Welcome to a captivating conversation with Joey Goone, an expert in creating connective fundraising events for nonprofits. With a unique blend of event planning and neuroscience, Joey reveals the remarkable role our brains play in designing transformative experiences. Get ready to be inspired as we explore the power of emotional connections and the art of crafting unforgettable events.
Key Points:
Power of Connective Fundraising Events:Unleash the potential of fundraising events that go beyond raising funds. Joey Goone emphasizes the importance of fostering a sense of community and emotional bonding. These events create lasting connections and drive increased donor retention and support.
Neuroscience and Event Design:Discover the science behind impactful event design. Joey Goone leverages neuroscience to elicit positive emotions, shaping experiences that resonate deeply with attendees. Through storytelling, sensory engagement, and personalization, events become transformative moments.
Storytelling and Emotional Engagement:Stories have the power to inspire empathy and forge strong emotional connections. Joey emphasizes authentic storytelling, sharing personal narratives of beneficiaries and supporters. Crafting a narrative arc ensures active engagement and emotional investment.
Sensory Engagement and Memory:Immerse attendees in a world of sensory richness. Joey reveals how engaging multiple senses creates unforgettable experiences. By incorporating music, lighting, and interactive elements, events leave a lasting imprint on memory and emotion.
Joey Goone’s expertise in connective fundraising events is a game-changer. Neuroscience-driven design creates events that ignite deep connections and drive support. Join us as we explore the transformative potential of events that leave a lasting impact.
Contact:Joey GooneEmail: joey@utopiaexperience.com
LinkedIn: Joey Goone – https://www.linkedin.com/in/joey-goone-58225758/
Resource:”You’re Invited” by John Levy – https://a.co/d/0q223vy
“When the mind stops speaking, the heart starts listening” – Joey
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:05
Welcome to nonprofit lowdown. I’m your host Rhea Wong. Hey by gases nerds real well with you once again. So this must mean it’s nonprofit lowdown. Today I am speaking with Joey goon we’re talking about how did you end non boring events for nonprofits. Joey is the CEO at Utopia experience and his job is to actually design implement execute exciting nonprofit events, which maybe sounds like an oxymoron. Joey, we’re gonna get into it before we jump into a welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
JOEY 0:39
Thank you so much. Yeah, so my name is Joe goon at a very young age. I had to get comfortable in my own skin with a last name like goon. Yeah, so we just had a child and we almost named her Meow, meow goon. That’d be we wouldn’t do that. Her name is Sage. We have a four month old. My wife is Stephanie. We live in Lake St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri. For all of my other Midwesterners out there. And I have a younger sister and an older brother, who are actually both visiting St. Louis this weekend. They’re here. They’re in my basement, probably listening to me, right now as we speak, which I’m super excited. They’re in from Chicago in LA, we don’t get to spend a whole lot of time together. So I’m just jazzed to have the family in town for the weekend. And I know I’m gonna get a ton of energy from having this conversation with you. And I’ve been looking forward to this. Thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity. I feel honored.
RHEA 1:27
Oh, thank you so much, Joey. And it’s so funny. You’re a middle child. I’m from a family of three as well. But unsurprisingly, I am the Bossy oldest sister, I just like to tell everyone what to do. I know you have a really interesting origin story for your company and how it’s intertwined with your family history. So talk a little bit about that. And then we’ll get into some nitty gritty,
JOEY 1:46
For sure. So my mom started utopia in 2001. So where a woman found a company, and she was a teacher and a gym teacher, and she realized I’m probably not the most athletic person in the world, but I love kids. So then she went from gym to fourth grade. And, and that’s where she stayed. But her athleticism or lack of athletic abilities rubbed off on me as well. So I was the benchwarmer on my high school football team for about five minutes, which is when I knew Oh, man, I better figure out what I want to do with my life because becoming a professional athlete was not in the cards.
JOEY 2:15
And so right before starting utopia, my mom was planning my brother’s Bar Mitzvah. So he’s three years older than me. And if you’re familiar with these Jewish traditions, these are like massive gala celebrations for 12 year olds that are coming into making their passage into adulthood. And so my mom, Jodi and my dad, Neil did not have a wonderful experience with the company that they hired here locally to produce my brother’s Bar Mitzvah. And they did the AV, the entertainment, the videography. And so she said, Okay, for Joey’s me, two years later, I’m gonna bring in an out of state company. And so my parents were like, wow, this is so much better. We actually felt humans as opposed to a transaction.
