It’s easy to dismiss the events industry as simply party planning and spectacle, but Julie Novack, CEO and co-founder of PartySlate, sees an ecosystem that operates with deep purpose.

During her time leading large-scale digital agencies like Razorfish and Agency.com, Julie served on many nonprofit boards and helped them with high-profile fundraising events for important charities. Those experiences gave her an appreciation for how important these annual events were to those organizations’ overall fundraising—a single event could bring in 80% of the charity’s yearly fundraising goals.

She came to recognize that these events are about more than a formal dinner. Events are about human connection. Great events help people connect to an organization’s mission—not just the attendees but also the people who hear about it from friends or see images on social media.

Julie explains,

“These fundraising events are important, not just in terms of creating a great experience so that people would donate and come back the next year, but getting people off their devices and connected to the organization’s mission. Having that dedicated time at the event and that perfectly orchestrated ‘ask’ is so incredibly powerful. To raise meaningful funds, these events need to be executed perfectly with the help of experienced event professionals.”

What Julie realized, though, was that finding an experienced planner and the right venue was time-consuming and challenging. There were some wedding websites and a few corporate event blogs, but nothing specific to the fundraising community. What was available was a handful of low-quality pictures scattered across dozens of venue and vendor websites.

That gap sparked a process of purpose discovery for Julie: “How could we help these important charities produce higher quality events that people will remember long after the party is over? How could we help them be more effective for the purpose of raising mission-critical funds for what their purpose is?”

In 2015, she founded PartySlate to help fulfill that purpose. Today PartySlate has published over one million photos from events of all kinds—everything from galas to baby showers—and helps people planning events connect with venues, caterers, photographers, event planners, decor companies, and more.

Then in 2020, COVID disrupted the entire industry, shutting it down practically overnight.

Julie recalls that vendors calling her were literally anticipating losing their businesses, which gave her a new sense of purpose—helping those businesses survive that uncertain time.

She recognized she could use her 25 years of experience in digital marketing by sharing strategies that would allow them to stay relevant during the pandemic by building their digital presence. Because huge events almost always have photographers and videographers, event vendors often have hundreds of thousands of images of their services—they just don’t always know how to use them to grow their businesses.

So Julie began hosting a weekly webinar on digital marketing: email marketing, Instagram marketing, Pinterest marketing, website best practices, Reels and TikTok, SEO optimization. PartySlate hosted over 60 free webinars to help the industry become better digital marketers during this challenging time.

She also focused on helping event professionals express their own purpose message through their digital footprint—telling the stories of what brought them to the industry and what keeps them passionate about their work.

Julie sees event professionals as deeply purposeful people. She explains, “They truly understand that what they do allows others to celebrate, connect, and live in the moment in a world where that’s become less and less common. They spend their entire week putting out fires, then get up and do it all again next week.”

Julie says she always knew that the PartySlate platform would expand to a more all-purpose platform, but she started to think about the level of purpose that was inherent in every event, whether or not it was focused on charitable fundraising: “What if every event in the world, not only fundraisers, had a connection to a local nonprofit? What if we could weave in an element of giving at weddings and corporate events?”

Today, Julie is collaborating with some leading event professionals in the country to see how PartySlate can be a platform to share an important message around “Parties with Purpose.”

Julie sees every event—from weddings and birthday parties through corporate events (where it can also help build the brand’s authenticity)—as a chance for hosts to help their guests connect with a meaningful cause, something that carries them beyond the event:

“Every event is an opportunity for the host or the organization to connect the audience with something that’s important to them. The connection you get at an event is unique in our world. You have a moment where people aren’t distracted by their screens.
There’s a real opportunity for the guests to connect with a person and hear why this particular cause is important to them. I think we could increase the money going to important causes tremendously if every event took this ‘parties with purpose’ approach.”

Julie envisions “Parties with Purpose” as an initiative that will not only help raise funds for meaningful causes but also help raise awareness of these organizations, making every event both memorable and impactful, especially at a time when social media ensures that even small events are often seen by larger audiences.

Julie believes that the past few years of distancing have reinforced the importance of living in the moment and coming together to celebrate and connect:

“There’s always a reason or an objective for an event. But we can elevate it with purpose. Imagine if every wedding, as part of their registry or as part of a short speech, encouraged their guests to contribute to a cause that was meaningful to the couple. Imagine if every kid’s birthday party asked guests to bring a dollar that would go to the local shelter or library. Purpose is the icing on the cake that creates a crescendo that’s bigger than just the event itself.”

Featured