Innovative Fundraising for a Mission-based Organization

Plan Better EventsSmart Event TipsLeadership InsightsPodcast

Sep 22

With Guest Elaine Honig Founder and CEO of STUDIO 4Forty

Elaine Honig is the Founder and CEO of STUDIO 4Forty, a national leader in strategic nonprofit planning and signature event fundraising. In 2005, Elaine developed Wine Women & Shoes where she served as a local community fundraiser before launching her next fundraising concept, Farm to Table (aux). In 2016, she merged both businesses to create STUDIO 4Forty, which has now raised over $85M for its nonprofit partners.

Elaine currently serves on the board of the Napa Communities Firewise Foundation and has previously served on the boards of The Napa County Land Trust, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, and The Napa County Farm Bureau among many other organizations.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Elaine Honig’s vision for all of her nonprofit organizations
Elaine shares her strategic fundraising process for clients
How STUDIO 4Forty’s innovative events foster organizational value
Common mistakes clients make when planning events
Transforming challenges into unique business opportunities
How Elaine collaborates with her team to ensure best coaching practices
STUDIO 4Forty’s supportive company culture

In this episode…

Event planning in the nonprofit space is a complex process that requires careful consideration of factors such as sponsorships, management, and even auctions. Most business owners are not equipped to handle the demand or have the resources to successfully execute a fundraiser. So how can you develop an effective planning strategy to ensure you’re providing value to your organization?

Elaine Honig coaches clients by offering a handbook that advises them on navigating sponsorships, event setups, and strategic calls. When creating the concept for a fundraiser, Elaine encourages business owners to structure their event around three crucial guidelines: cultivating entertainment, raising money, and communicating their mission. By conferring and collaborating with an event planner, you can develop fundraisers to amplify your company’s message.

In this episode, Paige Buck sits down with Elaine Honig, Founder and CEO of STUDIO 4Forty, to discuss how she executes customized events to sustain value. Elaine shares her strategic fundraising process for clients, common mistakes clients make when planning events, and how she transformed challenges into unique opportunities.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs — from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about their services, visit their website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how they can guide you in making your event successful.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to The Kennedy Events Podcast where we feature top marketing, communications and future of work leaders and share their biggest takeaways and insights. We love these conversations and hope you will too. Let's get started.

Paige Buck 0:23

Welcome This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events. We create stress free conferences and events providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs, from in person to hybrid and virtual. You can learn more about us at Kennedyevents.com. Today I'm talking with Elaine Honig. Elaine is an entrepreneur who thrives on creating brands, building businesses and helping others be they animals or humans, a native Oklahoman with an economics degree from Tufts University. Elaine started out in the real estate business then spent 21 years in the wine business helping grow a small family project into a nationally recognized wine brand. Elaine is the founder and CEO of STUDIO 4Forty, a national leader in nonprofits, nonprofits, strategic planning, and signature event fundraising known for their award winning event concepts, Wine Women & Shoes, and farm to Tableau and a customized event solution eventful, which have proven successful for more than 300 nonprofits throughout the US. Wow, Elaine, welcome. I'm so glad we're talking.

Elaine Honig 1:33

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Paige Buck 1:36

So tell me how your vision for these programs started. How did it which one came first? And what where did the idea come from?

Elaine Honig 1:45

So I sat I was in the wine business. And I sat on the board of a local nonprofit here in Napa, which needed a fundraiser as you know, we're always looking how do we raise money? What do we do? So I thought of a women's wine event that we called I called Wine, Women & Shoes, based on an old country western song by Tammy Wynette wine women and saw and we did a play on words where we did Wine and shoe pairing, as opposed to wine and food pairing. And that was a kind of a kitschy, fun hit in the Napa Valley. And some friends of mine attended who had, who were part time here in Napa and part time in other cities, and said that was so much fun. Can we do it in our city? So I'm like, Sure, let's do it in your town. So the next thing I knew, one event became three events became 10 events. And it kind of adds I was volunteering all this time and kind of helping 10 Different people throw 10 different Wine, Women & Shoes that around the country really started absorbing all my time. And so at that point, I realized it was time to leave the wine business, and take this full time, turn it into a business and see if I could grow it into something. So I have a real thing on my hands here. I had was like, Okay, I basically looked up and thought, Okay, we're raising lots of money for these folks. It takes a ton of time. I wonder if they pay me. And then I could leave the winery and go do this full time. And they all said yes. So I had a business and was off and running. Wow.

