In order to estimate the number of people that will come to your Fundraiser, start by making a list of family, friends, coworkers, neighbours, your parents friends, etc. Ask your wedding party to make a list of friends or family that know the couple, and who may like to come or at least buy a ticket.
Get your committee to review the list because chances are, you forgot a ton of people. Keep in mind that some people will just buy a ticket for support but do not intend on going to the event. Once you have your list, expect that 60% to 70% will show up if you are lucky. Even for people who say they will come, and you know that they will be there no matter what – people cancel last minute all the time, so that is to be expected.
Legally you are not permitted to advertise your event on public webpages or newspapers, but you can promote yourself within your own friends group on Facebook by inviting people personally. Make sure to give permission to others to invite to your FB page, because as long as someone is invited, they are able to come, even if you don’t know them. We just cannot have people walking off the street coming in because they heard there was a party going on.
Be weary of Facebook though because people will confirm they are coming but they may not have bought a ticket from you yet, so don’t count on their “confirmation.” Other times people say “maybe” as a reply which really doesn’t help you at all. The sole purpose of the Facebook Event Page is to generate excitement, invite those who you normally would not run into or who you would phone, and keep everyone updated with any important details. So do you want to know how to get an ACTUAL number to work with? Read about our Calculation below.
The Calculation
So as an example, let’s say that you invited 1000 people between you and your committee members and family members and facebook contacts, etc. Out of that 1000, let’s assume that 400 will buy tickets, because let’s face it, people suck. People are weird we find – they might be totally well off (so money is not the reason) and want to support you (because they really do care for you), yet they just never seem to get around to getting the money to you and don’t make it a priority. Ok might have been a harsh things to read. But it is hard these days to get people to commit!
If we went with that 60%-70% statistic, approximately 240 to 280 out of the 400 who bought tickets, will attend in person. You can also expect people to buy tickets at the door too, so assume that about 5% will do that (about another 50 people in this case). That is an excellent turnout! So by using this formula, this is how to estimate the number the people that will show up to your Fundraiser.
Here is the calculation again:
Number of people invited x 0.4 = number of people who might buy a ticket (lets call this "X")
Take "X" x 0.65 = number of people who may show up at your event
Take "X" x 0.05 = number of people who did NOT pre-order ticket and bought at the door
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