Going hybrid allowed us for the first time to bring both of those groups together.  Because people who didn’t want to come to a gala were very curious to try it out and being able to do so virtually has made such a huge difference to us.  So now whenever we’re approaching any of our events it will always in my mind be a hybrid type of a thing.

So what we’ve learned – evolve or die.  We’re not going to go back to just a live event and there definitely needs to be that community element of it, but we know that our ask process in the past followed the typical scripted event that we all know you do and we’ve learned enough from the hybrid event to say we’re going to make the evening a journey.

We talked about the analog donor vs. the digital donor.  And there’s really two different types of human beings in the world now, right?  Analog are looking for patios and nice books and glasses of red wine and watching sunsets; and digitals are consumers on demand where they want things delivered at their doorstep within 48 hours and they don’t want to go to a 4 hour gala at the Ritz Carleton – they want to join in online and take their spouse out to dinner.

This is the greatest opportunity to make a change, a shift or to go in a very innovative direction.

Let’s face it, this is the analogy I love to use.  I think we’ve realized the insanity finally of living in one box; driving an hour to go sit in another box to do our jobs for those of us that have been working in offices.  Two hours of lost productivity and the quality of time …and so many companies now saying that’s insane, that’s crazy ..why are we doing that, that’s nutty.

What about doing an internal workshop like this with your board members or your ‘A’ donors, or your ‘B’ donors or your key stakeholders to sort of help you co-create and design your future event experiences giving them a feeling of ownership like they’re a part of the decision making process because then they’re more likely to invite friends, to get excited about it and then to support it.