BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY

Best Friends Animal Society is a national non-profit animal welfare organization that works to end the killing of dogs and cats in shelters and make the country no-kill by 2025. They have headquarters in Utah and lifesaving programs across the country, partnering with thousands of shelters and rescue groups in all 50 states and Washington D.C. to achieve their lifesaving goals. Rachel Hyde, National Events Manager, has been with Best Friends for over 12 years and has dedicated her professional career to saving the lives of homeless pets.

As these industry professionals often face stressful or difficult situations, Best Friends focuses specifically on wellbeing as a key aspect of their conference. “It’s not like other events in that our conference offers an extremely powerful experience for attendees who are passionate about animal welfare,” explains Rachel. “It’s a tough industry to be in so wellbeing is a big focus.”

Across the conference, Best Friends hosted a number of general sessions and 116 different breakout sessions. However, they had limited breakout space. They also wanted to cater to multiple learning styles and differing sensory needs in order to provide an inclusive, wellness-focused experience. As a solution, they developed "free-style learning lounges" where session content was live-streamed to accommodate different learning styles while providing a zone to reset and recharge. These lounges were equipped with beanbags, fidget toys, and other amenities for attendees who needed a stimulation break. They also ensured closed captioning was provided on all livestream content to create an accessible experience for all. The learning lounges were extremely well received and helped Best Friends ensure they met their attendees’ needs through inclusive practices.

Similarly, for speakers, the Speaker Resource Center coordinates speaker activities within a single portal. “The Speaker Resource Center makes it so clear cut for our speakers as far as what they need to provide and what is expected,” adds Rachel. “And they can self-serve, which saves us so much time by taking manhours off our plate, which is huge.” In addition to time savings, the automated solutions integrate with the rest of their Cvent platform, ensuring they maintain full visibility into all content and reporting in a single location.

They were also able to add donation and membership options to the registration process, creating additional revenue for the organization’s cause while garnering awareness and membership engagement. Moreover, Cvent’s payment processing solution offered a straightforward means of collecting fees through a seamless, automated process. “We also used the integrated payment feature, which made it much easier because we do have so many attendees,” notes Rachel. In fact, they drove 1,646 registrations, a record across the history of the conference.

To keep attendees engaged and informed, Cvent’s Attendee Hub mobile app was used as a central resource for attendees onsite. Here, attendees could access a personalized home screen with their agenda, reference session materials, access sponsor and exhibitor information, and view speaker details. Engagement features like live polling, chat, and Q&A allowed attendees to participate in real time. The easy-to-navigate mobile experience also meant attendees could easily view exhibitor information, network via attendee recommendations and direct messaging, and provide feedback through embedded surveys. “The mobile app also saved so much paper and printed signage, which is hugely wasteful,” adds Rachel. She adds that “everything integrated between the registration site and the app seamlessly,” creating efficiencies for their team while providing a helpful resource for attendees. “It was a huge time savings to have everything in one place in the app, from the venue floor plans to the self-serve agenda,” Rachel insists. The app had over 1,560 downloads and a 91% login rate, proving the success of their investment in the tool.

RESULTS

Best Friends Animal Society and Cvent: Creating meaningful change through the power of events

Best Friends achieved significant results, including a record high number of registrants and equally impressive attendance rate that surpassed even their pre-COVID numbers. While the conference is not revenue-generating, it serves as a crucial opportunity for Best Friends to connect with individuals in the animal welfare industry to promote their goal of making the country no-kill in 2025. They provide scholarships for many attendees, and are able to measure attendee registrations, engagement, and satisfaction through feedback surveys as metrics of success. These insights are critical for their planning purposes year over year, as they seek to continually prove event impact for their stakeholders and exhibitors. With these factors in mind, they found their conference to be a clear success and are already deep into planning their next conference.

Importantly, Rachel credits the relationship she has with her Cvent team as a key component of helping to drive this success. “It really feels like the Cvent team is part of our organization,” she says. “They always make sure we’re covered and we never have to worry about not having Cvent on our side.” As a non-profit, she also insists that it’s important to work with a partner who understands how to maximize their investment in the tools, given that budget is a central focus for the organization. “We try to always find a way around budget being a barrier, and we feel Cvent supports us and our purpose,” she insists.

PRODUCTS USED