How is Philly Give & Get different from your regular fundraiser?

Most “regular” fundraisers are not as overt about the transactional nature of philanthropy. In other words, what is the donor getting for their donation? Our event benefits everyone – the winning bidders get to learn a new skill, the Experts expand the community’s knowledge of their work, and all the proceeds go to charity. It’s a win, win, win situation.

How did you select PCAT as your charity recipient?

We selected PCAT because it is an amazing program! There isn’t enough space on this blog to talk about how impressed I am with the work that the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Technology is doing. It’s a very effective program, and because it’s located way up in Northeast Philadelphia, I don’t think it gets as much love as some of its Center City peers. We hope that this event is a platform for more arts and technology entrepreneurs to find out about PCAT, and donate their time, talent, and treasure to them.

Fun events are a great way to get new people involved in charitable causes that they might not normally find out about. I’m passionate about events because I’m passionate about philanthropy. I want to make sure that my generation of Philadelphians become enamoured with our nonprofit community. I want them to fall head over heels, bonkers, IN LOVE with donating time and money to organizations that are working everyday to make this city the amazing place that it is. Unless our generation finds a way to make philanthropy fun, people aren’t going to give back as much as they could. It’s that simple.

Do you have any horror stories from events that didn’t go so well? 

Absolutely. When I was working at an arts organization that hosted a large annual festival, our closing night party was almost a disaster. On the night of the event, Philadelphia has a freak snow storm…tons of rain and sleet and nasty winds and ice. Attendees were encouraged to wear costumes but when they showed up, they were drenched and cold and Not Happy. However, we had a great DJ and an amazing photographer in attendance, and the staff banded together and just made the decision to have a good time. The party ended up being fun and boisterous and memorable, and we got tons of great photos. The next year, the closing night party was a hot ticket!

Main lesson: go with the flow! Once the event is in motion, there are several things that are completely out of your control…and the weather is certainly one of them! If the event organizers stress out, the volunteers stress out, and that stress infects the attendees. However, if the event organizers are having a great time, the volunteers will be excited, and the attendees will have fun. So let go, and enjoy the party!

What you should DO

Consider the cost.

The cost of everything. Think about the venue, the food and drink, the talent. Who needs to get paid, and what do you, as the event organizer, have to pay for? Are you renting tables and chairs? Linens? What’s the hourly rate of the catering company or the live band? Are you selling alcoholic drinks at your event? This could knock your ticket price down significantly. Don’t forget a single monetary detail when adding and dividing.

Do your research.

It’s important to research events that are similar to yours when figuring out how much you’re going to charge for tickets. If there are two music festivals in your town in the same month, and your tickets are significantly more pricey than the competitor’s, most people will probably choose the less expensive option. It’s a good idea to stay in a certain ballpark range so that you don’t alienate potential customers.

Consider your target audience. 

Geographic location is another thing to think about when selecting your ticket price. Cost of living varies widely from city to city! Manhattanites are used to paying big bucks for big events, while a small suburban town might get serious sticker shock when purchasing a more costly event ticket. Make sure you get a feel for what your audience would expect to pay to attend an event of your organization’s caliber.

Whatever you do, DON’T

Change your ticket price after tickets have already gone on sale. 

Can you imagine buying tickets to an event, only to visit the event wall later and discover that ticket prices have dropped? You’d probably feel cheated and let down. Stick by your ticket price, even if tickets aren’t selling as fast as you had hoped. A last minute price drop won’t benefit you or your loyal customers. One way to avoid the “oh my god, why haven’t we sold enough tickets yet?!” freak-out is with tiered pricing. Tiered pricing is a great way to get people to commit early to your event. By offering incentives like a ticket discount, early entry, or swag bag, you can list “early bird” tickets at a lower price that will encourage event goers to buy tickets ASAP.

Go from free to paid tickets due to poor planning.

Similar to the tip above, you gotta stick to your word! If you advertise a free event, then later realize that your budget won’t cover event costs, suddenly changing to paid tickets is not the way to go. The best way to prevent this from happening is to plan consciously and carefully. Write things down. Do the math. Check it. (At least) twice.

Don’t forget about YOU. 

Hey, you gotta get paid too, right? When factoring in all your labor costs, please don’t forget to include yourself. You deserve to be paid appropriately for all your hard work!

Dylan Ladd, 18, discovered his passion for singing when he was only in the seventh grade. The Chicago suburb where he grew up has a community that encourages local youth to explore their talents, prompting Ladd to bring his after school activity of “choir” to the next level faster than you can say “break a leg!” Now the high school senior throws performing arts events for his group Project Two all on his own. Impressive, no?

