Please can you let me know if you can DJ for us on x date, at x venue – it’s for charity so we don’t have any budget, but it’s for a good cause! We will of course mention you in the programme and there will be some very influential people there.” Sound familiar? Of course it does! We get this, or a variation of it, on an almost daily basis.
And it’s no surprise; on the 30th of September 2018, there were 168,186 registered charities in England and Wales. There are currently a further 24,445 in Scotland and between 7000 and 10,000 in Northern Ireland. That’s not to mention all the not for profits, community interest companies/clubs as well as GoFundMe now raising literally billions in donations for every imaginable reason! HARIDEE!
IT’S FOR By Peter Holding A full-time mobile DJ and wedding host since 2013, Peter Holding set up his business – All Parties and Events – with his wife Michelle in 2012. Prior to that he spent close to 30 years working in Sales, Sales Management, and finally Corporate Communications, mostly within the banking sector. ’S FOR CHARIDEE! There are hundreds of thousands of good causes all trying to raise money for all sorts of purposes, so it’s no surprise that there is a constant stream of requests for our services as mobile DJs to help raise vital cash at parties and events.
The problem with this, of course, is that with an almost unlimited demand on you to work for free, you need a balanced approach otherwise there will be no time to do paid work! Spoiler Alert. It’s important to mention that this article is not ‘anti-charity’ , I am not against working for free for a good cause. But at All Parties and Events, we have a structured approach which has resulted from my experiences of both working with, and for, charities.
In my final role in banking, I spent a lot of time working with a range of good causes. My remit was to help our businesses to further integrate with the communities they operated in, and a significant part of this strategy was simply helping our employees to ‘do good stuff’ . I helped individuals and teams work with, and raise money for, charity. I helped them to volunteer their time through support with time off to do a range of volunteering activities, from helping out at events to joining a Board of Trustees (an amazing way to get executive experience).
So I’m a strong believer in supporting good causes, but for me there has to be joined up thinking. And it all starts with the question why. Why are you supporting a particular issue, when there are so many good causes out there all vying for your help? If you (or someone close to you) has benefitted from a particular charity, then it absolutely makes sense to return that support in the form of fundraising or volunteering.
Alternatively, you may have strong views about the benefits delivered by certain organisations and want to help out, or perhaps you’ve witnessed their work first hand and have seen the difference it can make. It may be simply that you watched a TV programme which pulled at your heart strings. Whatever the reason, it’s good to support a cause, or causes, that are close to your heart. But what if you don’t have a good cause?
Or what if there are simply too many good causes? There are, of course, hundreds of thousands and you can’t help all of them can you? There has to be balance and you must earn a living so you need to have a logical approach. Let’s take my former employers in banking as an example as they had an extremely structured and well thought out policy.
It all starts with defining ‘how much support?’ . For them it was a stated aim to use up to 1% of net profit to support good causes in the communities in which we did business. Now 1% may not sound much, but back then banks were making a lot of money! Our budget never even quite reached that 1%, but we still delivered over £8m of direct donations!
Let’s apply this approach to our business. If you are a DJ and your net earnings are, for example, the national average salary of £27,271, then your charitable donation would work out at around £273. The next question is ‘who to support?’ . We had strict guidelines as to the type of organisations we were happy to help.
As a household name, we needed to avoid any charity which could lead to reputational damage through association – a good example would be any organisation which conducted medical research. As an outfit who worked for the benefit of people, we also avoided anything supporting animals, as in any case, animal charities enjoy very healthy support! These were just two of the criteria we worked within. You will have your own views on what is a good cause, or what might not be, but it’s important to have some guidelines so that you can hone in on which organisations align with your own personal brand.
Finally, it’s good to have a strategy: state your aims, have an idea of what you can do, and do it. You may have a residency in a bar or club who have a charity event each year. That’s a good starting point for support; it can only make you more popular with your customer if you are looking to help them improve their image. The venues we work with an almost unlimited demand on you to work for free, you need a balanced approach otherwise there will be no time to do paid work!
33IT’S FOR CHARIDEE! with all support charities and we help them to support their good causes, which happily have all been appropriate within our view of what we consider to be worthy organisations. That is broadly our approach. There is of course much more detail, too much for one article, but what I’ve shared is a good overview. The key is to have a strategy and to stick to it.
Like any aspect of business, it’s a case of making sure it fits with your organisation and that it helps, rather than hinders, achieving your aims. But what about all those cries for help you can’t answer? We respond to each and every enquiry and the response goes something like this: “We are an organisation which always seeks to help local good causes, however our charity budget for this year has already been spent. We would, however, be glad to support you and can do this by liaising with any sponsor you can find for your event to cover our services.
We can help by promoting their donation through regular mentions during the event. The cost of the service you are requesting is £x, and we will also add value by providing an additional service or time extension (as an example).” What I won’t do, under any circumstances, is support any event which is blatantly using the word ‘charity’ simply to throw a free party. And there are a lot of those. Some might say I have a hard-line approach, but my years of experience have taught me that it’s good to have a healthy dose of cynicism!
If the request comes with an explanation that the event is to raise money for charity by holding a party, charging people to attend and holding an auction with all proceeds to charity then that is good - especially if the people running it are aiming high. These people will recognise that paying a proper fee for good entertainment will enhance the occasion and won’t want to detract from it by having a terrible DJ. However, if the aim is vaguely to “raise some money” then it is blatantly someone looking to have a party with no cost to themselves.
And that is against everything charity stands for… I must confess to having been caught out with this. On one occasion, I helped out a business who was holding a charity event and wanted to work with me on an ongoing basis on other events. I was drawn in! The event turned out to be a celebration of 25 years in business, where all their customers were invited to attend for free.
The company paid for full catering, a bar for all their customers and, yes, held a raffle with some donated prizes (from their suppliers) which raised a small amount for charity. It was a poorly disguised tool to get things for free. The celebration was a huge success, but they clearly took advantage of my willingness to help a good cause as I was the only person working on the party and not being paid. Good entertainment supports good events, and that in turn makes guests more generous.
Your skills as a DJ will make fundraising even more successful and any charity worth its salt knows that fundraising costs money. Even a cursory glance at any charity’s accounts will reveal that there is a huge amount of money put into raising donations. A good fundraiser knows that they would rather pay for a great service than receive a rubbish one for free. Apart from anything else, if they are not paying you, they can’t really hold you to any kind of standard, can they?
Providing your DJ services free of charge from time to time is a great way of giving a little back and in some circumstances it can even be a good way of getting seen by potential future customers. It can also be used to create good PR for your business. The key to making this work though is having clear guidelines for who you want to support and how much time you want to give away, and sticking to these rigidly. For all those “it’s for charideee mate” requests that fall outside of those parameters, my advice is to politely, but firmly, stick to your guns and insist on your full usual fee.
Good entertainment supports good events, and that in turn makes guests more generous. Your skills as a DJ will make fundraising even more successful ’S FOR CHARIDEE!
