Special Events Production

How to Create Successful Virtual Fundraising Events

September 9, 2020

COVID-19 has thrown non-profit fundraising for a loop in 2020. Many not-for-profit organizations that rely on fundraising events to fund their mission are scrambling to move their fundraising online. If you are one of those organizations, take a deep breath. With a little preparation, planning, and the right fundraising event partner, your next virtual fundraiser will be a success.

Tailor Your Fundraiser to Your Audience

One of the secrets to hosting an effective virtual fundraiser is having a well-defined audience. The better defined your event audience the more focused you can make your fundraiser to drawing donations from your audience. The easiest way to accomplish this is to make sure the WHY of your fundraiser is front and center. Don’t get distracted by transitioning to a virtual event. You can find success in this new medium by keeping your organization’s WHY at the center of your event.

Virtual Fundraiser Ideas

With your event’s WHY and target audience at the front of your mind, it’s time to determine what sort of virtual fundraiser will work best. What type of event best suits your audience and allows you to reinforce your event’s WHY? Below are few example types of virtual fundraisers you can run for your event.

Online Auction
Online Class
Online Contest
Online Open Mic
Online Raffle
TED-style Virtual Speaker
Virtual 5k
Virtual Concert or Festival
Virtual Tour
Watch Party

Drive Engagement Through Audience Participation

Without the stimuli of an in-person event your audience may feel disconnected to the content presented. There are many ways to stimulate an interactive connection. One of these ways is by encouraging audience participation. Ideas to add audience participation to your event include creating quiz questions for the audience to answer, operating online polls, or encouraging the audience to submit questions on social media for you to answer during the event.

How to Achieve Your Fundraising Goals

With the transition to virtual fundraising many organizations are worried about falling short of their fundraising goals. The first thing you can do to increase your donations is to make sure to follow up on potential attendees and RSVPs. Treat your virtual fundraiser like you are organizing an in-person event.

Another thing is to make sure you choose a donation goal that’s achievable. The silver lining of virtual events is they tend to have lower overhead compared to in-person events. This means you will keep a larger percentage of each donation. This helps to counterbalance the stigma from attendees that they don’t “get as much” out of a virtual event.

The single best advice to avoiding falling short of your fundraising goal is to make it easy to donate. This ensures you capture 100% of the donations people want to make. Make sure to choose a donation avenue that accepts many types of payment. Payment types your want to be prepared to receive include credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, etc.

What Makes for a Successful Online Fundraiser

Planning is the key to online fundraiser success. The earlier you start planning your event, the better. You should begin planning a one-time event at least four weeks before the date. For more complex virtual events, like multi-day simultaneous channel fundraisers start your planning 12 weeks out. Because virtual fundraisers live online, it’s important you create a well-designed event page with registration, agenda, and donation capabilities. Your virtual event also needs to be optimized for mobile. It’s likely a significant percentage of your attendees will be interacting and donating to your fundraiser via phone.

And of course, to ensure your online fundraiser goes smoothly, spend the time to pick out the right platform, tools, and event partner.

Virtual Fundraiser Additional Considerations

Additional considerations for your fundraising event should include event promotion. For your fundraiser to be a success people have to know about it and show up. Get your event information out early and often. You can reach out directly using email, social media, and SMS. You should also create a press release to generate media interest and coverage of your virtual fundraiser.

After the event make sure to follow up and thank attendees for their participation. This is a good time to solicit feedback to improve your next virtual event.

Virtual Fundraiser Example: March for Babies StepUp!

For an example of a large non-profit changing their fundraiser see the March of Dimes, March for Babies StepUp! The March of Dimes annual walkathon “March for Babies” was transformed due to COVID-19 concerns into March for Babies StepUp! The virtual fundraiser allowed participants to track their steps individually through a pedometer phone app. They also created a TikTok dance challenge and hashtags to share individual progress on social media.

Virtual Fundraiser Event Production Partner

Just like producing an in-person fundraiser, there is a lot of technical work that goes into producing virtual events. Virtual fundraising events also have the added difficulty of making sure your fundraiser looks and sounds great over broadcast.

Trust an experienced, virtual event production partner to make your online fundraiser a success. Onstage Systems has 30 years of event production experience, including virtual event and live streaming expertise. Onstage Systems can help you with lighting, stage design, audio, and multi-feed setups.

Onstage Systems Virtual Event Production

See how Onstage Systems can help make your virtual fundraiser a success: Sonic Soul Tribe Virtual Concert. Onstage Systems produced the 12-hour international, virtual concert event. The event included on-location concert production and coordinating remote, international performances over the event’s 12-hour duration.