(Ladd, third from the right, poses with the rest of Project Two.)

How did Project Two get started?

I wasn’t ever interested in Music until middle school when I started choir. My choir teacher encouraged me to audition for the musical, which got me interested in musical theatre. The first musical I ever saw was Jersey Boys. I loved the show so much because it was so relatable, being a guy with a high singing voice. I showed my friends back home and we instantly fell in love. We started a singing group called The Jersey Kids, modeled off the musical Jersey Boys. It was pretty cool, since we did it all on our own. We were able to meet all the actors from the Chicago company of Jersey Boys, and we even booked a few shows. All was great, until the producers of Jersey Boys found out about us and had to request that we stopped performing due to copyright infringement (the name, songs and dances). We changed our group name to Project Two, as it was our second endeavor in performance groups, and added an assortment of Broadway shows to the repertoire.

How do you juggle Project Two and school? 

It is really difficult to balance it all. On top of school and Project Two, I am involved with the high school theatre program, and I direct the after school men’s chorus. I also work 25-30 hours a week at Best Buy. This group is something that I love more than anything. When you have a passion like that, you just do what you can to make it work. I find myself using any moment of free time I can to come up with new ways to promote the group, or new things to add to the show. I’d love for Project Two to become something big. Especially since it’s so unique in its style. Plenty of kids have started bands, but were different. We’re good kids that love theatre. We all are leaving for college in the fall, but we hope to stay in contact, and continue rehearsing and performing all around.

Where is your favorite place to perform?

We perform anywhere someone will take us. We’ve done shows anywhere from the local Culvers fast food restaurant to the High School Performing Arts Center. We’ve even been main stage performers at our local Fall Festival for two years in a row. Our favorite place to perform is a retirement community of over 6,000 residences in Huntley called Del Webb Sun City. They have a theatre that fits about 500 people, and we sell out every time. The people there are so welcoming to us, and they’ve given us the support to want to keep doing this for years and years.

How does TicketLeap fit your needs as a performing arts group?

Among researching ticket providers for our concert, TicketLeap seemed like the perfect fit for us. It has such a user friendly interface and is very inviting to ticket purchasers. The ability to track sales and add discounts has been essential to some other decisions such as what sound companies to use and things like that (because ticket sales is our only source of income). Its seamless integration with PayPal has made tracking net sales incredibly easy. Plus, the integration with mobile devices such as iOS and Android is going to play an incredible part in our ticket sales and check in process at the door.

Do you have any words of wisdom for kids who dream of pursuing the performing arts?

Take the advice that you hear over and over again from anyone that hears you are interested in performance–if you love it and put your mind to it, you can make it possible. You have to take things like that into your own hands to make your own dreams come true. I’m confident that if my group keeps trying, and has the right determination, the right person will see us and help us make our dreams come true.

At TicketLeap, we’re always looking for opportunities to improve our product. To do this most effectively, we need to be product experts, but we also need to be user experts — experts on you! And that’s what we’ve set out to be. We think of every email, tweet, phone call, and post that you send our way as a little nugget of gold. All of these nuggets together constitute a goldmine (so to speak) of user knowledge and insights. We love this goldmine; we study it, discuss it, and write about it at work. As Director of Product, this goldmine is my north star.

Sometimes, when we’re evaluating a particular part of the product, we seek out a particular type of nugget. Last week we did this in the form of a survey, which we sent to users who recently signed up for a TicketLeap account. I wanted to thank everyone who completed the survey — we’re really grateful for the feedback, and are already putting it to good use! And, as an even better way to say ‘thank you,’ we decided to send an iPad to one randomly selected user who completed our survey. So congratulations, Casey from Florida; we’ll be sending out your shiny new iPad soon!

Got feedback you’d like the product team to hear? Send us a note, tweet at us (@ticketleap), leave a comment, post about it… we’re listening!

No More Refund Fees

Yep, you heard it here first. TicketLeap will now support full refunds. That means 100% of the ticket cost will go back to the buyer. No more fees! Learn how to refund a ticket here.

Support for Facebook’s “Buy Tickets” Button

After exporting your TicketLeap event to Facebook, you’ll see a handy dandy “Buy Tickets” link within the FB event details. This link will take patrons directly to your TicketLeap event page.

Your number? You can keep it. 

To speed up the checkout process, patrons are no longer required to provide their phone numbers (unless, of course, the event organizer wants to ask for it).