Paige Buck 3:19

So then what were the early days of that company? Like Like, what were your first hires? What were your first like, major challenges to overcome?

Elaine Honig 3:28

Oh, well, I built a brand so I you know, first hires are, you know, good graphic designer? Who can I branding? First People accounting, you know, those are, you know, people who could help me with that and set that up. And then it's funny, my I'm a creative and make thing I'm kind of I think one of the strengths that I have is that I'm, I don't want to say fearless, but I just don't. I leap before I look, oftentimes in life. And when it comes to entrepreneurs, and setting up businesses that can be helpful, because I just sort of like, okay, let's go forward. And then I figure it out as I go. And so as I was figuring this out, as I go, as I and I recognize patterns, like okay, I'm seeing patterns between event, from event to event to event, like if we can do sponsorships this way in one city, we can do it that way in another. So my next hires were people who could help me take this, these systems and best practices that I was seeing, and write them down and put them together because I found I was having the same conversations over and over again, which then were subject to my memory. Did I remember to tell him that or not? And then I kept thinking, man, it'd be so much easier if I wrote this down. And I just sent them a Word document with like, this is how you set up your auction. You know, here's the best ways that I've seen it done. And so those were some really important hires because, again, I like to move fast. Think of things think of solutions. I am not the person who wants to sit down and like write Get it all out. So, yeah, and you don't love like typing up the chat. No, I hate that. I needed someone to sit with me and allow me to do brain dumps, and then to organize all that, you know, all the stuff that comes out in the brain dump, and then and put it into these really nice formatted systems. And that was the beginning of our How to, and how to guide was, you know, has just been critical to our success.

Paige Buck 5:28

So then what is the offering? And the opportunity for your clients look like now? And how does it how is that different than when you were doing 10 events? And not that even getting paid for

Elaine Honig 5:42

today? So what it looks like today is someone we hand them a playbook. So if you're, you know, and the playbook is online, and so everything is broken down, you know, how do you go about sponsorships. And now at this point, we've done I donate, let's see, we've been in business 15 years, and we do about 60 events a year. So that's however many events we've done over this time. So we've done so many that we have, you know, 60 sponsorship decks a year, and we can go through and glean our favorite ones put those on the how to, and now people get, you know, you get everything, basically you get this turnkey template, and so that you're not reinventing the wheel. So that is a big part of it is this online, how to guide where everything lives, then, you know, you need a thank you letter to an insurance company, you need, you know, anything, you need a shoe guy recruitment, AD, all of this, It all exists. And it's all findable. And then of course, because it's there's a lot of it we have, we have basically their consultants who work with each team that we call them project managers. And so we have for project managers who work with the various nonprofits that we work with, and they sit in on their committee calls, they sit in on, you know, their strategic calls, they might even make a handful of sponsorship calls with them so that they can show them how the conversations done how the language is done. They're basically their coaches and their guides. And they take them through from start to finish. And they show up at the event day of you know, they help with setup, if the auctioneer is not doing well, which is kind of not that uncommon. You have an auctioneer who hops up on stage, and maybe they're the wrong energy for the crowd, or something's kind of not going right, my team will step up and help. My team also has all been trained in auctioneering. So if you're a little charity, and let's say Wenatchee Washington and you don't want to hire an auctioneer, because it's not in your budget, or my my team will step in and be your auctioneer. We have full time graphic designers who will do all of the collateral and materials from invitations to ads to banners to you name it, there's a poll, you know, social media plans. So it's kind of everything you need to execute this event from an another, you know, budgets, what do you look at, let's see, if we get 60 budgets a year, we can say okay, with with a degree of confidence, this is about what you can expect it to run per head to put this event on. And then they can come at it with some degree of of reasonable estimation. And so all that comes in with our package. So that's all our intellectual property and business coaching. And then they get a license and exclusive license in their city. Because you don't want to have to Wine Women & Shoes or to Farm to Table (aux) in Milwaukee, you want to have only one and so that

Paige Buck 8:48

you're guaranteeing them exclusivity in their market, so.

