Non-profit, social, and corporate – I can do it all!

Isn’t it always the case that once you think you’ve made a decision about something, you have a unique experience that causes you to completely change your mind? For such an organized and decisive person, I had to take a moment to realize that this great feeling I felt, helping someone plan an 80th birthday party for her father, was something I wanted to experience again and again.

I’ve spent the last few months trying to define what I want LW Events to be, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is that I don’t have to put limitations on myself. Most of my experience lies with non-profit events, but I’ve realized that planning social events can be so much fun, so why not do both?

I’m excited to announce that I will be taking on social clients for the 2018-2019 year, and I’m really looking forward to sharing in everyone’s birthday milestones, weddings, and bar/bat mitzvahs. I know these events are the most important days in a family’s life, and I want to partner with families to ensure that they actually have fun at these events and not feel stressed-out.

For non-profits, I have even more exciting news! I’ve developed a 4-part process to help them achieve success well beyond just one event. The process includes:

1.     Strategy

2.     Planning

3.     Execution

4.     Follow-up

I’m so excited about this because it really defines all of the important pieces of event planning for a non-profit and builds-in the most important parts that they don’t always think about: strategy and follow-up. Having worked inside non-profits for over 15 years, I know the struggles and where the holes are. So many times non-profits are short-staffed and just trying to reach a fundraising goal, and that leads to so much focus on events, sometimes too much. In my experience, most of these organizations get so wrapped-up in the event planning details that they don’t stop to think about why they are doing the event and if they are achieving goals other than just hitting their numbers.

If you’re going to spend so much time, energy, and money on an event, get more out of it than just one thing. I want to build this strategy into the planning process so that once an event is over, non-profits have a plan to capitalize on all the goodwill they created at that (perfectly planned) event.

It’s going to be a great year!