JOEY 2:56
And my mom was like, there’s nothing like this here. So let’s do it locally. So the first event Utopia ever produced was my sister’s bought Mitch button mitzvah, which was two years after mine. And then it just took off from there. And so my mom scaled the business out of our house while working full time as a teacher, so she was working 50% in both businesses and 100%, neither. And our kitchen became our office, our garage and basement became the warehouse for all the AV equipment. And my dad, my amazing dad, Neil just had a cancer scare. And thank god, he’s good. He’s on he’s on demand. He’s in remission.
JOEY 3:27
And my dad became the weekend roadie driving box trucks and setting up and breaking down events all over the Midwest and lugging all this AV equipment over his shoulder on this 25% grade Hill on the side of our house to and from the basement. And God bless him Utopia went from a group of one to then two with the addition of my dad, and then unfortunately, we lost my mom to cancer in 2013.
RHEA 3:50
Sorry, sorry to hear that an entrepreneurship story of you start at the kitchen table. You grow. Everyone’s part of the business. I grew up in a family business too. So I totally get I was like 10 years old working on the cash register. So I get it. So Joey, talk to me about how you made the transition to I know you do work with more than nonprofits. But I know that nonprofits are your bread and butter. So talk to me about that pivot, like why nonprofits
JOEY 4:13
I attended, and then a nonprofit event in 2016. And I was moved to my core. It touched my heart in ways that private events never did. So I joined the company in 2014. Two years later, I attended this nonprofit event. And I laughed and I cried, and I was like, this is the most gratifying, rewarding, fulfilling experience that I’ve ever been a part of. And I didn’t even know that there were groups creating this kind of change in the world, like change agents and people who are a force for good on this beautiful planet, who make their life like their lives work is making the world a better place.
JOEY 4:42
And so that was something that we wanted to be a part of, and it’s in our name, it’s utopia. So like to us scaling Utopia doesn’t mean scaling our business. It’s like scaling the meaning of collective purpose and hope. And we found tremendous meaning and working with charities and businesses that are forced for good and so now From two employees with my mom and dad to three with me, and now we have 10 full time employees 25 part time employees, and we’ve helped 300 nonprofits and 20 states raise more than 50 million through their events, which has just been incredible. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
RHEA 5:14
That’s so awesome. So good for you. And that’s why I love working in nonprofit to I just feel like I get to be among the most inspiring, most optimistic people in the world, which in this day and age, optimism and hope are really in short supply. Before we get into here, and now I just curious, like, what happened during the pandemic, because as we all know, in person really ground to a halt. I’m in New York City. It’s gala season right now. And we just saw a lot of there’s a lot of hand rigging, and then there was a lot of moving to virtual events. Then a couple of years ago, maybe a year ago, we started to see hybrid events. So can you say a little bit about what you’re seeing from your vantage point in terms of the nonprofit Gala? event space?
JOEY 6:04
Yeah, during the pandemic was interesting. I actually just had, you know, are you familiar with one cost the mobile bidding platform? Yep. Yep. So we just had one, the CEO of one cars on our podcast a couple weeks ago, and his name Steve Jobs. And we talked about our parallel journeys and events in that, like, the world stopped, and we’re like, okay, we need to figure out what to do not for us for our nonprofits, because they need these events in the fundraising money to continue to have viable missions, and to make sure their programs are happening in the recipient families are being served.
JOEY 6:31
And so we stumbled into this virtual thing. It was like, I think, march 20, when the world stopped, and that following weekend, we had a gala in Chicago. And we’re like, we can’t bring 500 people into a ballroom, but we can figure out how to do this online. And thankfully, our team has a background in broadcast. And so we were able to pivot very quickly and do this virtual Gala. And they raised I think they raised about $250,000. And of course, they didn’t have the overhead or the expense of the venue and the food and all of that. And we’re like, whoa, this could be something fast forward to today.
JOEY 7:06
And as terrible as the pandemic was, it was the catalyst for exponential growth in our business, because we unlocked this thing that it’s like the technology was there at our fingertips before, but we weren’t leveraging it or utilizing it in the way that it was it could be harnessed and utilized. So it’s just this thing that we stumbled into. And then Maria, the second part of your question is, how does this all play into the here and now is that I feel there’s an opportunity like this world, we talked a moment ago about scaling, hope and joy and connection, the world has never been more disconnected.
JOEY 7:40
And so there’s such an opportunity for organizations that are doubling down on relationships moving away from the transactional nature of I can order a toilet right now from Amazon and have it installed tomorrow. The world is at your fingertips, move away from that transactional nature of people doing business and just like a number on a spreadsheet, and move towards that relationship. There’s a huge opportunity for organizations that are doing that and doubling down on relationships, virtually or live.
