The CSC Gala Happenings

By this evening, our gracious webmaster will have posted the Gala results to this website. Pull them up in a separate window so you can follow along. The first question: Was your overall experience at the Gala excellent, good, or poor?

Nobody said poor! Yay! That's all we need. On to the 2009 Gala.

But wait a minute...there's a lot more hear to look at. 43 Gala attendees (out of 404 total) responded to the survey, which if fantastic. I'm quite pleased with a 10 percent response rate. For those of you who took the time to fill this out, thank you--your input will play a direct role in the decisions we make for the 2009 Gala (if you want even more input and involvement, please contact me at stegmaier@washucsc.org).

I'm not going talk about every question here; that would get a bit tedious. Or maybe I will. There are interesting little insights in each question.

Dinner: 70% "excellent" is really good for rubber chicken. I'm a man who considers fish a fancy meal, but I really enjoyed the chicken at the tasting. I heard from very few people that they weren't happy with the food, and that sentiment is reflected here.

Ritz: This is the second year at the Ritz, and 79% of the responding attendees really liked it. Some people get invited to a number of Gala-type events, but others only go to the Newman Gala, so I can see why they'd like a night to dress up and go to a premiere establishment like the Ritz.

Silent Auction: So the most appealing silent auction items were the restaurant gift certs and the sports tickets. That's helpful data if we ever try to decrease the size of the silent auction--we know to focus on those things. But it's not like there was a category that had zero interest, which is also good.

Live Auction: These results were really interesting. Given that there were only a few live auction items (20 total) compared to the silent auction, I thought more people might respond that they just weren't interested in the live auction at all. As it turns out, 91% people like the live auction! That's great to know, and it pushes me to make sure that everyone can hear the auctioneer next year (we tried this year, but we failed, somewhat miserably. I apologize for that).

Raffle: I was disappointed in the raffle sales this year (50 fewer tickets sold compared to last year). I suspected that part of the issue was the price of a raffle ticket. I'm thinking next year we'll try to lower the price (and the prize), and perhaps put together some sort of a deal where if you buy a ticket to the Gala, you get a raffle ticket as well.

Appeal: Based on these results, we'll definitely be exploring a new approach to the appeal next year. I'm so happy that 38 people contributed to this year's appeal, and I want to keep it fresh and exciting from year to year. Again, audio is key.

Deep pockets: I was surprised that 50% of the people come to the Gala with the possibility of spending between $101 and $500. Wow!

Speaker: I was really pleased to see that the vast majority of people (80%) enjoyed the speaker portion of the evening (the non-live-auction portions of the program).

Band: Per the results, we'll be exploring a new band next year.

Question 12 is really interesting--this is the ranking of what people consider the most important parts of the Gala. At the top of that list are the dinner, the silent auction, cocktail hour, and dancing. People don't come to the Gala for the raffle (good thing it only takes a few minutes). So what can we do with that information? For one, if we ever want to have an event that's smaller than the Gala (in-between Galas), we know what's important to people. I'll admit, the silent auction is not easy to pull together, but Jeff Buchek knows how to make it happen. Dinner, cocktail hour, and dancing? No problem! (See the final question about a night of wine and dancing with the Javier Mendoza Band.)

Last is a question that is currently under hot debate at the CSC--feel free to weigh in your thoughts with Father Gary or me at any time. Gary's a strong advocate of having the Gala in September in '09 for several reasons: One, not much other than weddings happen during that time, so we don't have the same conflicts with other galas like we do in the spring. Two, it's a great time for alumni to return to St. Louis--the fall is beautiful here, and Wash U doesn't bring in any alumni during that season (opposed to the spring, when they have Thurteen and the reunions, and we have Easter). Three, it would give us a chance to try out some smaller events in September of '08 and spring of '09 so that the CSC could continue to get the support of the Gala without such a huge undertaking.

All good thoughts, really. However, according to the survey, the majority of the respondents said that late March/early April is their first choice, and September is their last choice. This is important feedback, and it says a lot about the time of year we choose to have the Gala. I'm curious about why people chose that answer--perhaps we have a good thing going for us, and we shouldn't change it? If you have strong opinions either way, now is the time to express them, particularly to Father Gary. He definitely values your opinions, as do we.

Thanks for hanging in there for this long post, and for filling out the survey!