Leverage Hybrid Events In A Post Pandemic World

Now that things are starting to slowly return to what was our pre-pandemic normal, in-person events are on the horizon. While most nonprofits are absolutely thrilled at the prospect of in-person gatherings again, many conducted very successful virtual events during Covid and don’t want to lose what they gained from the virtual format. Keep reading to learn more about strategies for executing successful hybrid events which combine the best of both worlds.

What We Learned from the Pandemic

Although nonprofits were forced to go virtual during the pandemic, many that invested in virtual events were able to reap significant rewards. Some of the new event strategies were even already in motion before the pandemic and covid simply accelerated their adoption. Several of my clients who conducted virtual events early in the pandemic were also forced to keep the virtual format the next year as it took much longer than we originally thought to turn the covid corner.

Almost every aspect of producing a nonprofit event was tweaked to work differently for the virtual format and while some elements of live events had to be ditched entirely (like food service) most aspects of live events had a virtual counterpart. For instance, many of the virtual gala events I produced still had a signature drink and beverage sponsor. However, instead of enjoying the gala’s signature cocktail served by a friendly bartender the recipe and instructions were shared as part of the event preprogrammed and attendees could follow along to make it at home.

I also produced an awards show that was forced to be in a virtual format for the first time ever. While almost the entire program was pre-recorded, including announcing winners, the award winners were kept secret and nominees were able to accept the award live and give a truly spontaneous in-the-moment acceptance speech.

As we begin to see a new hybrid event model become the norm it’s useful to take a look back at what we learned from producing virtual nonprofit events and what elements can continue to provide lots of value in a hybrid event model.

Virtual event combining high production quality nomination videos with live acceptance speeches.

Event Content

The virtual events we produced had a very wide range of content and participants, many times bringing together high production value pre-recorded content, lower production value prerecorded submitted content, high quality live content, and lower quality live content.

The mix of these types of content was a necessity, but in some cases was also a strategic decision to create a more varied experience for the attendees and bring together participants that otherwise would not have been available for the event. Sometimes the decision to use live content was an absolute requirement, such as raffle drawings or award acceptance speeches where there was a desire to keep the final winners unknown until the event.

Many times we also seamlessly mixed live and pre-recorded content as a way to accommodate A-list participants schedules. Although to the attendees the entire program was perceived as live, we often had to pre-record some segments in order to secure the best possible event speakers.

Another advantage of the virtual format we discovered was the ability to bring together a diverse set of event guests that would normally not be able to participate because of travel or scheduling challenges. We were able to produce incredible panel discussions for virtual events because each member could participate from their own locations, oftentimes thousands of miles apart.

Event Attendance

Early in the pandemic, my nonprofit clients were very worried about attendance to their virtual events. It was unknown if their audience would be willing to participate in a virtual environment if they would still find it a valuable experience, would people still be willing to buy tickets, and would donations and auctions still be viable?  

It turned out for most organizations their attendees were fine with the virtual format and actually discovered some advantages. For instance, I produced a large-scale two-week virtual summit where hundreds of people gathered virtually from all over the world. It was many of these attendees' first time participating in the summit due to the fact that travel and lodging weren't required anymore. Although the traditional summit location in Atlanta Georgia is a beautiful place to gather for an event, many participants would not have been able to attend the 2020 event had it not been virtual.    

Event participants also found great value in being able to revisit much of the event content at a later time. Also, the virtual format allowed much more flexible scheduling and timing of event content, automatic schedule reminders, interactive Q & A, and many other features attendees found highly valuable.

Event Fundraising

Many nonprofits use their annual event as a major fundraising vehicle and several of my clients were concerned about hitting their fundraising goals in the new virtual environment. Thankfully the vast majority of my clients reached their goal and many times exceeded their all-time net take-home by raising more and spending far less on producing the event.

New strategies needed to be implemented for fundraising in the virtual space but ultimately donations, auctions, raffles, ticket sales, fund a need giving and sponsorships were all possible. With the right planning and event, design sponsors felt they still got a great value in the virtual format. Also, with an online virtual format, the donation and auction information was highly accessible and it made donating and bidding very easy. Many of my clients opted for a “one screen solution” where watching the event and donating happened in one seamless easy to use environment.

Virtual event featuring live music and real-time fundraising data.

Another advantage of the virtual format was that attendees could also watch the event again or see parts they missed at a later date and time. This meant more donations continued to roll in even after the event was over. It’s much less likely that attendees would donate after a live event as there is usually no way to revisit the content and be persuaded to donate.