RHEA 8:11
Yeah, we’re all about that here at nonprofit lowdown. Anyone who has engaged with any of my content knows that I’m all about doubling down on relationships, investing in your community. Double click on that for me a little bit. So what does that look like in terms of technology in terms of practices that you’ve adopted coming out of the pandemic for 2023?
JOEY 8:30
Technology and practices? I think about like just event creation in general, when like when we’re talking to a nonprofit, and kind of preface this, yeah, go ahead. Before we dive into all the tactical things, and like the technology, I think we should preface it, which is like, starting by why we do what we do, and the intention behind everything that we do. And we start with neuroscience. Yeah,
RHEA 8:59
you really continue. I love neuroscience. I’m such a nerd. I listen to human podcasts like it’s my job. Please continue.
JOEY 9:07
Yes. Okay, cool. So I just like to scale back before we scale in or zoom out before we zoom in. So everything we do at utopia, and every event we produce is focused on neuroscience. And for those who are not as familiar with neuroscience perfectly, okay. It’s really just the study of the brain and behavior. And so we use neuroscience to be super intentional about the experiences that we plan. And since each event that we produce is grounded in neuroscience, we don’t announce Hey, yay, everyone at this event, neuroscience things Whoo, like from the stage right? That’d be weird. But when attendees leave feeling super connected, they’re not exactly sure why they just leave saying there is something different about that experience, and my friends need to know about it.
JOEY 9:49
And so this is what we’re tapping into now post pandemic because there was a time of like, total isolation, and now people are going back into communities and we’re leveraging technology to make sure or that we are grounding people, and making them feel connected at event experiences. And it really comes for us and having an understanding of what is actually happening psychologically and physiologically when we enter a space. And so picture the brain divided into three parts. And this is based on the triune model of the brain, which was first presented by neuroscientists in the 1970s. And so it’s one of the ways to make sense of how the brain is organized into different systems in areas. And I want to make this super simple.
JOEY 10:28
You’ve got your prefrontal cortex, which is up here I’m holding like the front of my head. And you can argue like this is where all the executive function happens. This is like you have to unlock this to get into a deep state of thinking flow state complex thinking whole bunch of the learning that we think about happens when this part of the brain is online. Then you have the middle part of your brain, which is up here on the top, where emotions and the concept of love and belonging lives in that area. And then in the back is the lizard part of our brain. That’s the part that’s been around the longest part of our brain that’s always been connected to Am I safe. And 1000s of years ago, this part of the brain was essential for survival.
JOEY 11:06
And it still is now if you’re in the street, and there’s a car coming, your lizard brain kicks on, you jump out of the way, so you don’t get hit by a car. Or back in the day, if someone was trying to invade your tribe or a tiger was chasing us, we had to analyze the situation and stay alive. But we live in a time that despite having nice homes and technology, and an abundance of food, and modern medicine and hospitals to keep us alive, it’s like there’s never been a time where more people are neurologically and biologically feeling more unsafe. And so they’re living in fear, and they’re living in uncertainty.
RHEA 11:41
And I just need to pause you here because I am so with you. This is actually a lot of the theory that I teach around fundraising, because so many of us come to fundraising, from that fear state of like scarcity and freaking out and I’m so nervous about this ask that I’m going to do but we know that true generosity lives in that middle state that love connection, belonging, emotional state, continue.
JOEY 12:07
Yes, love it. And sometimes people don’t even know they feel unsafe, right? Like we and like when we walk into an event, we usually do that with like our significant other, maybe one or two more people. And we’re asking some version of the following two questions. All of us think about when you walk into an event with 500 other people, you’re thinking to yourself some version of Do I belong here? And can I be myself and still fit in with this group of people? So one of the things we’ve learned about psychological safety and neuroscience is if we as a community organizers, and event planners don’t understand the importance of this, our events and communities will never do what they need to do.
RHEA 12:43
So good. Okay, so how do you accomplish this, say more.
JOEY 12:47
So we’ve, we want to help people feel safe. So activating the lizard brain, help them to connect to each other by the middle brain before they can truly learn together, which is the prefrontal cortex. And so like many of us are leading purposeful communities, but we don’t have the strategies or the tools yet to unlock these communities. And so if we dive if we zoom in now and think about more of the tactical nitty gritty of how to do this at an event, would be like one way to do this as from the stage, me as the emcee, the teacher, the trainer, the coach, the leader, the CEO, the auctioneer, whatever my title is, as soon as I can, I need to stop talking and create the conditions in the room where everyone is equally invited, not controlled or required, but equally invited into some type of connection, experience or conversation.
