The Charitable Impact of Event Tickets

As an entertainment asset management company for Fortune 500 clients, we send out thousands of tickets a month for various sporting events, concerts, and theme parks across the United States. These tickets are used for various reasons, whether it be customer entertainment, promotional activities, or team building. However, what happens when some tickets aren’t ordered and must go unused? Are tickets just shredded and thrown in an incinerator? The answer is “no”, there is no incinerator at the office and luckily the tickets don’t have to go to waste. The tickets are donated to a number of metro area charities across the country. This way, the tickets are put to good use, and someone can enjoy an experience they may not have had the opportunity to experience before.

The Process

Physical tickets first become available for charitable donations if the tickets have gone unused 3 days prior to the event date. This allows us 1 to 2 business days to ship the tickets to a charity for use at a local event. For E-tickets and mobile tickets, the time frame for availability is shortened to 2 days prior to the event because of the ability to instantly transfer the tickets to the recipient’s email. Below is the table we use to determine which tickets should be available to donate throughout the work week.

The Impact

Each day throughout the week, we create proxy orders to send tickets to charities in cites that are close to the events’ locations. A lot of the tickets are sent to Ronald McDonald Houses and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The ticket donation process provides a great opportunity for the organizations to take kids and families out for a fun field trip, with no charge to them. There are times where donations can be over a hundred tickets for a single organization. This really helps the charities because everyone can be included for the event. A lot of these kids and families don’t have the chance to attend these types of events, so the organizations have told us they really enjoy being able to provide them with a new experience. Donating unused tickets each day is a big part of the work week in the office. It’s great knowing that these unused tickets are not being wasted, and they are actually going towards a meaningful cause.