Situation

The Sons of the American Legion ("Ronald Reagan Palisades Squadron 283") was looking for a way to host a live streaming online virtual event. The event also needed to serve as a fundraiser for its Living History series, a recurring event featuring veterans telling their stories from serving in past conflicts and wars. The event was scheduled for Thursday, May 21, 2020 at 7 PM Pacific Time, to benefit hospital workers at the Los Angeles VA Hospital and California Veterans Home-West LA.

The Post's speaker was Francesco “Paco” Chierici,  who served in the US Navy, flying A-6E Intruders and F-14A Tomcats, deploying to Somalia and Iraq. During these deployments, he was stationed on the carriers Kitty Hawk, Ranger, and Nimitz. He is currently a pilot for Delta Air Lines and is the author of Lions of the Sky, a novel about a Fighter Pilot Instructor, with a class about to be deployed to the South China Sea.

The planners decided to charge $10 per household/screen to attend the benefit Living History talk and raise money for the local Veteran's Administration.

Solution

The planning committee decided to use Zoom to host the live stream event, since it also featured a chat system, where the viewers could pose questions for an interactive Q&A session with the guest speaker following the video presentation. The committee also selected Eventene to handle the event promotion, website, email correspondence, event registration, ticketing, donations, and the flow of the event from one activity to another. The committee members especially like how seamlessly Zoom links could be integrated into Eventene activities.  

During the registration process with Eventene, the participants could purchase tickets to the event and also make additional (optional) donations.

Eventene made it easy to determine which registered guests had paid or not and also provided summary reports for the accountants.

Results

The event was a great success and raised important funding for the local VA. The participants enjoyed the online experience and the guest speaker, Paco Chierici was an engaging speaker.

As a follow-up to the live event, the Squadron committee used Eventene to send a post-event survey to the winners of the event's auction, asking them if they preferred to pick up their autographed book from the guest speaker in-person or have it mailed.

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