Elaine Honig 8:55

So we also get that they get the exclusive license with it when they sign up

Paige Buck 9:00

with us. So that's a pretty incredible package. And I can absolutely see how much value is and that combination of like playbook consulting, ad hoc things you didn't know you needed like AUCTIONEER in a pinch. And that I think that like industry, benchmarking, it sounds like you do like you're in good shape, or you're in trouble or based on our experience other events like yours should be performing like this. Elaine that's an incredible asset or set of assets all wrapped up in one pocket.

Elaine Honig 9:35

Yeah, it is. It's a law. It's a It's pretty amazing value. Basically the I've always looked at it as if they can make more money with us than without us. We have a viable business. And so we have to add value. And and many times you know, it's funny a lot of nonprofits have young staff and they have a development professional who's responsible for fundraising you know, overall fundraising. And then there's more junior staff that's going to be responsible for the event. And so those, they just don't have a life experience. So when you put a junior staff person with our, you know, coaches, our project managers who have all been, you know, they've all come from the nonprofit fundraising world, they can provide that continuity and that coaching, that many times, you know, the development directors too busy to provide and the board, you know, they're not going to do it. And so you've got young, you've got these young Yvette kids running, you know, basically trying to pull off, you know, a $500,000 event, and they're 28 years old,

Paige Buck 10:41

you're touching on something that another another interview subject, who's a fundraising executive professional consultant, hit on, which is the amount of effort it takes to build the skill, the infrastructure and the relationship with your community to successfully mount an annual event year over year, so you're helping them build that muscle, and probably scale a lot faster than they could independent? Yeah,

Elaine Honig 11:07

absolutely. And we have, we have what we call revenue generating, think of them like tools. So you go to an event, and you might have a raffle and a wall of wine, and, you know, a shoe guy auction and this and that there's, you know, a dozen or so, and first year, couple year, you might say let's, let's do three of these, and then master those. And then next year, we'll add three more. And then the next year, you add three more after that. So we really help them, you're right, build those skills, and, and do that. So it's huge.

Paige Buck 11:43

It is huge. And you've got this amazing, innovative, like off the shelf, and yet fully customized concepts you've rolled out. Why? Why do your events stand out in our industry? And what impact do you think they besides some of the things we've touched on, what other impacts do they have for your clients,

Elaine Honig 12:01

um, they stand out, we have two right now we have two flavors, what I call fleet, so we've got a wine, women's wine and fashion event, which is Wine Women, & Shoes and, and then we have an art and food event that's called Farm to Table (aux), and their standout, really in their level of fun, though, it's a lot about, you know, making sure the event is on making sure that it's strongly branded. It's amazing how little sometimes events aren't really all that well branded, and fun branding and, and profitable. You know, it's funny, we I started when I first started this, I had this question, I would ask myself, does this thing I'm about to create for this event? Does it do three things? Is it fun? Does it raise money? And does it communicate mission? And we put those and so everything had to pass that and if it only hit on two of them, like, Okay, we're going to have a coffee cart, add a check when you're waiting for valet, and valet might take 15 minutes, and people can get cranky while they wait for valet. So let's have you know, an espresso cart there. Okay, is it fun? Well, espresso cards are great, but it'd be more fun at a Wine Women & Shoes. If we have like a cute shoe guy work in the espresso cart, who was outgoing? And could be, you know, kind of working it as these they're okay, can it generate money? Well, let's sponsor that espresso car. What if that cute shoe guy that's working espresso card is your local real estate agent or insurance agent or works for the bank that everybody knows. Now we can put a logo on a shirt, we put a logo on the car, you know, I don't know what, wherever you brand that thing. Now let's talk about mission. So let's say we've just raised I'm just making this up a bunch of money for the Boys and Girls Club. Now let's hand out with that. You know, do you print something on the napkin? Do you have a little sign that hangs on it that says, you know, we love you are here you are fabulous. Your your efforts just helped us, you know, provide after school programs for 800 children. You know, maybe you might put pictures of the kids. So you just you circle back all three of those things. And you just make sure it's it's it's almost it's really almost more like a discipline. Anything have I done this? Have I touched on this? And I think that is actually what separates our events from a lot of the other ones. They're more fun. They're better branded, and they're effective.

