December 10, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A desire for cross pollination and cost savings drove the decision by two New York charities to combine their year-end young professionals events into a joint fund raiser.
For the past six years, the Alliance for the Arts has held its annual young professionals event at Christie’s. The auction house gives the organization free use of the venue.
This year the alliance invited New York Lawyers for the Public Interest to incorporate its year-end event into the party. The legal-aid organization has held an event for its pro bono advisory council for the last three years, but the event has been at a different location each time.
Because the event focused on younger adults — a demographic that typically doesn’t make large donations — the groups decided to experiment, says Marnie Berk, director of pro bono programs at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. It also helped that the groups focused on two very different missions.
“You can afford not to be territorial when you’re not directly in competition for donors,” says Ms. Berk. “We see ourselves in overlapping terrain, but we have been speaking to very different audiences.”
The two groups sent the same print invitation to all the people they invited, but supporters of the Alliance for the Arts and New York Lawyers received different reply cards, which made clear that any tickets they bought or contributions they made would benefit the right group. Each group sent electronic invitations to its constituents, which led them to parallel Web sites.
More than 400 people attended the joint November event, roughly three-quarters of whom were Alliance for the Arts supporters. The organization brought in $45,000, about the same amount as it did for last year’s event. But because the two groups were sharing expenses — in proportion to the number of their supporters who attended — the alliance spent about 25 percent less to put on the event.
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest brought in quite a bit less. But it was still an improvement over last year when the organization decided to make admission to its young professionals event free in the wake of the economic crisis.
The biggest benefit to the two organizations was the opportunity to introduce their missions to each other’s supporters, says Lane Harwell, director of development for Alliance for the Arts.
Says Mr. Harwell: “We were thrilled to see all of these new names on our list and to make new friends at the party that hopefully we’ll take us with us into the future.”
