What's the best way to identify key stakeholders for your event?

1 Start with your event objectives

Before you can identify your key stakeholders, you need to have a clear idea of what your event is trying to achieve. What is the purpose, vision, and mission of your event? What are the specific goals and outcomes you want to accomplish? How will you measure your success? Answering these questions will help you define the scope and direction of your event, and also the criteria for selecting your stakeholders. For example, if your event is a fundraiser, you might want to prioritize sponsors and donors as key stakeholders, while if your event is a conference, you might want to focus on speakers and attendees.

2 Map out your stakeholder groups

Once you have your event objectives, you can start mapping out your stakeholder groups. A stakeholder map is a visual tool that helps you identify and categorize your stakeholders based on their level of interest and influence on your event. You can use a simple matrix with four quadrants to plot your stakeholders, such as those with high interest and high influence, who are your most important stakeholders and require close engagement and addressing of their needs and concerns (e.g. sponsors, key speakers, VIP guests, media partners). Those with high interest but low influence are supportive stakeholders who care about your event but have little power to change it (e.g. attendees, volunteers, staff, vendors). Those with low interest but high influence are potential stakeholders who have a lot of sway over your event but are not very interested in it (e.g. competitors, regulators, critics, local authorities). And those with low interest and low influence are peripheral stakeholders who have little to no stake or impact on your event (e.g. general public, industry associations, suppliers). For all these groups, it is important to keep them informed and satisfied but also prioritize resources appropriately.

3 Validate and prioritize your stakeholders

After you have mapped out your stakeholder groups, you need to validate and prioritize them. This involves verifying that all relevant stakeholders for your event have been identified, and ranking them according to their importance and urgency. To do this, you can brainstorm with your team or other experts to generate a list of possible stakeholders; research online or offline sources to find out more information about your stakeholders; and survey your existing or potential stakeholders to get their feedback and input on your event. All of these methods can help you validate relevance and influence, tailor communication and engagement strategies, prioritize needs and goals, and measure performance and impact.

4 Manage your stakeholders effectively

Once you have identified, mapped, validated, and prioritized your stakeholders, it's important to manage them effectively throughout your event lifecycle. Establish and maintain positive relationships with them, and make sure they are in line with your objectives and outcomes. Stakeholder analysis can be used to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This can help anticipate and mitigate any issues or conflicts, as well as leverage potential synergies or collaborations. Additionally, create a stakeholder communication plan that outlines how you will communicate with each group. This keeps them informed and engaged while also collecting feedback and input. Utilize emails, newsletters, social media, webinars, reports, etc. Finally, develop a stakeholder engagement plan that defines how you will involve and interact with each group. This builds trust and rapport while motivating and empowering them through meetings, workshops, surveys, polls, contests, etc. By following these tips, you can ensure that you have a clear understanding of who your stakeholders are and what they want from your event. Ultimately this will help you deliver a successful event that meets or exceeds their expectations.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?