Arranging a funrasing night

kirsty_baird_26

Gold Member
Does anyone have any advice as to how to arrange a fundraising night for someone.

Ill give you the background,

My dads best friend who is self employed has taken a massive stroke and will be unable to work for a long time. He is currently in the high dependancy unit in hospital having come off life support twice and being moved from intensive care after three weeks in hospital at present.

He is a well respected member of the public as he has run a local football team in the area for over 20 years. We are looking to arrange a fundraising night to help them over the next few months with money raised going to him and a donation to the wards that are looking after him in hospital.

It will be family/friends and football club relations invited.

Does anyone have any idea how we can get raffle prises or prises to auction? Its hard as its not for a direct charity if you get what i mean?

Any help appreciated
 
Does anyone have any advice as to how to arrange a fundraising night for someone.

Ill give you the background,

My dads best friend who is self employed has taken a massive stroke and will be unable to work for a long time. He is currently in the high dependancy unit in hospital having come off life support twice and being moved from intensive care after three weeks in hospital at present.

He is a well respected member of the public as he has run a local football team in the area for over 20 years. We are looking to arrange a fundraising night to help them over the next few months with money raised going to him and a donation to the wards that are looking after him in hospital.

It will be family/friends and football club relations invited.

Does anyone have any idea how we can get raffle prises or prises to auction? Its hard as its not for a direct charity if you get what i mean?

Any help appreciated

I'm not sure how you would do it as I've never done such a thing but you could ask local businesses to either give a prize for the raffle/auction or give you a donation???

Hopefully someone comes along that's done this before. Good Luck & I wish him well XX
 
You could do a 'table top' type raffle whereby people attending the event bring stuff as prizes. Lots of people have unused toiletries or vouchers or presents kicking around the house, or they could buy a box of biscuits / bottle of wine etc to donate.
Then, sell raffle tickets on the night and let people pick their prize in the order they are drawn out of the hat. I've been to events like this a couple of times and when it's for a good cause that means something to the people attending, the prize haul has usually been very generous. Good luck with organising, it's a lovely thing to do.
 
I have done similar things in the past. They were a while ago, but I'll try and raid the memory banks....

Find your venue, date, time etc.,(or at least come up with a short list). Some places will give you the venue free of charge because it means people will be using their bar etc. Decide exactly what you would like to do, and produce mock ups of advertising.

Canvass friends to help in the organising and especially on the night.

Contact local businesses with full details of what you are doing. Many businesses will be happy to help, but to be honest, if you can give them something in return it's often more appealing to them. It's the old 'WIIFM' syndrome. So I suggest thinking about how you will recognise their contribution - in effect you 'advertise' their business for the fact that they gave you a contribution - eg: a list of contributors clearly displayed on the night, on advertising etc. In reality it isn't necessarily much advertising for them, but it is a nice gesture.

Sometimes a local business will be prepared to act as a main 'sponsor' for the event, in which case they tend to feature more heavily in your advertising.

If the venue has no bar or similar, decide if you will be providing refreshments on the night, and start to plan the 'how, what, who' of that as well.

Start looking online for local sites/forums etc that will allow you to advertise the event free of charge.

Contact your local radio stations, if there are any, and local papers. They will often feature these kind of events. Our local radio will allow these kind of events to be featured on their 'What's on' listings free of charge, and will read out the local events that are coming up during the programme as well.

Make sure that the businesses who have contributed get copies of posters etc., for display. Take every opportunity to tell people about the event. From experience, posters placed 'randomly' will often only generate 2 - 5 people max per poster, often less than that, so advertising in places where people feel they have a 'connection' with the event is always worthwhile.

Consider if anyone is prepared to do something funny/silly/daring for sponsorship. Think Children in Need/Comic Relief - humour is always a good money earner!

Plan, plan, plan, make lists!

Good luck. It can be hard work, but very satisfying.
 
a 50/50 raffle has no outlay, each ticket costs a £1 and half the money is for the cause and the other half makes up the prize, you can go for one big prize or a first, second etc. The more paid in the more the prize money.

not sure if there are any legal complications if you give out cash prizes though!
 
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