21 Feb
Case Studies: Wildlife Conservation Network
In the vibrant world of nonprofits, where grants and donations serve as the lifeblood of organizations, fundraising isn’t just the responsibility of the development or advancement team —it’s a collective effort of the board, other key stakeholders, and nonprofit staff. Unlike the more segmented fundraising efforts, like the annual campaign or major gift asks, nonprofit events serve as the singular place where fundraising responsibilities converge.
Here, executive leadership, board members, and the event host committee cultivate, solicit, and steward support. Programming staff volunteer and share their experiences. Marketing and communications teams align to showcase the organization’s mission. And the development team coordinates all for the ultimate goal of raising funds and awareness of the organization’s mission. Amidst the whirlwind of event logistics, from venue selection to program planning, one critical aspect stands out: coordinating event registration. This is precisely where RSVPify steps in, providing a reliable solution that streamlines the intricate event planning process, allowing nonprofits to focus their energy on what truly matters—raising vital funds and fostering community support.
With that in mind, RSVPify sat down with Sophie Croen of the Wildlife Conservation Network, a leading environmental conservation nonprofit organization, to learn more about how WCN leveraged our software to make nonprofit event planning easier.
About Wildlife Conservation Network
The Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) helps conservationists carry out their best ideas to protect endangered wildlife. They have a multi-strategy approach which includes supporting conservation partner entrepreneurs, philanthropic grant-making (through Wildlife Funds), and leadership development (through the Rising Wildlife Leaders program). Learn a little more about the important work that WCNS does everyday in its own words. At a high-level, WCN is committed to:
- Ensuring conservationists have the resources to succeed,
- Helping supporters engage in conservation,
- Helping donors invest in conservation, and
- Holistic solutions for wildlife and people.
One important way that WCN engages supporters is through events. WCN’s largest and most attended engagement events are its twice annual Wildlife Conservation Expos. These events bring thousands of supporters together in conservation – many meeting their wildlife heroes. See last year’s recorded presentations here.
The Challenge
There are two specific audiences for the Wildlife Conservation Expo, general attendance and VIP guests – and both had the option of attending in person or virtually. Prior to finding RSVPify, WCN largely coordinated all registrations manually. This was chaotic, not a great experience for VIP guests, and a world of headaches for the WCN team.
In her own words, Sophie shares:
The Wildlife Conservation Network hosts a twice-annual Wildlife Conservation Expo, which provides an opportunity for our donors and community members passionate about wildlife conservation to meet our conservation partners and get the latest updates on their efforts to save wildlife. Our event model is complicated because we have different tiers or segments of donors invited to various events. It’s crucial for us to track easily who’s going to which events, who shows up afterwards, and to have their registration process be seamless. They should be able to show up on a webpage, easily click what they need, and get the information to attend the events. That’s what brought us to you.
Before RSVPify, everything was done manually, including individual communications with donors. They would email me directly, which is still an option for our donors. We manually kept spreadsheets of who had RSVP’d and who hadn’t. Then, a couple of times a week, my teammate would upload this into our CRM so everyone in our organization could easily check who had registered for a given event. It was very tedious and error-prone.
One important note of context – the WCN team relies on its CRM – or donor management software – for all donor communications, notes, etc. A significant pain point was manually updating WCN’s CRM so that guests were not emailed more than they should be, and that registrations were accurately brought into its CRM – its source of truth for donor engagement.
The Solution
WCN searched online for an event management platform to help streamline event registration, weaken the internal headache of manually syncing registrations to its CRM, and more. Sophie and her team quickly booked a demo with RSVPify to learn about the Enterprise offering. Their call with an RSVPify Product Specialist demonstrated a few things – notably:
- An event website could host all Expo-related information, including speakers and bios, sessions faqs, invitation details, and more.
- An event registration process could let WCN supporters choose how they wanted to attend the expo – i.e., in person or virtually.
- Registration could be customized for VIP guests – without having a separate registration process using invite lists, tags, and more. This helps keep all registration data in one place.
