The Scottish Fundraising Conference and Awards is an annual event that attracts approximately 400 delegates each day and consists of over 40 breakout sessions across five tracks including an opening and closing plenary. The event also hosts the Scottish Fundraising Awards dinner for over 300 people making the event one of the largest conferences for fundraisers in Scotland.
The IoF partnered with Conference Care in 2016 with the objective to deliver a professional seamless event which attracts a large audience range and generates a strong interest from sponsors and exhibitors. To meet these goals, Conference Care focused on delegate registration and management, all supplier liaison, sponsor and exhibitor management, marketing assistance and all event logistics and have successfully increased revenue year on year. We supplied a team of four to manage on site and conducted all the pre-event administration to ensure the event ran smoothly and to schedule.
The IoF utilises a conference organising committee consisting of 12 volunteers who are fundraisers within the industry. Conference Care works closely with the committee and has learnt successfully to work with the group and manage their individual expectations.
Since partnering with IoF, Conference Care has been a vital element in the growth of IoF’s largest conference – attracting record breaking delegate numbers each year. Working with the IoF Scotland team, we have devised and implemented an effective marketing plan that required designing emails to the database, organising blogs, video marketing and making social media suggestions to reach a wider audience. The success of this effective plan is clearly reflected within the conference numbers – increasing from just fewer than 310 delegates each day and 212 guests for Dinner in 2016 to just 400 delegates each day in 2018 and 302 guests for the Dinner.
There has also been a clear growth in the level of interest in sponsorship and exhibition following developments made to the sponsorship programme and packages. Not only has the team secured a headline sponsor each year for both the Conference and Awards but we have also doubled the number of sponsors supporting the conference.