fundraising ideas

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITHOUT TRYING TOO HARD!

by John Watson, June 2006

It occurs to me that the best sort of fund-raising is the type where you make lots of money without doing too much hard work. We’ve all tried coffee mornings or jumble sales where we make about £200 but that success is tempered by the fact that we needed about 20 helpers and every member was required to donate jumble or food or both.

Some years ago I realised that there solicitors might make a good fundraising target.

I went along to Perthshire Solicitors’ Property Centre and made them an offer. If they would provide a decent trophy and help us contact their member firms, Hospital Radio Perth would provide an annual Solicitor’s Quiz Night.

They agreed and it has become a huge success. There is no reason why other Scottish stations can’t be raising the same sort of money with their own local solicitors’ property centre.

Here’s how it works.

Firstly I find a venue. We now use the Salutation Hotel in the centre of Perth. We’ve tried a number of venues but find that it must be in the centre of town – the teams finish work, walk to a local hostelry for a bite to eat, then walk to the venue. There are other venues that we could get for free on a Wednesday night, given that we bring along 120-140 hardened drinkers, however we find that by paying a small fee for the best function room in the city we attract teams. In any event, I wouldn't expect to pay more than £50 or £60 for a function room.

If you are holding the event in the spring particularly, try to avoid an evening when the major football teams will be involved in major competition; Quiz versus Rangers or Chelsea means three or four teams less attending.

Arrange a date that suits the Property Centre then send out invitation letters to all the solicitors' offices. We also invite those solicitors that are not part of the property centre ring – it allows the Centre to try and persuade them to join. In addition we invite the Procurator Fiscal's Office, The Sheriff Clerk's office and teams from all the associated companies that offer mortgages and house surveys. The letter is a formal invitation to the company to enter as many 4 person teams as they wish, plus we enclose a colour poster or two that can be displayed on their notice boards for the staff to see.

Then we start preparing a quiz. Not too easy, not too hard. Every team should be able to score 60%, a decent team will score 75% and a very good team will approach 85%. It's handy too, to throw in a round that might not appeal to solicitors but might appeal to the secretaries and cashiers in the teams – in the past I've had rounds on TV Soaps and on Fashion.

About a fortnight before the quiz we send a second letter to the solicitors, reminding them of the date, encouraging them to enter a team or two and asking if they would mind bringing along a raffle prize.

Remember that property centres have loads of equipment, so you can persuade them to produce your posters and picture rounds on their colour copier. They'll also be able to send out all your mail-drops via their DX postal system. It might not sound much, but it will dramatically reduce your costs.

On the night we need a PA system, a quiz master, a score keeper and three beautiful assistants to sell raffle tickets, collect score sheets and carry out all the peripheral jobs.

We take £15 per team of four payable on the night and sell raffle tickets at the door. We have 8 rounds of twenty questions with a break of 20 minutes half way through when we take the opportunity to sell more raffle tickets. In general we get between 25 and 30 teams.

At the end we draw the raffle and this year we auctioned a signed Scotland football top, some Mamma Mia Tickets and a signed bottle of Houses Of Parliament Whisky (see your local MP for one of these!). The winning team got the trophy and 4 bottles of wine, the runners-up got 4 bottles of wine and the team that was last got four mugs.

Many of the teams will donate the remains of their kitty to the station and often you forge relationships with people who can be helpful in all manner of ways in the future.

Competition is really fierce and in the couple of months leading up to the quiz the property centre gets literally dozens of emails and phone calls from the various lawyers asking when the quiz will be. So much so that next year we plan to announce the date 3 months in advance!

Hospital Radio Perth raised over £800 this year. Everyone had a great evening and it wasn't a huge amount of work. There was work for one person for a few weeks before the event and work for a further four or so on the evening. Money for old rope! Why not give it a try in your area.

If you'd like copies of the paperwork we use drop me an e-mail and I'll send it out to you.