In event planning, your guests’ first impression often comes at check-in. A seamless, welcoming, and efficient check-in can set a positive tone for the entire event, leaving your attendees feeling engaged and valued. Here are some essential strategies to elevate your check-in experience.
1. Choose the Right Tables
Using rectangular tables with extenders or high-top tables can bring the check-in staff eye-to-eye with guests, creating a warm and personable experience. Having check-in staff at eye level sends a message of approachability and shows attention to guest comfort.
2. Invest in Credit Card Swipers
Make check-in swift and stress-free by providing credit card swipers for payment collection. Not only does this streamline check-in, but it also minimizes follow-ups for unpaid fees later, saving your team time and reducing logistical headaches. With a faster payment system in place, guests can get into the event sooner, creating a better experience for everyone.
3. Collect Phone Numbers at Check-In
Gathering phone numbers upon arrival allows you to follow up seamlessly after the event. Whether it’s for pledge reminders, surveys, or donation follow-ups, this quick addition to check-in can prove invaluable. Some event platforms also allow texting capabilities, making it easy to send reminders or updates throughout the night. This detail keeps guests connected to the event and opens up a valuable communication channel.
4. Station a Greeter at the Front
Position a friendly greeter at the beginning of the check-in line to guide guests to open check-in stations and offer a warm welcome. Better still, if this greeter is a familiar face within the organization, guests will feel even more welcomed. This gesture isn’t just practical—it adds a human touch to check-in, which many guests remember fondly.
Final Thoughts
A thoughtful check-in process helps guests feel acknowledged and cared for. Implementing these simple strategies can significantly enhance their experience, making your event more memorable and engaging. Plus, these techniques make your team’s job easier by reducing bottlenecks and ensuring smooth communication
By starting early, staying organized, and paying attention to every detail, you can get ahead on your fall event season planning and ensure your events are a resounding success. Embrace the beauty and energy of the fall season as you plan and execute your events, and enjoy the rewarding experience of bringing people together in memorable ways. Happy planning, and savor every moment of this vibrant season!
An engaged board of directors is essential for a nonprofit organization not only to survive in today’s environment but also to thrive.
If you’re grappling with the following questions, then this article will provide you with tangible takeaways and resources to improve your organization’s governance structure and overall pipeline.
❓How can I make sure I have a pool of qualified candidates ready to join my board?
❓How do I know what governance structure is right for my organization?
❓How can I engage and recruit younger members?
💡Step 1: Review & Strengthen Your Existing Governance Structure
Before you can dig into your governance pipeline, it’s really important to review your existing structure to ensure you have a strong foundation.
✅Ask: “Have you established clear governance roles for your officers, board members, and committees?
While key elements such as term length or term limits should be codified in your by-laws, it’s never too late to ensure you have role descriptions on file for your key people and groups.
Generally speaking, you can distill it like this:
📋Board of Directors – Provides oversight, strategic direction, and financial accountability 📋Committees – Focus on specific areas such finance, fundraising, programs, nominating, and governance. (This is a great topic for a board retreat small-group discussion.) 📋Advisory Boards – Offer expertise without voting power, serving as a talent pipeline (more on this below!). 📋Executive Leadership – Works with the board to execute strategy.
✅Ask: “Do our role descriptions clearly communicate our expectations around board service?”
Key areas include:
📋Required attendance 📋Required involvement in fundraising strategy, 📋Required financial contributions (“give/get” or “give and get”) or “personally significant” contribution
✅Ask: “Have you conducted a board skills matrix?”
In short, a board matrix exercise* (*haven’t done one yet? Here’s a free template!) is a valuable tool for nonprofit boards of directors to ensure that their composition aligns with the organization’s needs, goals, and challenges. It promotes effective governance, strategic planning, and sustainable growth, ultimately contributing to the nonprofit’s overall success and impact.
By way of background, there are several important purposes for this exercise:
👍Assessment of Skills and Expertise: The exercise helps identify the specific skills, knowledge, and expertise that each board member brings to the table — to ensure that the board has well-rounded skill sets that covers areas such as finance, legal, marketing, fundraising, programmatic expertise, governance, and more.
👍Alignment with Strategic Goals: By mapping board members’ skills and attributes to the nonprofit’s strategic goals, the board can assess how well it is positioned to guide the organization towards achieving its mission.