Paige Buck 14:42

Yeah, that's a great filter to run any decision through. And I imagine too, it can help your clients staff and board stay focused. Yeah. Because they can go off on any of a number of ideas that might not be Again, drive the mission, the bottom line on the fun factor

Elaine Honig 15:04

home. Yeah, cuz I mean you can you can drop a card. I mean, I'd seen we all gather ideas all of us go to events a lot. And so we're always gathering ideas when we're at an event and I had, I'd seen that cart, the espresso cart at checkout, you know, at valet at a party that had I think it literally had like a 20 minute wait for valet because the parking was so far away. And we don't care it was we were drinking espresso and having a great old time. And I was like, Okay, this is this is going to help us. So I think that's yeah, I mean, you could just put an espresso cart there. But if you put the espresso cart with those, you know, with that filter on it, it's it brings it to the next level, and help people raise more money. So a big

Paige Buck 15:50

piece of the overall package, and something that you've been doing more customized, as the need demands, is coaching and teaching best practices to your clients. And so I'm curious, before you, before you set them straight, or before you advise them, what are some of the most common mistakes and misconceptions your clients come

Elaine Honig 16:16

to us? I think the common most common thing that we see is the team is too small. And many of what we'll see is the executive, maybe the development person, or the event person acts as the chair of the event, they say, oh, you know, committees are a hassle, we want to just we're just going to do this mostly in house. They'll have a figurehead chair here or there. And, but not really in get bill down and engage their committee. What happens is you just it's a bottleneck, it's a bottleneck for how much you can get accomplished. And it also narrows the outreach within the community. You know, the broader the broader your team, the bigger your outreach everywhere. So I would say that's probably one of our biggest issues, things that we come across. And another thing is that we hear a lot is, Oh, I understand this is common for something called a cat what we I call a cache hole, which is just basically you give money during the auction for you're not you're not getting a an auction prize or anything, you're not buying a specific lot. You're just giving money, raising your paddle to give money to write,

Paige Buck 17:26

sometimes a Paddle Raise or a funder need or at a cash call all of this. Yes, so

Elaine Honig 17:31

the most common thing we'll hear is oh, those won't work in our town. Oh, gosh, yep, we forgot a lot. Oh, yeah, that might work in this town. But our town is different our culture, you know, people are going to be turned off like by that. And what we will say is, it doesn't hurt, you know, we hear you because we don't want to not hear what they say. But let us try and you have nothing to lose, we will do the auction for you, we will get up and do that, you know, be your auctioneer do that cash haul. And whatever we make is gravy for you. Because you were planning you thought you could make zero. So even if you only make $4,000 would still 4000 More than you had. And inevitably, we get up. I think, you know, it goes well, I think the least we brought in for somebody with a small event with you know, that wasn't quite, they were ready for it. But they they hadn't wrap their heads at least we've made this like 10k for someone and a lot of times we'll get up and they'll say I won't work in our community. And our team will come back with a 30 or $40,000 Cash call, which for them is just, you know, gravy, money out of the air that wasn't there before.

Paige Buck 18:42

And not only have you brought in that money, but you've taught the organization and the staff of that organization. To be a little more fearless, or a little less fearful about direct asks, I think that's a it's a real challenge. It's a common, I think we hear that with our clients too. Like that won't work in our community. These folks are already giving so much it won't land right in the tone of the probate, you name it, it's and it's all just fear. It's just fear of it like falling flat, and you know how to structure it. Do you know how to structure it so it feels energetic and exciting in the moment? Not like oh, this is not done? Very Yeah. I don't

Elaine Honig 19:23

like it and well, and then I hope everyone who does project management and interfaces with the client and goes to events is a certified fundraising professional. And one of them the president of our company has a master's in fundraising and is now getting her PhD in fundraising. And so they're all you know, they're all they could all drop back in and be development directors easily. So they get it they're not just event planners, you know they're their event planners with this whole development strategy and and actually, the nuts and bolts of the event planning is left to a local you Know a local event planner, like we don't rent the venue, we don't decide the menu. You know, we don't decide the tablecloths, you know, we can weigh in on that stuff. But that's all handled on the local level.

