FREE teleclass: How to negotiate your charity auction venue contract

Carlean Ponder will be my guest speaker on negotiating charity auction venue contracts.

UPDATE: This class has passed.

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I wish someone had offered this class when I was a full-time event planner.

Many nonprofits and some schools hold their charity auctions at outside venues … most of which will require the group to sign a contract.

But if you don’t regularly work with contracts, they can be overwhelming. Not every organization can afford to have an attorney on staff to negotiate those written tomes, so it often falls to the responsibility of the executive director, board president, or even the special events manager to figure out what the contract says, and how it affects your charitable cause.

This FREE teleclass will cover five key areas designed to make you more confident in understanding and negotiating a charity auction venue contract.

1. Build your confidence when talking about contracts.  Learn what provisions of a contract can likely be negotiated.  What should you do when the venue provides its own pre-drafted agreements?
2. How the economy is affecting venues (and how that could affect you). You read in the paper that the hotel you are using for your benefit auction in six months has just filed for bankruptcy. What should have been in your contract?
3. That sticky word: practicability.  How are you going to deal with your auction if it suddenly isn’t practical to fulfill a provision of the contract? Like maybe your guest count has dropped by 100 people because everyone is afraid of getting swine flu and doesn’t want to come? Does the word ‘practicable’ have a different meaning in contract terms versus everyday understanding?
4. Indemnification and insurance requirements.  What type of liability is the organization exposed to in venue contracts? Alcohol consumption and liability is a big portion of this. What happens if your guest is involved in an accident?
5. Oh, and those nitpicky points: What are ‘optional extras’ in a venue contract? What are ‘exclusive vendor’ clauses and how can they increase the cost of the event? (How many times have you been told that you “must” use the hotel’s A/V vendor?)

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I’ve invited attorney Carlean Ponder onto the call to walk us through five common problem areas. Carlean worked for several trade associations and community groups before founding her own firm. Today, she combines her traditional legal skills with her understanding of non-profit organizational advocacy to help her clients in their unique missions.

Her volunteer activities include serving as a board member to the University of Michigan Alumni Club (she also negotiates their venue contracts) and she chairs the non-profit committee of the Women’s Bar Association of Washington, D.C

I’ll see you on the call!