👍Diversity and Inclusion: The matrix exercise highlights the diversity of the board in terms of skills, experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives. A diverse board is better equipped to make informed decisions and drive innovation. This reduces groupthink and fosters more well-rounded discussions.
👍Succession Planning: The exercise facilitates succession planning by identifying potential gaps that may arise when board members’ terms come to an end. It helps in identifying future leaders and ensuring a smooth transition of leadership roles within the board.
✅Ask yourself, “Have you conducted a board self-assessment?”
📋Board Development: The self-assessment (here’s a free template!) assists in identifying areas where board members may need further development or training to enhance their contributions. This supports ongoing board education and growth.
💡Step 2: Laying the Foundation for Your Governance Pipeline
Recruiting strong board and committee members is crucial for a nonprofit’s success. Using your board matrix results, you should have a fairly clear idea of where you have gaps as well as strengths among your current pool of members.
Here are best practices to help you find, engage, and retain the right leaders:
✅Define the Ideal Candidate Profile
Use your board matrix data to identify the skills, experience, and diversity needed to complement the current board.
Screen candidates through an interview process with existing board members (this is often part of a Nominating Committee’s responsibilities).
Assess mission alignment, leadership experience, and commitment level.
✅Develop a Strong Onboarding Process
Provide a structured orientation with key documents, financials, and organizational history.
Assign mentors (or “board buddies”!) to new board members to help them transition smoothly.
💡Step 3: Creating Your Governance Pipeline
Hopefully, by now you have a sense of who you might want to tap to serve on a committee or who might be ready to receive an invitation for your board of directors.
❓But what about how to structure, organize and manage this pool of potential candidates?
The good news is that some board portal solutions — like BellesBoard — offer the ability not only to stack your board and committee rosters over time, but also to enter and track your potential board and committee members by configurable attributes such as skills sets, leadership style and ability to give.
❓And what about engaging younger folks in your organization’s mission and leadership pipeline?
From a structural standpoint and depending on your organization’s history, goals, and capacity, you have a few possible pipelines to consider for Gen Z and other supporters not quite ready for your Board of Trustees:
⚡Junior Board: Sometimes affectionately known as the “baby board” or Young Professionals Board, formalizing this pathway can pay off. Typically, junior board members personally donate. They raise awareness of the mission while they gain leadership skills by planning and attending events and engaging with the board of directors.
⚡Youth Advisory Board: An advisory board allows for a less structured option to keep ties with younger prospective donors on an episodic basis.
⚡Events Committee (ad hoc): A fun event can often be the perfect introduction to your mission and leadership. The low-hanging fruit segment for this are individuals who served on their university’s student government.
⚡Social Sharer: Gen Z is all about Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and likely other platforms we haven’t even heard of yet! If your mission, digital marketing expertise, and capacity lends itself to this sort of content creation and remarketing, consider more intentional outreach to this population.
💡Your Takeaways From Steps 1, 2 & 3!☝️
In closing, the work to engage and retain board and committee members is an evolving year-round effort.
It’s critical to provide meaningful involvement beyond board meetings—such as committee work, fundraising, or junior board opportunities — but the structure and approach needs to be based on your organization’s strategic goals and capacity.
In addition, don’t try to do everything all at once. You’re already balancing multiple hats and it is very important to avoid burnout and overwhelm. Rather, my suggestion is to identify an item or two to complete each quarter throughout the year — and let that serve as your Board Development Roadmap. And first, pat yourself on the back for any items you have already completed — after all, there’s a proven psychological benefit to checking items off a list!
In closing, I hope that these suggestions and resources help your nonprofit build a stronger, more engaged, and mission-driven board — along with a healthy pipeline of prospective candidates!
About the Author of this article:
Christine Deska is the President and Co-Founder of Nonprofit Sector Strategies, a public benefit corporation dedicated to helping nonprofits maximize mission impact through strategic planning and board management services. BellesBoard, its signature product, is a board management software solution and mobile app that grows nonprofit boards’ efficiency, engagement and fundraising. Christine has more than 15 years of experience working in and with nonprofit organizations, foundations, and the government.