Paige Buck 20:11

Right? You can you can say like you're doing a good job, keep it Yeah.

What do you think? Are some of the challenges you you're you or the brands you are running have had to overcome? Oh, well, I

Elaine Honig 20:28

mean, the last two years is we come out of COVID. That thing that sort of round all of our business to a halt, I remember, who was that I remember that someone had said that they'd sat down with event professionals at the time, and had looked at COVID. Just as I remember, when we were thinking it'd be a couple of weeks. And when someone said it was going to be 18 to 24 months, and I remember that group of industry executives had met and said, Oh, no, this is going to be 18 to 24 months. And I remember thinking you've got to be there's no way how are we going to hold on? I've got an employee's WHAT DO WE I can't just park this on hold? What do we do? And the biggest challenge for that was like, okay, all these nonprofits are counting on this revenue from our event every year that's critical for their services. So how this is, you know, when virtual showed up, so the biggest challenge was, in figuring it out for the first time, our first virtual event was, you know, about as homespun as it could possibly get. And so then doing them over and over again, looking at other ones trying to figure out how to make them look more like a variety show and have higher level tech and be scripted and costumes and worth sitting down and watching.

Paige Buck 21:50

Right, not just not just boring everyone. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You will. So that was a big, that was a big one. And it seems to me, like, like us, you even more so have come out with not just everything it took to get through those times. But then everything you learned is driving future innovation.

Elaine Honig 22:14

Yeah, it is. I mean, now a standard is the all auctions are online, as well as being live and in person. You know, we load everything up, you start the auction a week in advance, so people can get on and bid on their silent auction lots. You know, so that the hybrid events are great. And I don't think people want to do purely virtual events anymore. You know, if they do they might exist in different form. But But yeah, the hybrid has been wonderful. And what we've been able to apply has been really good. Yeah.

Paige Buck 22:52

Who else is doing this work that impresses you? And, yeah, who do you admire out in, in our industry and in the fundraising, fundraising

Elaine Honig 22:59

world. It's funny, there's a group here in Napa Valley called Nimbus arts. And they have an event every year called Nim bash, and I go to the I try to go every year because it's such a, it's such a standard setter, it's such a great event. So I go and take notes and their decor, as you know, they're, they're an art center, and where they teach art classes. So like, their signage for their wineries, is they'll do a painting winery, and they but they can do it in their art class. You know, let's do today are an art class, we're gonna paint winery sign. And so they have they might do a, you know, depending on the theme that might be Matisse copies or something. You know, they do really fun, interesting things. They have a fashion show that sort of more like performance art. And that feels sort of like a pagan tribal dance meets a fashion show and performance art. And they the bar is really high this year, they had a DJ with a live percussionist. And the DJ was on one side with the live percussionist on the other. So he had multiple, you know, drums and things, and he was very theatrical. So that was really, you know, gorgeous and cool. And I'm looking at it going, Okay, how do we replicate that? Can we replicate that and Toledo? Know, how can we do this? And you know, what kind of client what kind of organization would have the right tools to be able to get this where is it so I think they do amazing work. That Napa Valley i i live in the land of fundraising. Yes. And wine and auctions. You know, the Napa, Napa Valley Wine auction has always been you know, sort of the Super Bowl of nonprofit events. So that's an excellent one. I watch that a lot. No, I haven't traveled as much to to a bunch of other people's raising events, I need to get out on the road and go to like, I don't know, Palm Beach in New York and those places, but I have not. But you've also built

Paige Buck 25:12

a team of people who are distributed now, what do they bring you? Do they bring you ideas and inspiration? That's level,