More Virtual Experiences by Onstage Systems

Boxing Events
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s America Strong Concert
DAS Ultimate Typing Championships
Stitch House Dallas
And More

There is still time to meet your 2020 fundraising goals with a well-planned virtual fundraiser and the right event production partner. Visit HERE to see more of Onstage System’s featured work. Or, CONTACT US to get started with planning your next successful virtual fundraising event.

FWSO America Strong Televised Concert, Virtual Event Audio Visual

July 24, 2020

Onstage Systems was honored to be a part of the creation of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s 4th of July concert, virtual event. The “Celebrating the Best of America in a Trying Time” concert event took place at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth and featured guest appearances from various Fort Worth feature performers with a special guest appearance by Fort Worth native and Broadway star Major Attaway.

Featured Performers

Major Attaway (Broadway’s Aladdin)
Fei-Fei Dong (The Cliburn)
Megan Koch (Fort Worth Opera)
David Schrenk and Andre Silva (Texas Ballet Theater)

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has performed their 4th of July concert performance at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens as part of its Concerts in the Garden (CITG) series for over 20 years. Onstage Systems has had the pleasure of supporting the FWSO and their collective of truly majestic musicians for over 25 years.

Watch the Virtual Event Concert

This year the CITG event was canceled due to COVID-19 public health concerns. Instead the performance virtual event production was pre-recorded in the closed Dickies Arena on June 26th and broadcast on July 4th by ABC-affiliate, WFAA. The pyrotechnics display was provided by Pyro Shows of Texas. The recorded concert was then hosted online for viewing by the FWSO and WFAA.

2019 George Strait Concert, Dickies Arena — Photo from Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The event’s 100 person attendance of performers, building, and technical crews was in vast contrast to the last Dickies Arena event that Onstage was a part of. The last time Onstage Systems provided production services at an event at the Dickies Arena was George Strait’s 14,000 capacity crowd per night with two sold out performances in 2019, less than one year ago.

Virtual Event Audio

Onstage Systems provided virtual event audio design, multi-track recording, post-editing, and mixing through a Digico SD10 console with over 90 individual channels. A major challenge facing the FWSO musicians was the ability to hear each other. To comply with social distancing the usual two foot span between musicians was increased to over six feet. Additionally, the arena lacked the familiar acoustic sound shell. To compensate Onstage Systems provided various monitors (IEMs, wedges, hot spots) and L’acoustics Syva for fill.

Virtual Event Lighting for Concerts

In addition to the event’s audio production, Onstage Systems provided all the stage lighting design, programming, and operation. The 75’ square performance area was lit by Varilite stage lighting fixtures. The fixtures were selected for their intensity and features to properly cover the performance area. Onstage further collaborated with WFAA to optimize the stage lighting for video recording.

Event organizers hope the recorded performance to be a one time affair and the FWSO will be able to resume their Concerts in the Garden event production in 2021. Learn more about Onstage System’s audio visual services or see more featured work.

Political Event Production Solutions

May 8, 2020

Event Production Solutions for Political Events

As your campaign prepares for November, your message will need to get in front of the public in a clear, concise, and professional manner. If your political values are all about hard work, family values, and achieving the American Dream, Onstage Systems is the perfect political events solutions partner.

Since 1978, we’ve built our business as a family-oriented culture. Our grit and hard work are unmatched, while our kindness and compassion are more than just our company values. They represent how we treat one another and our clients.

Onstage started in a small warehouse in Dallas, but has become one of the biggest and most innovative event production companies in the US. We use our extensive knowledge and state-of-the-art tools to help you get the most from your budget while leaving a lasting impact on constituents.

When you select us to handle the audio visual services for your political event, you can focus on your message instead of all the details. Here’s a brief overview of how we can help:

Virtual Event Production for Political Events Amidst COVID-19

As we navigate these unprecedented times, Onstage is already experienced in the art of live streaming. We will work with you to design and create professional online stage sets that are aligned with your brand and live stream your presenter(s), without losing the impact of your message. If your message has to be virtual, we’re ready to lend our expertise.

Political Rallies

No matter how solid your message is, if your attendees can’t hear it, it will be lost. Onstage has the technical know-how and one of the biggest inventories of audio and visual equipment ready to be installed at your political event. Additionally, we understand how to provide strong security measures and crowd control equipment, as well as ADA ramps that ensure that everyone can attend.

Press Conferences

Ensuring that the media gets the best possible version of your message is incredibly important. After all, any technical issues or poor audio visual quality will be instantly judged and reported on. We’ll ensure that your audio, visual and graphics are presented in the most professional way possible. Whether you need this event completely produced by us or simply need to rent equipment, we have you covered.