JOEY 13:35
That’s the fastest way to feel seen, heard, felt and safe. So we may ask a question at an event. And allow the attendees to explore this question together. That’s one way to create connection is to get the voices of your attendees in the space to get them talking just like what you and I are doing. Just get them talking to each other and feel you feel more connected. There’s so many things real right now that you and I are aligning on. And if we weren’t talking at an event, we’re just sitting awkwardly at a program a program heavy, passive recipient experience of just information coming at us. We don’t have that opportunity. So that’s one way. Another way to do it is we just did an event a couple weeks ago, and we didn’t ask a question from the stage. We instead we were inspired by. Does anybody anyone here just throw in the chat? Are you familiar with the Van Gogh Art Museum? Bree is nodding.
RHEA 14:27
Yeah, I think we talked about the immersive experience. Yeah.
JOEY 14:32
So this was a couple months ago, actually, I say weeks because it feels like yesterday. But we were inspired by the Van Gogh Museum. And we produced a gala, where we took donors on a guided tour of the programs of this nonprofit. So we built these massive display walls that kind of modeled the Van Gogh Museum. And in the center of these walls was one of our big display wall in the center of it was an LED wall, which is for us just one of our large TV screens that showed one and a half minute long pre recorded video of families whose lives were changed by this nonprofit.
JOEY 15:04
And we have four of these different display walls at different areas in the venue. And volunteers were taking these intimate groups of 20 to 25 donors to these four different display walls. And people were getting emotional, they’re laughing, they’re crying, they’re hugging, they’re connecting, they’re creating community. And I think about the quote of, oh, I don’t know the philosopher. There’s he’s Australian, the quote is when two people relate to each other authentically, and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
RHEA 15:37
Oh, that’s beautiful. I love that.
JOEY 15:40
You call it God call it energy, call it higher power, call it what you want, but what we focus on expands. And so when we’re sharing positive, real, emotional, raw experiences, we grow together. So these donors had this visceral experience. Then after they reached the last of the four display walls, we brought the families out from the videos that they just watched, and they were able to connect with those families during cocktail hour, before their butts hit the seats for the main program.
RHEA 16:08
Okay, can I pause you here, cuz I feel like there’s so much good juicy stuff here. So I’m really loving what you’re saying around identifying what’s called an emotion or the way that you want people to feel, and designing a program around that sort of form follows function. Whereas I think we often get into this idea of oh, this is how that goes. And then we have the speaker, and then the rubber, chicken dinner and Bubba. So how do you really hone in on the emotional experience that you want people to feel like in the ideation phase, what does that look like with your clients?
JOEY 16:43
Yeah, the planning process starts with the 60s. For us, this is an acronym. And we took the first three C’s from an organization called exchange, exchange approach and shout out to the CEO over there. They’re just, they’re a group of individuals that really study this neuroscience thing and understand, bringing people together through event experiences, and that they’re really great at. So like the first acronym, it’s the six C’s, but the first three, we were inspired by them. And the first three cover why people come. And then the second three, cover what you should actually do at your events.
JOEY 17:15
So the first three, like when we’re planning an event, or thinking about creating connection at events, we want to understand why people actually come to these things like why are they going to give up their Thursday or Friday or Saturday to get dressed, come to a thing, find a sitter, which is now like topical, for me with a four month old, it’s like it becomes this whole ordeal. You have to do all these things to go to this thing. And of course, my wife and I want to be there, but you’ve got to make us want to go. And so the first three C’s are forms of capital. So the first one is intellectual capital.
JOEY 17:46
People go to events because they want to learn something, looking at them giving a thumbs up. They want to learn something. They want you to teach them something and make them better for it. But we have to know now that this antiquated information is ubiquitous. We stopped watching live TV 20 years ago, we watch it on demand. We stopped getting our information from encyclopedias. Now we get it from tiktok. People can get learning on demand anywhere, or GPT. It’s frickin incredible. Yeah. So yeah. equitas,
RHEA 18:21
If I mentioned is cheap. Yes.
JOEY 18:23
For sure. And it’s everywhere. So you gotta be doing more than just giving them information. So number two is social capital. People want to network and they want to create connections with other people like them. And typically, intentional, purposeful, thoughtful organizations stop right there. They do those two things. But they miss the most important reason why people, anywhere, any group of any kind gathers. And that’s a transcendent purpose. That’s like the deeper meaning of the community.
JOEY 18:56
How are we going to change the world together? That’s the question that we need to be asking, as event producers, how can we enable that and unlock that in our communities, and that’s called communal capital, the power of the community at large. So we introduced these three forms of capital to organizations. And those are really the undercurrent of all of our events. And then from there, we talk about the next three C’s, which are like, Okay, now we know why people come now what should we actually do? So people feel connected, and they want to come back? And that’s the next three C’s are connect, capture, and cultivate? How do we connect peer groups? How can we capture information on the most important relationships? And how might we cultivate and follow up with thoughtfulness and intention? And I can dive more into the those? Yeah.
