Fast Forward 15’s mission
Fast Forward 15 (FF15) is a pioneering mentoring programme founded by Fay Sharpe, dedicated to supporting women in the events, hospitality, and associated industries. Over the past 12 years, the organisation has evolved into a vibrant community of over 4,500 professionals, offering mentorship, industry insights, and career development opportunities.
Cvent has been a key partner for the last decade, enabling FF15 to scale its programmes efficiently while providing participants with valuable skills and experiences.
Managing a growing, multi-event portfolio with limited resources
As FF15 evolved, so did the scale and complexity of its events. The organisation now delivers everything from its annual graduation ceremony and the FF15 Mentoring Awards to speed mentoring sessions across London and a university challenge designed to introduce students to the event industry. Attendance continues to grow year after year, with major events attracting between 150 and 200 industry professionals.
For a not-for-profit organisation with a lean team, managing registrations, scheduling, payments, and ongoing engagement became increasingly demanding. Ensuring that every participant - whether a student, mentee, mentor, or senior industry leader - received a seamless, professional experience required a reliable, flexible system that could support both growth and day-to-day operations.
Cvent is the main tool we use for all our registrations, all our builds. It's just it's just so easy to use.
The FF15 Awards programme in particular is one of the highlights of the portfolio, and has specific requirements. The programme is a fundraising event, and FF15 utilise Cvent to safely manage payments and registration.
As a non-for-profit organisation with a strong, meaningful ethos, partnering with established technology providers gives FF15 peace of mind that the structure of their events is in safe hands. Particularly as the portfolio grows, Fay explains “it's companies like Cvent that have allowed us to, to do this. They have been fully behind us every step of the way, supporting us.”
Cvent has been really successful in engaging the event community in the UK. My mentees and the mentors actually build their knowledge from the Cvent relationship.
Partnering with Cvent allowed FF15 to deliver hands-on experience to their mentees. Registration is a core aspect of any event and requires a robust system to power it - particularly for complex elements such as multiple ticket types, paid and unpaid models. Mentees are given the opportunity to be trained on the Cvent platform, managing FF15’s own events and expanding their skill-set.
Fay explains, “Having Cvent as our partner, really strengthens the knowledge that the mentees have in terms of delegate registration and how that they can develop their knowledge. Not all mentees come in knowing how to use a delegate registration tool and Cvent is the creme de la creme.”
Cvent handles the operational complexity so the FF15 team can stay focused on mentoring, development, and community building.