Political Debates

When two candidates may have major differences of opinion, they can agree on one thing: Being able to properly hear and see every word is the most important challenge of any political debate. From the right audio visual equipment to properly setting the stage, Onstage will check every box allowing you to stay on message.

Town Halls

Answering the questions of voters is a time-honored tradition. Instead of worrying about the technical and event space challenges, Onstage is ready to handle every single detail. Plus, we’re also experts at ensuring that seating, crowd control, and ADA-approved ramps are installed.

Onstage Systems has more than 40 years of experience handling the audio visual needs of political events of all sizes and scope. Our industry-leading team of production managers, riggers and stage designers, and audio and video engineers are ready to help in any way possible.

Connect with us today by phone at 972-686-4488 or via email at info@onstagesystems.com.

onstage-systems-political-event-production-solution-set-up

Audio Visual Production Services for the State Fair of Texas

November 1, 2019

Nearly every year since 1886, Dallas has been home to the signature event, the State Fair of Texas. Over two million people from Texas and neighboring states annually flock to Fair Park for the games, deep-fried food, and exciting live event productions.

Onstage has played a part in this tradition for many years by providing audio visual production services for the State Fair of Texas, such as professional stage lighting, audio, staging rentals, and video elements throughout the fairgrounds. We’ve also been able to take staging and stage design to the next level with a featured stage in the middle of a fountain that provided as a platform for varying dance and acrobatic performances.

Stage design, lighting, av production for the State Fair of Texas by Onstage Systems

While working the fair, Onstage has run into various audio visual production challenges. From power and cabling in a water fountain to rooftop access for performance areas, Texas-sized problems require Texas-sized thinking. The experience and versatility of our technicians play the biggest part of our success.

Stage design, lighting, audio visual production for the State Fair of Texas by Onstage Systems

Onstage has procured waterproof speaker cables that can be run in fountains as well as custom speaker configurations. All this ensures for clear 360-degree audio projection from the stage. We also had wireless lighting controls to reduce the amount of cabling within the viewing areas. To protect the robotic lighting from the constantly changing Texas weather, eco domes were used for over 4 weeks through rehearsals and live performances.

Event Management and AV Production for the Cattle Baron’s Ball

November 1, 2019

Cattle Baron's Ball AV Production / lighting solution / staging rentals by Onstage Systems

The Cattle Baron’s Ball is one of Dallas’ most well-attended fundraising events. Since 1974, the Cattle Baron's Ball has raised over $81 million for cancer research. For many years now, the one-night fundraiser benefiting the American Cancer Society has been hosted at Gilley’s Dallas.

The fundraiser contributes much of its success to the sponsors and partners that donate luxury raffle items such as vehicles from Volvo, Mercedes, Porsche and Range Rover, a Hawaiian Getaway, a $10K Debit Card, and a $10K Highland Park Shopping.

Onstage Systems has been a long-time supporter of the Cattle Baron’s Ball. For over 40 years we have provided this event with event management and av production services such as staging rentals, lighting, audio, live event production, and onsite technical assistance. Onstage organized the event logistics of the live auction by preparing lights, speakers, and microphones. Perhaps even more exciting than that, we were granted the opportunity to manage the full production and offer onsite technical assistance for this year’s headlining talent, Keith Urban.

Keith Urban and Travis Tritt on the Onstage Systems Stage for the Cattle Baron's Ball

Keith Urban and Travis Tritt helped raise funds with spectacular performances. However, they are only the latest in big names to have performed here. Throughout its history, many adored country music stars have supported the cause with entertainment, including Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, Crystal Gayle, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Waylon Jennings, Brooks & Dunn, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Big & Rich, Toby Keith, Sugarland, Brad Paisley, Zac Brown Band, and many more.

Cattle Baron's Ball AV Production / lighting solution / staging rentals / technical support by Onstage Systems

In the early years of the event, Onstage Systems faced challenges with venue preparation. The tent outside Gilley’s Dallas was unable to hold the number of video walls, automated lights, and large top-of-the-line speakers due to weight restrictions. Times like these are when having a staff of creative and experienced technicians become critical. Our staging department designed a custom indoor ground supported rigging grid that could fulfill all of our needs. This has since been certified by our engineers for safety and is now the standard for this event.

With Onstage’s complex staging, lighting, and audio visual elements, we had to coordinate our complex installations with vendors bringing tables, chairs, and decor that also required the space. Onstage contributes to the annual success of this event to our attention to detail and everyone’s dedication to cooperation.