RHEA 19:41
Let’s dive a little bit more into that because I think one of the challenges that I’ve seen certainly, in my own experience is the capture and cultivate peace because you have a big group of 600 people, many of whom are new, many of whom may become because of the lottery or because someone bought a table and did, it can be hard to do follow up, it can be hard to convert those people into long term donors. So talk to me a little bit about the some strategies there.
JOEY 20:08
For sure, we have to make them fall in love with the organization. And we a couple weeks ago, this is actually really interesting. I love this because it’s it just happened. So we produced an event for an organization. And I’ll just use this one as an example, because I thought it was very well executed. And it was a nonprofit organization that offers a variety of different programs to kids with disabilities, and one of their biggest programs is allowing kids to express themselves kids with all different types of abilities. I love how they frame it that way. They allow these kids to express themselves through arts, so they do theater and dance and music.
JOEY 20:42
And the biggest goal for this event and this organization, and when we met with the board and the executive team, was we want people to leave saying, Wow, that was radically different. And they wanted their donors to be like my Ria, to your point, my friends, neighbors uncle invited me to come to this thing. And I didn’t know what to expect. But I laughed and I cried, and I formed new relationships. And I’m getting dinner with the person next to me next week and her husband and I donated more than I plan to, but I feel really good about my contribution. And so that’s what we want to create at the event. And I’m pretty sure we our team did that. And so we made the kids, the stars of the show. And so if you’ve ever seen John Krasinski, some good news. That’s Jim from the office.
RHEA 21:28
I love that so much. It’s all of the Doom scrolling that I do online. But yes, say more.
JOEY 21:36
No. So some good news, we modelled that. And so donors. So let me take a step back. I’m jumping ahead. So we recorded five total videos, two year in review montages to breaking news segments, and then a funded need video. So imagine the donors are at cocktail hour, and we have these three separate display walls at the venue. And the VFX sound effect goes off. And then you hear footsteps like, you see a kid approaching one of the one of the display walls, and the kid says, Excuse me, sorry to interrupt your cocktail hour. But we have some great news for you. And we want to share with you. And this was all made possible by you the donors that are in the room tonight. So take a look, boom, video plays.
JOEY 22:22
And it’s two kids that are news anchors. And they’re sitting in front of our in a studio, and they’re sharing with you as a donor in the room, the great news that has been made possible by your donations. And so we peppered in the 60 to 92nd, great new segments where the recipient kids of the organization are reporters in the field. And so having this bit pre recorded ensures that we were able to stick to a tight schedule, and be mindful of the program so that we can tell people like it’s going to end at this time, we want to be mindful of your time we end when we say we’re going to end.
JOEY 22:57
And because we were planning tight, we could also hang loose and have spontaneous interactions with the kids. And so throughout throughout the evening, the two and a half hour program, the kids were performing on stage because remember, this is a musical theater, dance nonprofit. When they weren’t performing, they’re backstage hanging out. And so we had a local anchor backstage, and we would cut to our backstage cam. And we would have the audience members chime in and ask the kids questions backstage live. And it was like Jimmy Kimmel’s mean tweets but nice tweets and questions from the donors.
JOEY 23:36
They were able to engage in real time with the recipient kiddos backstage and we had cameras on the kids throughout the course of the night, giving them the best questions that we crowdsource from the audience. And so the key here is just we wanted to get the audience involved the donors, the sponsors, Kathy, the neighbor, uncle’s friends nephew that I mentioned before her niece that I mentioned before, who doesn’t know you yet, but she does now. And it’s a way of also ensuring that these kids were involved and having a great time.
JOEY 24:07
And so it takes these otherwise passive recipients of a program heavy information award ceremony, blah, blah, rubber chicken dinner, and it moves them away from that and moves them into active participants. And that’s what unlocks community. We had a bunch of other stuff going on to where we’re putting donors in front of the camera and asking them, how would you rate this one to 10? If it’s anything less than a 10? Can our executive director call you on Monday and figure out what we can do next year to make it a 10? We had real time live surveys going on we’re showing the survey results on the screens. We’re doing them involved in the experience so that they’re not just there passively witnessing and program
RHEA 24:46
Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say I It reminds me I went to this Tony Robbins event once and I was like, there’s just no freakin way that I’m going to be like one of those people dancing in the aisles and hugging strangers. And yeah, I was one of those people. Dancing in the aisles and hugging strangers, because Tony Robbins knows what he’s doing. But I think the energy in motion creates the emotion.
