Philanthropy

Philanthropy Team

The Philanthropy Team focuses on establishing partnerships with charities, fundraising, and promoting charitable causes.

Generally SNAFU Con only has one charity per year that we promote and organize a charity auction for, however smaller charities have also done tabling and their own panels and programming to promote themselves and gather donations.

We have been partnering with BBBS for the last several years.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Charity Partnerships: They identify, reach out to, and establish partnerships with charities. Generally only one per year, and generally we stick with the same one annually unless we have a reason to change it.
• Donation Promotion: They prepare and distribute info sheets to merchants at the convention, explaining the donation process. They work with social media to solicit pre-con donations or to prime people on how to donate at the convention.
• Donation Management: They solicit, organize, label, and securely store donations from convention merchants at the convention.
• Charity Representative Coordination: They ensure the timely arrival and registration of charity representatives.
• Financial Management: They handle monetary donations, including obtaining change and a cash box for the charity auction.

Charity Auction

One of the Philanthropy Team's main responsibilities is organizing the Charity Auction.

• Preparation: Before the auction, the team solicits donations from merchants, ensuring each item is correctly labeled with information about the donor and a potential starting bid.
• Storage: Donations are initially placed in a monitored donation bin close to the merchant area. As the auction approaches, items are moved to a secure location near the main stage, where the auction will take place.
• Auction Management: They oversee the auction proceedings, handle the cash box, and ensure there's change available for transactions.
• Post-Auction: All money from the auction is handed directly to the charity at the convention itself. The team keeps track of the total amount raised for announcement at the closing ceremonies.

Challenges and Solutions

The team faces several challenges, such as unresponsive charities, time constraints, limited availability, obtaining high-quality logos, and managing last-minute donations. To overcome these, they:

• Establish early contact with charities.
• Prepare promotional materials in advance and adjust them based on feedback.
• Utilize the graphics team to trace/create high-quality logos using Illustrator.
• Coordinate with registration staff for badges for charity representatives, and for change for the charity auction.
• Coordinate with relevant staff for the secure storage and transport of donations.

Continuous Improvement

Following the convention, the Philanthropy Team solicits feedback from the charity to improve the process for future events. They also document all processes and procedures to facilitate knowledge transfer and future reference.