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| Glenn Chamoff & Amanda Ma co-authored this article. |
As 2025 budget planning ramps up, it’s critical to ensure events are given the attention—and funding—they deserve. By thinking ahead, collaborating across departments, and engaging senior leadership, you can make a compelling case for the value events bring to your organization. Because whether it’s celebrating a milestone or driving key business outcomes, events contribute to long-term brand strategy.
Below are five tried-and-true strategies to make sure events remain part of your 2025 budget:
1. Remember, Events Can Take Many Forms: While traditional conferences and large-scale celebrations may come to mind when thinking of events, it’s important to remember that events can take many forms. Whether it’s a virtual panel discussion, an employee recognition event, or a smaller, more intimate client gathering, these occasions provide opportunities to engage key stakeholders. Additionally, with remote or hybrid working models becoming more prevalent, events remain critical for fostering community and driving engagement within organizations. Non-traditional events, like celebrating key employee milestones, have proved to be especially valuable tools for maintaining a strong company culture in a remote setting . One of my favorite events was when we had the privilege of helping a client celebrate an employee’s remarkable 20th work anniversary with the company. It was truly special to witness the genuine appreciation and camaraderie among colleagues, as well as the joy of the honoree who was rightfully celebrated for their loyalty and hard work.
2. Lean Into the Placeholder: One common pitfall teams encounter is attempting to retroactively fit events into an existing budget. When events are not accounted for during initial planning, teams are often left scrambling to find funds at the last minute, sometimes pulling from other line items to gather critical monies. This not only leads to compromised quality or missed opportunities, but it often forces teams to do without critical elements that help give an event its long tail or helps surprise and delight attendees. Work to secure placeholder budgets by identifying key business cycles or brand milestones relevant to your organization. This allows for flexibility in planning, while still ensuring that there is enough financial cushion to pull off an event with impact . It's much easier to have the idea, even if it’s not fully baked, so the funds can follow.
3. Lean on Your C-Suite Champions: Sometimes events are handed down by a corporate parent, sometimes they spin up spontaneously. No matter how they come to be, having key leadership bought in—in advance —as budgets are being drawn up is one critical way to ensure you not only get the funds you need, but also the upper-level attendance. Involving executives in the event planning process—whether through speaking roles, hosting panels, or reflecting on key company milestones—gives them a personal stake in the event’s success . We worked with a client where the CEO led a panel discussion during a company anniversary celebration, reflecting on the company’s history and future. This not only gave the event weight, but it showed leadership’s personal investment in the outcome.
4. Don’t Forget About Other Departments, Too: Events are not just the responsibility of the PR or marketing team—they often require collaboration across several departments. HR, for example, may see the value in using events to bolster employee morale or for team-building purposes, while marketing can leverage events and their collateral to boost brand visibility. Being able to create something bespoke and have the assets used by multiple departments, such as HR (for recruitment, retention or onboarding), PR (for media relations, social media) and marketing (for paid social, mar-comm/sales collateral) is a great way to try and have line items from the budget come from multiple departments while giving everyone a stake in the outcome. For one anniversary our team worked on, the employee attire came out of the HR budget rather than the anniversary budget. Phone a friend!
5. Position Events As More Than Just Parties: Being able to advocate for events in your budget gives an opportunity to show the value they bring to an organization. In certain organizations, events can be seen as only an expense rather than a value-generating project. While it’s easy to think of events as purely celebratory, they often serve much larger strategic purposes. Whether it’s generating leads, building brand recognition, or fostering internal culture, events can contribute directly to an organization's goals. By approaching events with a clear strategy and understanding of their potential ROI, you position them as an integral part of the overall business strategy—not just as an afterthought or luxury expense.
Finally, for companies looking to commemorate major anniversaries or milestones, it’s highly cost effective to get expert guidance to ensure your events resonate with both internal and external audiences, further solidifying their importance in your budget. Events are hard and those who do them daily intrinsically understand how to create lasting ROI from these touchpoints so that they are more than just single moments in time-—they are meaningful and memorable.
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Glenn Chamoff and Amanda Ma are two of the founding partners of the Anniversary Collective.