Elaine Honig 25:21

they do all the time. I mean, this is I'm founder, and now I'm really just involved on the financial land, you know, coaching, visioning that stuff, but they are the day to day, you know, people who interface with the clients, they determined what we're going to do, they go to their own events and bring their ideas to the table. You know, they're, they're really driving the bus on what we're doing now. And they're because they're development directors and have nonprofit backgrounds, they go to quite a bit, and are active in their own communities. And so they're always bringing their ideas back into many times, because they're executing and I'm, you know, in more the founder position, oftentimes, I, I only hear about these after the fact, like, oh, we tried this at an event and it went really well. And I'm like, right on you guys.

Paige Buck 26:12

Yes. You're like, wait, wait, come back. Tell me more. I want to hear about that. Yeah, you go. So besides other events, where do you think your team looks for information on best practices and an event trends and be specific? I know, they have all this fundraising expertise they felt so maybe some of its

Elaine Honig 26:31

in there, it's in there that I think they all read nonprofit times, they all pay attention to those sorts of things. I think they attend other events in their communities. I think that's where they're gathering a lot of their events, their information.

Paige Buck 26:44

Very cool. And what what and all of this is giving you energy right now.

Elaine Honig 26:49

Right now it's developing the team, and helping the team grow and helping the business grow so that the team can grow, you know, somebody Ashley's now the, you know, Director of Project Management. And so what's that look like? We have to have enough projects to have her be able to be a director. So then how does that work, and then making sure that we can we keep growing our business right now we're at like, 60, I think we'll do 64 events this year. And if we continue with what we're doing next year, we'll probably do 80 ish. So that means we'll need another team member, you know, we want to I'd like to continue to grow this so that as the business grows, you know, the staff can grow with the business, so that this can always stay challenging and interesting to them. And then it's really about setting the culture. So that it's always this empowering, supportive culture of each other and of our clients.

Paige Buck 27:47

You've talked a little bit about the using some of the coaching practices you've picked up in EO Entrepreneurs Organization, which we're both a member of, how do you bring what you've learned in that to your team,

Elaine Honig 28:01

some reading, we're all share, and mark some articles. I'm about to probably share a blast, I sat in on a couple of weeks ago on compensation, I'll share that with our president. A lot of it is just my own coaching my own shift in mindset, you know, trying to just be the best person I can be. So that I know that helps them create a good atmosphere for the team. Many times if I come from a place of anxiety that's going to cause them to be uncomfortable. So how do I be confident and supportive leader in a way that helps them feel good and confident and supportive of their their their folks, you know, the people that they're working

Paige Buck 28:55

with? Nice, and then the culture piece? Do you guys have core values?

Elaine Honig 28:58

We do we do have core values and we have a next week we have a staff retreat. It's a week long we're going to be an orderly in Idaho Monday through Friday. Fun Oh, that is fantastic. rented to Airbnb is two big houses. And we're going to work in event we've got an event next week and quarterly in Idaho on tickets Thursday. So we're gonna, the whole team is going to work that event together which has which hasn't happened, and we haven't all been together in probably three years. So all because first, so all of us together is going to be huge and then being able to work towards a common you know, common goal it's like it's like getting together and throwing you know, cooking together. It's just really fun to get to do that. Yes.

Paige Buck 29:43

Oh, that's so great. Oh, I envy you your staff retreat. Our our like post COVID What's not, you know, our long tail of COVID team looks like every time we go to set a calendar date for that retreat. We have to move it because a new project It comes in is really trying and 2023 to like set a space that we really hold sacred for that is the value of getting everybody together and working on some common needs for the treating yourself like your best client. Yeah,

Elaine Honig 30:15

yeah. Yeah, part of Yeah, and the team and just that those positive interactions getting to know each other. You know, everyone, it's an all female team. And we're there to have one, one woman Alyssa is young, and, you know, not married, and doesn't have kids, and everyone else except for me as a mom. And so. So it's interesting to see, because they're all some of them have a little bit older kids, and most of them have younger children. So not only I've noticed, are they colleagues in work, but their colleagues in like, parenthood, you know, they'll talk to each other about oh, my gosh, I want to, you know, my daughter just had an allergic reaction, what do I do? That just came up recently.

