When the pandemic first struck and virtual events became the go-to method for conducting fundraising auctions, hybrid events seemed to offer so much potential. Hybrid events offered many promises, including the capability to bridge the divide between attendees eager to be back in the room together and crowds that still wanted to remain socially distant.
Two years later, what became of hybrid events? The short answer is they never lived up to their promise. The long answer is slightly more nuanced. Once in-person fundraising became an option, would-be supporters were separated into two distinct camps: those who were ready to be back in person, and those who were not.
Hybrid galas never truly took off
The at-home crowd seldom met financial expectations, let alone donated or spent enough to justify cost.
The people who wanted to be in-person were really ready to get out of the house and leave the virtual world behind. They were eager to gather, eager to party, and eager to support the cause. If they couldn’t get tickets to attend an event in person, there was no way they were going to log on to a virtual gala: they simply wouldn’t attend.
Those who chose to remain socially distant were less likely to purchase tickets for an in-person gala, obviously, but they were also less likely to log on for a virtual event. Multiple times we witnessed organizations work really hard to appease the “at-home crowd,” only to see tickets sales flag for the online event. And on those rare occasions when there were a decent number of online attendees, we seldom saw the level of participation we were hoping for from the online crowd. Simply put: virtual crowds did not donate or spend much within the hybrid model.
Which leads to the final reason hybrid events didn’t succeed: cost. Adding a hybrid component to an in-person event at least doubles the associated AV costs, and more than doubles the workload for event planning staff. And if the virtual crowd isn’t going to show up and spend money, those costs simply are not worth it. We saw a fall ’22 event spend over $15,000 on the virtual component of their hybrid event, only to have 12 people log on to watch the show.
This isn’t to say that there were not successful hybrid events; there were. We participated in hybrid events where the online audience generated over $155,000 in the fund-a-need, adding 33% to the overall take. And another event where the at-home crowd donated more than the in-person crowd. But these events were the exceptions, not the rule.
By the time crowds could gather in-person again, they were all-in or all-out, there was no middle ground.