For so many organizations, vehicles are a necessary evil. They take up a large cut of the budget, are a headache when anything goes wrong, and it almost seems like they’re the responsibility of everybody and nobody at the same time.
Over the past few years, they’ve gotten even more complicated. Maintenance and repair costs are continuously increasing and inventory fluctuates rapidly. We’ve all felt the pinch as tariffs and general uncertainty have driven up vehicle prices. With global trade policies constantly shifting, it’s crucial that you have a plan (any plan!) and stick to it!
I wanted to take the time to dive into how the upcoming tariffs are affecting vehicle prices, and why taking a proactive approach to managing your fleet can make all the difference.
Impact of Tariffs on Vehicle Prices
Tariffs on imported vehicles and vehicle parts can lead to substantial price increases. For instance, the recent 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico are expected to drive up vehicle costs by $4,000 to $12,500, depending on the vehicle type and origin[1]. These tariffs cause inflation, increasing the replacement cost of vehicles by up to 16.5%[2]. As manufacturers face higher costs, they often pass these increases onto consumers, resulting in higher prices for new and used vehicles[3].
There are a couple options to avoid the hikes:
Make sure you are getting the best buy on vehicles- are you factory ordering your vehicles today? This can save you thousands per vehicle: you can avoid extra features that you don’t need and order only the basics, and you can avoid increased markups from dealerships.
Additionally, as non-profit organizations, you should be getting access to additional discounts in the form of incentives. This model year we saw a massive resurgence of manufacturers taking thousands of dollars off invoice pricing for non-profits and government agencies.
Have a plan to track maintenance and hold people accountable for getting it done– a maintained vehicle is one that prevents larger repairs for happening. Do you have a solid system in place today to track when a vehicle needs an oil change, as well as make sure it gets done?
Weigh the cost of replacement versus repair- can you pinpoint how much you’re spending on maintenance? Are you buying large ticket items like transmissions and engines, to keep your vehicle running? The more you spend on these items, the more money you sink into a depreciating asset- that will need to be replaced at some point. What metrics to you use to make sure you’re deciding correctly?
Proactive Fleet Management: A Financial Strategy
One thing I always tell my clients is: your vehicles are a tool you use to drive your business. As with any tool, you cannot risk a lapse in efficiency. By proactively managing your entire fleet, you ensure your organizations have the means to continue to run without delay.
So, what goes into proactive fleet management?
Scheduling Vehicle Replacements Appropriately: Maximizing on vehicle resale is one way organizations are getting money to come back intoto their programs. By running a vehicle the appropriate amount of time (while it still is worth a decent amount on resale and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg in maintenance & fuel) you can plan to have a new vehicle at the right time, and have the resale of that first vehicle fund the next one.
Regular Maintenance and Inspections: By scheduling (and enforcing!) regular maintenance and inspections, you can extend the lifespan of their vehicles and prevent minor issues from escalating into major problems. This approach reduces repair costs and ensures vehicles operate at peak efficiency, saving on fuel consumption and emissions.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging data analytics allows you to make informed decisions about vehicle replacement, route optimization, and resource allocation. Analyzing the mileage trends of one vehicle might allow you to extend its usage by switching it between programs; analyzing how much maintenance is costing you on another could mean the difference between replacing it now or dumping more money into it and replacing it in a year. If you aren’t tracking these things diligently, you’ll never know!
Safety and Compliance: Staying ahead of safety inspections, driver training, and industry regulations protects employees, assets, and reputation. A large part of that is doing your best to have vehicles as new and within federal safety standards as possible. The NHTSA reports that over 600,000 lives were saved between 1960 and 2012 from the improvements in vehicle safety. Since then, advancements in safety features such as electronic stability control (2011), back up cameras (2018), and blind spot warning systems are saving even more lives[4].
Conclusion
Tariffs on vehicles and parts can significantly impact prices, posing challenges for organizations reliant on fleet operations. However, when you have a plan (any plan!) and stick to it, you can mitigate these effects and maintain stability. Regular maintenance, data-driven decision-making, fleet optimization, and compliance are key elements that contribute to an efficient and cost-effective fleet, that can help offset the burn of market changes.
By getting ahead of potential price hikes and operational challenges, you can ensure your fleets remain an asset, driving success in an ever-evolving world.