- Timely confirmation emails could give supporters confidence that their registration went through successfully – and without any manual work from the WCN team.
- All registration data could integrate with WCN’s Salesforce CRM with the help of Zapier – i.e., no more manually updating lists!
- The WCN team could leverage the check-in suite to know which registered supporters actually came to the expos – and alert them when VIP guests checked into the event.
The WCN team requested and completed an Enterprise trial to see if RSVPify would be a good fit. It was clear – RSVPify would help level-up the Wildlife Conservation Expos.
The RSVPify Factor
Just how did RSVPify level-up the Wildlife Conservation Expos? See blow for the three specific reflections from Sophie and her team.
Control. RSVPify is a DIY platform – meaning as the event host, you have control over your event, its look-and-feel, and event data at all times. The WCN team worked hard to make all RSVPIfy events fully WCN branded – from the colors to the fonts to the messaging itself. Since one of the main goals of the Wildlife Conservation Expo is a donor and supporter engagement, it was important for the WCN team that donors coming to the registration page felt the WCN experience – and not an unfamiliar brand or event.
The ability to email a certain segment of people based on whether they’ve registered or not has been wonderful. Setting up a site is now much easier, which is crucial for us as a nonprofit with limited staff and budget. We can now customize our registration tool for each specific event we host over a weekend, knowing exactly who’s coming to what. Another huge win for us is being able to see each person’s individual RSVP within a group, allowing for personalized communication with our donors.
Customization. One of WCN’s priorities in the registration process is to create different registration paths for general supporters, VIP donors, and other major level supporters. This ability separated RSVPify from other tools that might have the registration paths completely separate. In keeping the registration paths together, it simplified event management. It also reduced complexity for checking guests in on the day of the event.
Two main things stood out: the user experience and the customization options. From the donor’s perspective, it’s important for them to quickly get to a page from their email and register or update their RSVP easily. RSVPify allows their names to be pre-filled if we set it up through emails. For us, being able to customize our registration tool and have detailed control over individual and group RSVPs has been crucial, especially as we aim to have personalized communication with our donors.
Guest Experience. RSVPify automated a significant part of the event management process and it saved the WCN team time in doing so. WCN was equally, if not more, concerned with the time and effort required by guests for event registration.
We wanted a system where our donors could quickly and effortlessly register for events directly from their email. RSVPify’s system pre-fills their information if we set it up through emails, and they can also edit their RSVP, which is incredibly valuable. Our donors often update their availability leading up to the event, and RSVPify makes this process seamless.
The team leveraged RSVPify’s invite list and email communications to simplify the guest look up experience, and allowed guests to edit registrations as they firmed up plans. The team also sent a number of donor communications through RSVPify, leveraging different audience segmentation and merge fields to send the right guests the right message.
Moreover, the ability to customize our registration tool for various events was crucial. We host many different events over the course of a weekend, and it’s essential for us to know who’s coming to what. RSVPify’s system allows us to manage RSVPs on an individual level within groups or families, which is a game-changer for us. It enables us to have more personalized communication with our donors, like sending specific messages about who we look forward to seeing at an event and who we’ll miss. This level of detail and personalization was something we couldn’t find with other platforms.
Partner with RSVPify for your event
Are you looking to save countless hours on nonprofit event planning like HOPE? Have questions about how RSVPify can partner with your organization to provide a custom suite of event planning tools designed for streamlining your upcoming fundraisers, networking, or donor relations events? Let’s get started:
- You can contact our Sales team here to book a demo and learn more about features, pricing tiers, and features specifically designed for nonprofit events.
- Check out some of our custom nonprofit event templates (link added once template page is live), designed to make event setup easy and quick. You can tailor your nonprofit event template to feature your own branding, edit details, and much more.
RSVPify is proud to partner with hundreds of nonprofit organizations from around the world, to help these organizations continue the vital work that they do and spend less time on the mundane duties of event planning. We’re excited to meet you and help tailor a solution to fit your organization.
