Here's What Actually Makes Donors Give More at Your Gala

Donors Are Consumers, and They're Getting Choosier

Rob Giardinelli has spent fifteen years attending and chronicling top fundraising galas, primarily across Texas, from the guest experience side rather than as an event planner or auctioneer. His clearest read on what's changed since before the pandemic: people are far more selective about where they spend an evening. "People are much more selective with their time," he says. "They want to be sure that they know where their money's going and why they're there."

Giardinelli says he now attends a third to a quarter of the events he used to. That discernment, he argues, is exactly what nonprofits are up against — and exactly why generic execution no longer clears the bar it used to.

Know Your City, Not Just Your Cause

Giardinelli's sharpest point is that there's no universal template for a great gala, because donor culture is deeply local. "A great event reflects the tapestry of the community it's serving," he says, "and every community is different." He compares three Texas cities 150 miles apart: Houston galas are social first, and need to be fun from start to finish or guests won't return. Austin runs on mission — guests need clear moments in the evening that connect the event back to why they're actually there. New York crowds, especially on a weeknight, need the program to run exactly on time, because a late program eats into a night out they've carved time for.

"Every city and every town is different," he says. "Understand the pulse of your community and what will make that tick."

Mini takeaway: The gala format that works for the nonprofit across town, or across the country, isn't automatically the format that works for your donors. Know your specific room.

The Three-Legged Stool

Giardinelli frames a healthy gala as resting on three legs that all have to be in sync: the nonprofit's executives, the gala leadership, and the board, which usually acts as the connective tissue between the other two. "I can walk in a room and within 60 seconds tell when it's not harmonious," he says. "It is pretty easy to spot because the energy just isn't on the level that it should be."

When one leg is out of alignment — a board disengaged from gala planning, or executives disconnected from the leadership committee actually running the event — it shows up in the room whether or not guests can name what's wrong. Getting all three rowing in the same direction is a prerequisite for everything else on this list working.

Do Your Homework Like It's a Business Meeting

Giardinelli's advice for approaching a major donor or prospective sponsor sounds almost obvious once he says it: connect the dots between what you already know about them and the ask you're about to make. "A successful person wants to know that you're thinking about kind of not just them, but kind of everything around them," he says. If someone on your board also sits on a prospect's other board, or their company is genuinely aligned with a program you run, bring it up. "It shows you did your homework in a way that's germane to the conversation. It's good business."

The same logic applies to entertainment and hospitality: if a major donor has clearly attended a particular performer's shows repeatedly, that's a data point, not a coincidence — and a personal invitation built around it lands differently than a generic seating assignment.

A Gala Gets Everyone in One Room, One Time

Giardinelli pushes directly against the argument that events are a declining or unnecessary fundraising channel. "It's the one place where you can get the largest amount of your donors in one space at one time," he says. "People will give more if they see their friends or people they respect... or quite frankly people they don't respect, but they know are community movers."

He also makes the case for a gala as an entry point, not a ceiling: major seven-figure gifts often trace back to something as small as a $50 Giving Tuesday donation made because a friend shared a link. That $50 donor buys a $500 ticket the next year, then bids at the following year's live auction. "It's a stepping stone thing," he says. "The gala also allows them to be engaged with your community, and not just the donors, but also the services that are being provided."

Mini takeaway: Fundraising is an "and" game, not an "or" game. Major gifts, online giving, and galas aren't competing strategies — they're stages in the same relationship.

Messaging Has Two Jobs, Not One

Giardinelli separates gala messaging into two distinct functions that most organizations blur together: getting people in the door, and telling them why they're there once they've arrived. The thing that gets a major donor to actually show up — a headline performer, a specific social draw — may have nothing to do with your mission directly. That's fine. "The messaging can be, so like for example, Cattle Baron's Ball in Dallas... they announce whoever the entertainer's going to be," he says. "That will get people through the door. Once they get in, they can then do the messaging of what the organization does."

Once inside, mission messaging needs to be tight enough to land with everyone in the room. "Iconic songs can tell a complex story of love in four minutes," he says. "There's no reason a nonprofit couldn't do that" with a mission video. Long, meandering explanations of everything an organization does lose people; a focused, specific story keeps them.

Major Gifts and Galas Aren't Rivals

Giardinelli is direct about a framing he sees causing real damage in the sector: the idea that organizations should abandon events in favor of major gifts alone. "You need multiple revenue streams," he says. "The nice thing about stuff that comes in from donors is there's probably going to be less restrictions on how you spend the money" compared to grant funding — which matters enormously if your community needs suddenly shift, the way they can after a natural disaster or other crisis.

His practical test for whether a donor belongs in major gifts or gala leadership: watch what they actually do. A donor who pays for a table every year but never wants to attend belongs in major gifts. A donor who's attending fifteen other galas around town that year is clearly moved by the in-person experience, and belongs in gala cultivation instead. "Each of them is important," he says. "You have to understand what moves your audience the most."

Insights in this article are drawn from the Hey Nonprofits! podcast episode “After 2,000 Galas, Here's What Actually Makes Donors Give More”, featuring host Trevor Nelson and guest Rob Giardinelli of the Fun in Fundraising podcast.