve your attendance numbers. Make sure to track your attendance and data with fundraiser software like FundEasy’s Attendance to review your banquet results.
Delegate Responsibilities to Table Hosts
While you’re communicating more closely with a smaller group of table hosts, you will be able to delegate other responsibilities to them to directly impact the success of your fundraising event.
These can include inviting the attendees, ensuring they arrive, hosting attendees during the event, and passing out donation envelopes for collection. All of these table hosts will improve the attendee experience as they welcome their connections and add a personal touch.
Raise More Funds
Mix the right people with excellent attendance and a personal connection, and you’ll get even more donations. Table hosts invite people who will donate and attend at a higher rate. It’s much better to have 300 very generous donors, than 500 who barely cover the cost of the dinner.
Still, there are other factors for you to consider.
The Cons of Table Hosts
Table host banquets do still have cons, including the challenges of asking donors to be table hosts. You could face some rejection. Also, this can be more difficult for newer organizations that do not have established relationships or a donor base yet.
It also requires more planning in advance because you need to add time to secure all your table hosts. Then, you will want to have a communication plan in place for sharing table host responsibilities. Since these are your top donors, you want to be very mindful of how you communicate with them and ensure you’re organized and well-spoken.
You have more control over who attends, but still, you must choose table hosts wisely. If you choose an unreliable table host this can backfire. It’s important you only pick table hosts you can depend on to prevent a table of empty seats.
The Benefits of a Open Invitation Banquets
Now, on to the benefits of open invitation banquets.
These involve an “all are welcome” approach and may charge an entrance fee at the door. Setting the entrance fee is a strategic decision as you will want to cover costs at the very minimum starting point. You will also want to estimate how many no-shows you may have and raise the ticket price to compensate for those.
Remember the law of supply and demand. You must set your ticket price high enough to benefit your organization, but low enough that you sell enough tickets.
No Host Identification Necessary
With an open-invitation banquet, you don’t need to worry about identifying or inviting hosts. You can simply market your event as normal to your broad donor base. This will save you time and extra planning. You will also have more time by not managing communication with hosts.
It Can Be Easier When First Getting Established
If you’re a new organization, this could help you get more established in your first year by inviting your small number of existing donors. You may not have enough donors or know enough about them to consider a table host approach. (However, you could still encourage attendees to invite their friends.)
If this is the case, an open invitation can be your first ticket to awareness in your community and developing relationships with initial donors.
It’s More Inclusive
While table hosts are more exclusive (you might need to know someone tied into the organization to get an invite), open invitation banquets are fully inclusive.
You won’t have to worry about inadvertently excluding key donors or making other donors feel unappreciated once they find out they weren’t invited to your banquet by chance or on purpose. This approach eliminates these risks.
The Cons of Open Invitation Banquets
Unfortunately, there are two significant cons with open invitation banquets.
First, you could have less attendance than expected. According to research, in-person attendance has stalled at 65% of 2019 numbers. It’s challenging to get the same attendance levels as was possible before the pandemic.
An open-invitation banquet provides less commitment on the attendee’s end to actually show up. Even if the attendee purchased the ticket, if they don’t come to the event they will miss your message and a chance to make an even greater donation.
Second, you could be inviting people without the capacity to give much more than the banquet ticket price. This means your donations are capped right off the bat. However, you want to raise even more than the total ticket income, and certain guests simply don’t have the financial capacity.
Because of these two large cons, we highly recommend a table host banquet style if choosing between the two options.
How Can I Better Organize My Banquets?
As with any fundraising event, banquets take time, effort, and organization. If you haven’t thrown one before, we offer software to make planning easy.
With Attendance, we provide no-hassle registration and communication tools so table hosts or open-invitation attendees can register easily and seamlessly.
Our time-saving table wizard will make table assignments a breeze and make what seems to be a jigsaw puzzle into a very efficient task. You can layout the room and assign attendees to tables in as quick as seconds.
You might be wondering how all this works if you’re using a table host banquet style. We have this covered too. We can equip group hosts with private pages to manage their own guests. This is one less item off your plate and into the hands of your table hosts.
How will you track your attendees and update your CRM system at the same time? Easily! Our software integrates with CRM systems to help you track your attendees and the success of your event.
With FundEasy, you can organize and plan the most successful banquet yet! Schedule a time to speak with one of our representatives.
Which Banquet Type Will You Choose?
We’ve shared the pros and cons of both the table host and open invitation banquet styles, and now it’s up to you to decide which is best for your organization.
If you have affluent donors and don’t mind exclusivity, table hosts are the way to go. If you are a newer organization and aren’t sure who to even ask as table hosts, you may offer an open-invitation banquet.
However, if you do find yourself new and not yet established, perhaps another event would be better for raising funds and getting your awareness out to the community. We have more resources for hosting events in our blog! You can read about hosting a bike-a-thon or a virtual event.
From complex to simple fundraisers, we have software solutions for you.
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Madison Hull
This article was inspired by our customers and written to encourage your fundraising efforts. Although we work with nonprofits and events daily, our team members are not Event Consultants. We encourage you to consult with your event consultant, executive team, and/or affiliate organization before making any major changes to your events.