Joey 25:08
Can you say that again? That was beautiful. energy in
RHEA 25:11
motion creates emotion. So I love the moving from the passive to the active, how are you co creating co participating in this event rather than just sitting in your seat consuming and watching people? Yes, so good. I have so many questions here. Where do I begin? My brain is just you’ve blown my mind. Okay. So it sat it feels like with these events that you’re doing? Like they’re very outside of the box right there not your typical rubber chicken dinner? A lot of times we have boards that are a little risk averse.
RHEA 25:46
How do you get them to take a leap of faith with you because I think as great as these events can go, there’s also potential for it to go really badly. And I think a lot of people, I think the reason why we see a lot of the same format in these galleries, it’s okay, if I stick to the formula. Everyone knows what it is, we’re not going to screw it up. It’s also pretty boring. So what do you suggest.
JOEY 26:10
There’s one thing that boards love, and that’s objective data. A lot of boards want to look at information, like show us that you’ve done this before, and show us that it works. And here’s the thing, like from that last event that I shared with you, the entire thing we were running around, we had our event crew, holding six cameras in the venue, we’re interviewing donors, we’re interviewing kids, we’re interviewing, we got backstage correspondence, where we have 10s 2030 pieces of content from the event that we can then share with future organizations and say, Look what was done here, or that the host organization, the one that we produced it for, can use it for PR and blogs, strategic partnerships, blogs, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, you name it.
JOEY 26:57
So like content, and assets are everything. Because if I don’t have something to show a prospective client, I can’t really sell the concept or the idea, we have to put construct concept. But all of our events are your are unique, we’re not ever going to do something more than once. So I have to have those like visionary like I’m a visionary. Not everybody is and everybody has, I don’t know if Patrick Lencioni is working genius, the widget, we’ve got like her invention, all of those. I’m wonder I’m like big blue sky, let’s look at possibility. And then a lot of some people are tenacity. They’re like, let’s just get it done and drive to the finish line. And I don’t want the big great ideas.
JOEY 27:35
So you just have to know who you’re speaking to, and meet them where they are. I think like we as an organization, we do our best to work with people who see the need to change and evolve as a blessing. And I think that is consistent across the board, no matter where you are in the widget scale, or what how you receive information, whether you’re a CEO, or CIO or a CTO, or you’re just the event producer who’s checking the boxes and making sure you’re getting all the trains are running on time. Like you’re meaningful. You’re doing the work that ensures everything’s happening, and that’s fantastic. But I think we can all agree that we need to be evolving, and we need to be changing, and we need to lean in uncertainty, and view that as an opportunity, not a threat.
RHEA 28:17
I love that Joey? Okay. I have one last question, then we have the chat blowing up. So I want to get to these questions, but I’m just gonna put my Ed board hat on like, Joey, that sounds awesome. Yes, we want to be innovators. We want to give people an experience. Sounds expensive. So what would your response be to that?
JOEY 28:35
Um, yeah, doing something like this is not cheap, building those exhibits and display walls and producing the 567 10 pieces of video content before, during and after the event. That’s not cheap. But I would say, when we’re looking at measuring the success of a nonprofit event, and the metrics we use to evaluate its impact, it should create interest. And if it’s done that we’ve done our job, it’s not an REO. You say this, and you were on our podcast a month or so ago. And I think you said something like, it’s not the end of an event. It’s the beginning of a relationship. That’s right. That’s right. And so this should open doors for the organization. We had a Do I have time to share? Like one more short one minute story? Are we done?
RHEA 29:15
Yeah, no, we’re good on the story. I also wanted to talk about metrics as a follow up question. And then I want to make sure that folks have a chance to ask their questions. So sorry. Last question about metrics and then q&a.
JOEY 29:25
Sure. So we had an event for a wish organization where there was this little girl battling a terminal illness and all she wanted was for her wish to come true. So there’s 300 people in a room I was a donor at this event. Not one dry when the video played. This eight 910 year old girl who only knew the walls of a hospital, just like unfathomable and she shouldn’t be have to go through that. And we the attendees were asked to write a letter to this little girl. A letter of endearment, encouragement, love support and the letters were collected, and later sent to the little girl and her family.
JOEY 30:00
And she read the letters and that was all recorded. When she was reading our letters, they recorded the video of her reading the letters, then that short video was put together of her reading the letters and sent back to us as the donors. That’s powerful. And so our goal as experienced creators is to be moment makers. That’s more important than anything else, it’s more important than if we’re in the black or the red. If you have, if you have a strong development team, they can’t not do something meaningful with donors whose hearts are on fire. And this was seven years ago. For me. I’m still talking about it today. It was I think it was like the $1,500 2025. I don’t know what it was. I don’t like the cost to me, as a donor of that. It didn’t matter. I was so connected. I don’t think about the cost, I think about the moment. And if we can do that, we win as organizations and as event producers, people bring people together.