Paige Buck 31:01

So I think it's amazing that that says something already about the culture, you've, whether it's organic or cultivated, that is happening in your organization that folks can bring themselves to work. Because you hear about workplaces where that is just not like, don't talk about yourself, don't talk about your family, like, you know, don't acknowledge to having a life that isn't here and focused on our bottom line. That's beautiful. No, no,

Elaine Honig 31:28

no, it's it's a, I mean, the business is a part of their lives. There, they are whole people. And that, you know, that has really Heather, our president has done is, has just done a really good job of that. And I think to the fact that we're all working in this modern world, where there's less delineation between work and personal life, you just have to make room for all of it. And it's, it's not driven with time, it's driven with results and performance. And, you know, and I've had to get used to where people work in sprints, you know, that happens a lot. It's not about the slow, steady marathon is a lot of Sprint's

Paige Buck 32:13

Yeah, that's a really good, I'm curious, if you have a sense of like, what your team would say, are, they're, like, the most meaningful part of this work for them, or the biggest things they get out of, out of the work they do? Well, it's

Elaine Honig 32:29

we every Monday, we have a team call, where we talk about the events over the week, that were that week before and ever all the time it is they love to see their team, you know, their their teams that they're coaching and working with, they love to see them shine and thrive. So I think it's the same joy you get out of, you know, having kids, I think there's a, there's an agony and an ecstasy, there's an agony when maybe you have a chair in some town who's a 60 year old Gron DOM of some town, and she's talking to our team and is like, Oh, honey, this is how we do it in our town. And we've been very open to coaching. And maybe they break through a little bit, and she comes to the event and goes, oh my gosh, these ideas are good, or we're building trust, and we're building confidence. They, you know, they get up on stage and raise some money in the Cashcall it it's huge, they all and then they all really resonate with the messages of these, the missions of these charities. I mean, when you're, you're helping someone with, you know, kids with disabilities, or you know, an animal shelter, or whoever it is that we're working with, the money is really meaningful. And we and we have learned a lot about these charities and their missions. And it's it's pretty, you know, it's it's powerful. These gals, I would say they, you know, brings tears to their eyes, I would say nine times out of 10

Paige Buck 33:57

Oh my gosh, I have that turned into a sap every time moment when like, the video kicks off and the music swells and it hits me right in the gut. And then all of a sudden, like, Why am I crying? I knew I know this organization. So well. I've already watched this video 10 times, but now it's on a really high quality speaker in the room and you just get swept away with everyone else you do. Yeah, point. Yeah. Yes. That's the point. That's the really like beautiful, amazing work you've been doing. That's kind of awesome. Is there anything else I didn't ask you about you or STUDIO 4Forty or Farm to Table (aux) that you really want to share?

Elaine Honig 34:36

I'm not me. Thank I can't think of anything that she didn't ask me. off top my head. No.

Paige Buck 34:45

All right. Well, we've been talking to Elaine Honig, the founder and CEO of STUDIO 4Forty and an event fundraising expert and community activist. Elaine, how do people find all your amazing offerings they go to our website

Elaine Honig 35:00

that studio, the number four, and the word forty.com. So studio4forty.com. That'll take you to, if you want information on Wine, Women & Shoes, you can click into that website or Farm to Table (aux). It will take you to that website for our eventful or eventful offerings, which are more customized and consulting offerings that we do. All the favor. Yeah, if you have a gala or fundraising event that you're doing that you just feel like you can get a little bit more out of Think, think of us like personal trainers, you know, you've got a you've got a workout routine, but it's kind of okay, but you can use someone to help you take it to that next level. We can do that with any event you're throwing, or help you can think up a whole new event. So that's, that's where you find us.

Paige Buck 35:48

I love that and you have this amazing team that is moved by the missions, and they're standing by to support all your awesome projects. Thanks for being here today

Elaine Honig 35:58

Paige. Thanks for having me.

Outro 36:04

Thanks for listening to The Kennedy Events Podcast. Come back next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.