Mingling for a Meaning: How to Plan a Successful House Party (Three-Part Series)

About this event

Session I: Introduction to Fundraising House Parties
Aug. 24, 9 a.m. – Noon

At this introductory session, Kathy Wertheim, CFRE, will explore how to plan, host and debrief effective fundraising house parties. The session will include lessons from the trenches and planning essentials: the planning timeline, how to engage your board of directors, recruiting party hosts and securing a venue, preparing the guest list and the invitations, finalizing the program and having a practice party. Participants will be ready to host their own fundraising house party this fall!

Session II: Planning your House Party
Sept. 21, 9 a.m. – Noon

As workshop series participants reconvene to share their accomplishments from the first session, Wertheim will also debrief and troubleshoot challenges encountered thus far. At the end of this session, attendees will know how to structure the remarks, how to recruit and prep your testimonial speaker, how to make the ask for money, how to boost attendance and how to make it easy for your guests to make a gift. Online gift processing, monthly pledges and gift follow up will be examined.

Session III: It’s Your Party!
Oct. 19, 9 a.m. – Noon

At this point in the series, attendees will have hosted their own house party and be prepared to share their successes, challenges and lessons learned with their peers and colleagues. In this debriefing session, attendees will also explore how to integrate regularly scheduled house parties in to their annual fundraising efforts. Each attendee will have a chance to present the details of their house party and support those who were not able to host their party – yet!

Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, has been a professional fundraiser and fundraising consultant for more than 20 years. She has raised millions of dollars and taught fundraising to thousands of people in hundreds of workshops in 22 states, Asia and Latin America. For six years, she was director of development at Emmaus Services for the Aging in Washington, D.C., where as sole development staff she tripled the revenue, quintupled individual donors, increased major donors by 1000 percent, and conducted their first capital campaign. Before that, as a fundraising consultant to Bread for the City, also in Washington, she helped turn around a struggling organization, increased the number of individual donors by 500 percent and tripled the revenue in just four years. She also worked in the fundraising divisions of the American Red Cross National Headquarters and Special Olympics International Headquarters.

She has taught dozens of boards of directors about fundraising and board development. As the number one-ranked teacher (of 170) for the Institute for Policy Studies, she taught more than 100 classes in fundraising nationwide. She has also traveled to help clients working in Malaysia, Chile and Nicaragua.

Wertheim has been on 10 boards of directors at the local, state and national level for about 38 years of service, and has held every officer’s position. She completed 1,000 hours of volunteer service for Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic in 2003. She has a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College, Los Angeles, and has taken additional courses in fundraising from The George Washington University and The Fundraising School at Indiana University. Her articles on fundraising have been viewed by more than 200,000 people worldwide.

The Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) credential is held by fewer than 3 percent of fundraisers worldwide. It means that Wertheim's work has been peer-reviewed, that she has passed written exams through an internationally-accredited program, and that she continually renews her knowledge. She is also a Master Trainer through the Association of Fundraising Professionals, one of 240 worldwide. She lives in Southern California and continues to teach and consult nationwide.

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