RHEA 30:53
I lied. I actually have more questions. But last second, last question. So I love that story. I think it’s it is about stories. It is about connection, it is about creating moments. And I just want for you to speak a little bit on how we make sure that we’re not being exploitive, right? Because I think that we’ve all been the recipients of bad I call it poverty porn, of showing people in the lowest moments of their lives and getting into this gross like savior complex. So how do you make sure that you’re not doing that, but you’re still showing something that is emotionally evocative?
JOEY 31:29
Yeah, I think it’s just having a good pulse on on your donors and your recipient families. And asking them a lot of individuals they, from the organizations that we’ve worked with, they want to share their stories, they want to empower other individuals. And so when we’re creating stories in our video team is sitting down with them. It’s just asking those intentional questions. And before we hit record, just knowing where they don’t want to go, Hey, what are the questions that are off limits for us today? What do you not want to talk about? And that gets us closer to what you do want to talk about? And I think that Katie asked a question like, do you compensate them, you can.
JOEY 32:08
If that feels aligned to you, you certainly can. Or you can just share the story with them when it’s produced. So they can share it with their friends and their family, you can offer them a free ticket to your event so they can see their story, moving the lives and connecting with three, four or 500 people at an event, offer him a free ticket to come and attend and watch their story played for the first time. It’s like that, when a new movie is released, you get to go to the viewing party. If you’re on the VIP list, they’ll feel super special that their story is changing lives or option.
RHEA 32:38
And I would really encourage folks listening to go back to my podcast with Erica Carly. And she talks a little bit about trauma informed storytelling, but the way that they tell stories is they construct it as a gift back to the storyteller. And I think if you construct it as a gift back, and it’s empowering and beautiful and connecting and non exploitative and non victimizing, then it’s a gift. Okay. Catherine, you have a question. You want to jump in here and ask? Sure.
CATHERINE 33:04
My questions just about trying to figure out, you should do something virtual or in person. And our goal for this coming year is to have a gala event or a fundraising event that is is community building, since most of the work we’ve been doing has been online. And we want to try to build that community. And at the same time since we’re a nation based organization, how do we create programming or an event? That includes the people in LA, if we’re basing it in New York or vice versa?
JOEY 33:33
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. Have you done a have you done a virtual event before? Or are you mostly live in person?
CATHERINE 33:42
No, they are new to the organization. But they did one virtual gala event, which was beautiful and very successful, but it was smack dab at the, I guess, not middle beginning of the pandemic, so very much when everyone shut down. Were a music based organization, music was not something we were doing in person at all. At that time, the virtual event was really successful. And at the same time, it didn’t connect our community members with others. It didn’t connect our teaching artists, with our donors and our donors with our youth in the same way that an in person event might be able to do.
JOEY 34:16
What if you did a workshop? And instead of doing Oh, you could also do more of like your traditional fundraising event as well. But what if you workshopped it and you created an environment where zoom has a great feature, and it’s underutilized and it’s breakout rooms? We’ve done so many workshop type events where even for us, when we’re coaching our nonprofits, we’ll ask them a question like, hey, for the 3040 50 of you that are on the Zoom today, we’re gonna put you in a breakout room.
JOEY 34:44
We want you to explore this question, what’s the best event you’ve ever been to and why? And by the way, this isn’t a TEDx. This is an opportunity for you to interview each other boom, we put them in breakout rooms, they interview they talk, we bring them back to the main room and we ask for three or four or five shares and you are able To create your community in these virtual events by asking really intentional questions, bringing music into the experience, but also allowing them to do the thing that you mentioned, wasn’t they weren’t able to do at a prior event, which was connect to each other. And you can leverage the technology to be able to do something like that.
CATHERINE 35:19
Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Awesome.
RHEA 35:23
And Catherine, we’re gonna put Joey’s information in the show notes. So folks want to get in touch with him one on one. Have some combos and Is that okay with you? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Great question coming in from Katie, Katie, do and ask your question.