Event Promotion

For the most part, nonprofits I work with do an excellent job of promoting their event. However, with the new virtual format, there were many new promotional opportunities not typically available for live-only events. For instance, events that featured high-quality pre-recorded content offered us the option of creating promotional video segments using portions of this fantastic content. Promoting on social media was much more effective when staff was able to leverage event design, audio, and video content that was slated to appear in the actual event.

Also, the virtual format often meant that we were setting up website landing pages, YouTube or Facebook event pages far ahead of time leaving a very large window for promotion and giving potential attendees an opportunity to bookmark these locations or receive promotional emails with the event location directly in the email content.

In addition, with the event content living entirely online in perpetuity, there were post-event promotional opportunities that organizations could leverage to continually promote their cause and raise funds far after the original event date had passed.

Adopting A Hybrid Model

Now that we’ve outlined all the incredible advantages that the virtual event model can offer, let's explore combining some of these features with a live event to create the ultimate hybrid event that will wow attendees, attract high profile sponsors, bring awareness to your cause, and drive more revenue than ever. The goal of this hybrid model is to combine the best features of a live event with the technology and flexibility that virtual events offer.

There are two main facets to the hybrid model, one being able to support virtual attendees who are not on-site, and the other is to bring into the live model some of the features that virtual events usually leverage.

Supporting Virtual Attendees

With the right planning and technology your live event can also support virtual attendees in a way that makes them feel included and part of the excitement. Everything except food and beverage service could potentially be supported in your event’s virtual space. The key to providing an excellent virtual experience is to set up an online space where virtual attendees can watch the program, bid on auction items, donate, submit questions to the panel, or perform any other interactive activity that in-person attendees can.

The one-page solutions mentioned earlier often provide a great platform for creating this virtual attendees gathering space. Another important aspect of live events is the socializing that happens before your event's main program kicks off. You can use Zoom or other similar technologies to prove a virtual reception area for virtual attendees to gather. 

For some of the virtual performances I produced in 2020 we even projected our virtual Zoom audience onto a screen so the performers could see at least some of the audience that was enjoying their performance. This is not a necessity for all hybrid events but it’s another way to make the virtual audience feel included in the experience.

The most important aspect for virtual attendees is of course being able to watch the event with high quality sound and video. For this to be accomplished you should work with professionals that have extensive experience in multi-camera live streaming and production. The AV team responsible for the live in-person experience will need to work closely with the live streaming team to ensure both live and virtual audience have a good experience.

Incorporating Virtual Event Features

The flip side of the hybrid event coin is bringing some of the virtual event features into your live event experience. The most common virtual features that clients are now incorporating in live events is high-quality pre-recorded content. While the event host and some other participants are best experienced live, client stories and testimonials, yearly review content, award speeches and other content can be much more effective as carefully crafted pre-recorded video segments.

With a prerecorded video, award winners can write a prepared speech and execute it flawlessly with the help of a teleprompter and a good video production team. This method also allows the event producers to fit this content into a predictable amount of time, preventing long rambling speeches that may derail the energy and pace of your event. 

Prerecording content in our studio helped make this virtual event's content impactful and useful for future video projects.

Also, client stories can be extremely impactful and drive more donations when their stories are executed as expertly crafted video narratives. Using a pre-recorded video allows the audience to see the person in their natural environment, hear from other people in their life, and understand more of their story.

If your organization is part of a larger national structure you may also be able to have top-level staff and important leaders of the organization appear at your event in either a live virtual format or through prerecorded video. This is a great way for leadership to participate in many more events without having to add travel to their already extremely busy schedules. You can also feature larger more robust panels of experts for discussions easier through virtual means.

Although I am suggesting your hybrid event takes advantage of pre-recorded content that doesn’t mean the people featured in this content also don’t participate live. Often with a prerecorded award speech after the video is over the winner is invited on stage to accept the award but not make a speech live.

One other key factor to incorporating pre-recorded content is your venue's AV system. Hopefully, the location for your live event has large projector screens, a great audio system, and high-definition projectors. This will allow the live and virtual audience to experience the content in an impactful way.

Also, keep in mind producing pre-recorded content for a large venue takes some special skill. Any small audio or video issue can be magnified greatly when projected on a large screen and played back through a powerful audio system. Make sure to work with professional video producers who are experienced in having their content featured in large venues. 

Hybrid May Be The Future

Live events are coming back, that is certain. However, with so many nonprofits experiencing the benefits of virtual events, attendees having very different levels of comfort with live events, and the possibility of other widespread illnesses in our future, the hybrid event model may be the future. 

Now that live-streaming technology has advanced tremendously and people are more comfortable with virtual experiences, it’s hard to deny the huge benefits of a hybrid event model.