From the Blog: It's Not the Ask — It's the Room

I have a confession: I'm a tiny party person. Give me three friends — no more — on a patio or in a cozy corner of a restaurant, and hours will disappear. Something happens in a small, intentional space that doesn't happen in a big one. People go deeper. They stay longer than they meant to.

I think about this a lot when I talk to nonprofit leaders about fundraisers.

There's a temptation to think bigger is better — more names on the list, more reach. But Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering reframed something for me: a category can produce an event. Only a purpose can produce an experience. And purpose isn't just about why you're gathering — it's equally about who's in the room. Those aren't two separate questions. They're the same one, asked two ways.

A circle that outlasted the plan

About ten years ago, a friend and I answered the call to start a Lean In Circle — Sheryl Sandberg's idea for small groups of women meeting regularly to support each other. It started as a girls' weekend, just the two of us, in Hocking Hills. Then we each invited a friend we thought the other should meet. A year later, that had grown into a circle of eight — four women I knew, four she knew, most of whom had never met each other before.

That circle wasn't built on an agenda. It was built on the belief that these particular people, in this particular space, would matter to each other.

Ten years later, legend has it, five of the original eight still meet regularly.

What this looks like at a fundraiser

The principle behind that circle is the same one for nonprofit leaders to apply to a room of either two hundred or even 2,500 instead of 8.

Take an alumni gathering — say, former board members and program volunteers across a decade who never overlapped. They don't share a donation history. They share a why: a season of this organization mattered enough that they gave it their time. The invitation's job isn't “please give again.” It's naming that shared why out loud, then inviting the room into what's next.

Or take a mission built around serving kids. Not everyone on your guest list is a parent connected to the cause directly — but most know what it is to love a child fiercely. An invitation that opens with “as a parent, we often worry about…” draws that circle wider before the ask even arrives. Then the program leans into it — a parent's testimonial, a story that mirrors the exact feeling the invitation named. Parker's point about purpose is that it should filter every decision, from guest list to what happens on stage. When the invitation and the program are answering the same emotional question, the room feels cohesive — and that cohesion is what people remember.

What this means for your next fundraiser

Nobody remembers a well-run agenda. People remember how it felt to be in that room — the story that made them tear up, the person they met who they're still in touch with a year later.

So before you plan the menu or the program, ask a harder question: who needs to be in this space together, and why? Not “who can give the most” — who, together, will create an experience your guests will still be carrying next year, not just an event they'll forget by Monday.

That's not hosting with purpose for its own sake. It's the difference between people showing up, and people remembering they were there.

Read the book that sparked this: From the Stack: The Art of Gathering →