KATIE 35:36
Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me. So our organization is really trying to move away from the traditional, exclusive and gala type events to really just be more accessible to more folks in the community. The thing that I’m struggling to figure out is, how do we do this and yield high return get all those donations from folks who might have deep pocketbooks, and hopefully them wanting to still come to these nonexclusive events. And that just it there? I feel like I struggle a bit. Because does that mean then that we need to have more events, if we’re not having these gala type events with really high ticket sales and costs and things like that? Just curious to pick your brains as far as okay, what can we do to make sure events are high yield
JOEY 36:29
and accessible? Ria, we should tag team this one. Because I’m, this one is also right up is right up your alley with connection community. Yeah,
RHEA 36:42
my initial thoughts here, Katie is really to ask yourself, in terms of event, like, what’s it for and who’s it for? I actually like small groups, small dinner parties as a way to connect, especially with high capacity donors, because I just find it really hard to have the kind of conversations that I like to have in a gala setting, because there’s just everything is happening, especially if you’re on staff or the IDI like, it’s like your wedding, every year, wherever. And then once you’ve really made those relationships happen, maybe the events you have is more of a community oriented event. That’s my first thought. But I have to think about it more. What do you think, Joey?
JOEY 37:26
Yeah, I would I love the question of what are we doing? Who’s it for? And why are we doing it? It makes me think about, there’s this friend of mine who is incredibly philanthropic and runs a foundation. And this organization was trying to crack the door open with him. So I said to them, the one thing I know about him as he and his wife loves salsa, and they love tango. So we need to know what motivates people before we can plan and produce the experience. So we knew this particular donor to get them to come to an event and experience all the things this organization had to offer. We produced a salsa tango, and he and his wife signed up like that, right. So we have to know what motivates people what they care about. And then we can plan an event around that.
RHEA 38:13
The last thing I’ll add, and I just wanted to, this is a fun resource is I just finished reading, you’re invited by John Levy, I think I may have mentioned it to Joey, it is a fantastic book, they actually produce events. And part of the thing that they do is that they have people do stuff together. So they actually have them cook a meal together. And no one’s allowed to say their names, what they do whatever. And so you’re connecting with people on a very human level of making a meal. And then after the meal, you get to reveal who you are. And you could be like making a meal next to an NBA superstar, not know it, but you’ve connected to that person. It’s just a human being. So I would really recommend that folks give your invited or read and it’s all about harnessing a lot of the things you’ve talked about joy around all and belonging and connection and community.
JOEY 38:59
And I love your idea to have smaller, more intimate gatherings where you know, like this cooking together wine tasting small, smaller, more community focused event experiences that allow you to more deeply connect with the attendees that are better there with you think that’s fantastic.
RHEA 39:17
I just have to share this one example of the US which I think is so great. This they were creating an event so they create events for profit companies as well as they were creating an event for urban stems. And they invited people they didn’t know what they were doing in it ended up being a flower arranging lesson. But before that they asked people to submit a name of name and address of a loved one. And then at the end of the event, they were like oh and by the way we sent a bouquet to the person that you put on your card from you.
RHEA 39:50
And just like the field that last impression is the lasting impression right and you come away with a feeling of awe and like connection and love right like I to send bouquet of someone you love will make you feel special will make you feel connected. This one fun example of how you can start to think creatively about events. That’s beautiful. Joey friend, this has been awesome. Any last thoughts as we sign off, and I’m going to make sure to put all of your information in the show notes along with the resources that you mentioned.
JOEY 40:20
Yeah, this one is actually a part of my affirmations. I do affirmations every morning I meditate. I do Yoga Journal, I actually have. I have two journals here. One is existential thoughts that I had while in the bathtub, which is interesting. And then I have my journal to my daughter, my four month old and I’m writing her journal entries every morning that she can read later in her life. And during my affirmations every morning, one of the things that I say is when the mind stops speaking, the heart starts listening. So that’s meditation and in and of itself, right, when we can disconnect from the mind or slow the mind down, the heart starts listening.
JOEY 40:53
And joy is the natural state of the body when the mind stops speaking. And when the heart and the mind connect, the soul speaks. So if we can unlock hearts and connect souls to larger meaning and purpose, we have a better planet. And that’s what it means to have a successful event. Slow down the mind. Open up the heart. Amen. Maybe people will open up their wallets. But I just I appreciate the fact that I get to do this for a living. I choose to do this for a living. And I have the privilege of doing this for a living, serving nonprofit organizations that are making the world a better place to live. So I just tip my cap to all of you out there that are leading your life with passion and purpose. And I love you. I love all of you.
RHEA 41:36
Oh, Joey, thank you so much. And what a great note is that? To stop on everyone, go for it. Have a wonderful weekend, Joey, thank you so much for everything. This has been value bombs everywhere. And I hope that people get in touch with you so that we can start to think more expansively about the events that we could be throwing. You’re awesome. Maria, thank
JOEY 41:55
you so much for hosting.
RHEA 41:57
Thank you
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