I would add this: one of the things I really hate about galas is the amount of time getting ready for one eats up that you could be doing real development work. I was in a small shop once where as the development director I was the only development staff. I was the only one to send appeals, research and write grant proposals, steward donors, send acknowledgments---and plan the gala we had for 25th anniversary. I had a volunteer committee, but they took time.
It was so hard to do it all.
I started to get migraines as an adult getting ready for that. I was still expected to get everything else done. And I had a clueless board of directors who expected everything and wasn't good Scout learning their role--or mine. The chair said that the day after the gala we should launch a capital campaign. Dude. I have been trying to tell you the years in prep and fundraising before you go public with a campaign. The feasibility study where we hire fundraising counsel to interview key stakeholders, where we create a gift pyramid that will show us how many gifts at each Level we will need. Where we raise 60% of the goal before we go public.
They didn't listen to me. They asked a donor for a gift of $500 for the campsin when they should have asked her for $500,000. Crazy little agency.
Anyway my small org wanted to be like the big kids but a gala wasn't not a good idea.
Later I worked for an org that had special event staff and it worked much better. We had a New Years Eve gala--and an overnight event for the kids of guests at the science museum next door. It was cool. But it was calendar year end and a busy time for me doing development work and a bit of distance toon from that.
Anyway---yeah. I don't like galas from a development point of view.